Presentation: From Risk to Issue and Crisis Management
Abstract: The purpose of the 2020 Census is to conduct a census of population and housing and disseminate the results to the President, the states and the American people. The goal of the 2020 Census is to count everyone once, only once, and in the right place. Managing this process from a risk and issue perspective is challenging and has been since the first census in 1790. It is especially daunting given the environment: rapid changes in IT security and technology including social media and distrust in government. These and other factors make it critical for the Census Bureau to plan for the events that likely will occur that could become a crisis that derails the ability to complete the census.
To address these concerns, the Census Bureau has had to augment our risk and issue management process with crisis management. Thus, we have developed a standardized process for proactively managing crises during the 2020 Census. We applied the fundamentals and best practices from industry to the unique organizational structure of the 2020 Census and integrated our governance and project management processes that will direct crisis management across the program. This presentation will describe the Crisis Management process, including how it integrates with risk and issue management and walk through a training exercise that we used to prepare our staff for managing an event.
PMI Talent Triangle: Strategic and Business Management
Biography: Deidre Hicks serves as an Assistant Division Chief in the Decennial Census Management Division at the Census Bureau. Ms. Hicks heads up the Program Management Office, which is responsible for defining and implementing program management policies, processes and the control functions for planning and implementing the 2020 Census. She spent the first 15 years of her career as a DoD contractor project manager over software development and since 2004 has been a federal employee of the Census Bureau. Ms. Hicks has been a PMP since 2006 and holds a FAC/PPM-IT Level 3 and FAC/COR Level 3.
