The Health and Human Services IT Delivery Center (HHS IT DC) supports the Departments of Aging (PDA), Drug and Alcohol Programs (DDAP), Health (DOH), Human Services (DHS), and Military and Veterans Affairs (DMVA) and follows a formal procedure to add, delete, change and publish business and technical standards and policies. The process involves individuals from end-users and subject matter experts (SMEs) of the standards and policies to domain leads and bureau directors who are the custodians of the standards and policies.
HHS IT DC standards and policies comply with the information technology policies issued by the Office of Administration.
It is vital that all documentation is written and reviewed with security in mind. Be cognizant of using server names, naming conventions and anything that might compromise the integrity of the HHS IT DC.
The Business and Technical Standards contain 11 technology areas or domains. They are application, business, data, integration and middleware, knowledge management, network, operations and support, platform, privacy, procedures, and security. Each technology domain has a domain lead as designated by the domain's bureau director. Domain leads are responsible for annually reviewing existing standards, policies, procedures, guidelines, templates, and their respective domain web page (both Internal/external). During this review procedure, domain leads and SMEs evaluate the current documents and make necessary changes to include the latest technology, remove outdated materials, identify gaps where standards do not exist and write new standards to fill these gaps.
Ongoing maintenance of the technical standards and policies is extremely crucial in ensuring that HHS IT DC maintains consistency, applicability, and validity of the standards and policies for internal use and for external customers seeking to do contract work with HHS IT DC. The process described in this section plays an important role in keeping the documentation manageable and current.
The HHS IT DC uses the content management procedure to add, delete, or modify a standard or web page in the Business and Technical Standards.
New Standard, Policy, Procedure, or Guideline Process
When technical standards and policies are identified that a need to add, remove, or change a document currently published, the need is articulated by first making the technical changes to the document and ensuring that it is formatted to the standard templates identified below.
Formatting Templates
These updated standards, policies, procedures or guidelines documents are presented to the domain lead for technical review. Upon approval, the domain lead forwards the document to the Service Strategy Unit along with a completed "DHS Website Request Form.2017 Final" identifying the changes.
Service Strategy Annual Review Process
The Service Strategy Unit (SSU) reviews the document and form for completeness (not content) and organizational changes, posts the document to SharePoint in the TSO Team's Standards and Documentation folder, and sends an email to the subject matter expert (SME) for a five-day review period. SSU resolves any comments by SMEs and then circulates the updated document to the domain leads for a review period of five (5) business days.
Each domain lead is to review, question, or make comments to the revised document. After the review period is complete, the SSU resolves any comments or questions, inserts the appropriate signature, and submits the document and form to PW-UCM for publication within the Intranet and to DHS Office of Press & Communications for publication on the
DHS website.
Appendix II: Summary of the Technology Information Environment
The HHS DC IT Environment Summary provides a summary of the information technology environment at HHS DC (Health and Human Services Delivery Center) and serves as an introduction to this environment for information technology contractors and vendors that might work with HHS DC.