 June 17, 2022
Dear DHSS Employees,
What? Time already for another DHSS reorganization newsletter?
With the split looming, we have a lot of news to share right now and want to keep these newsletters brief, so we may publish this newsletter weekly through and past July 1 when DHSS becomes two new departments – the Department of Health (DOH) and the Department of Family and Community Services (DFCS).
As the date gets closer, we are getting more questions about what it’s going to be like on the ground after the split. In the immediate aftermath, we will absolutely be working just as closely with our colleagues from the other department as we do now as one department.
We fully expect there to be a lot of needed collaboration, training, planning and coordinating with our department partners in the initial months. We do not expect to complete reimbursable service agreements (RSAs) to support these efforts because this will be a two-way information street and the impact will be fairly even. However, there are some items we know will require support through an RSA as one department supports the other in a more formal way for services that will take longer to untangle. These include DFCS providing facilities support to DOH and DOH providing data center and security office support to DFCS.
As we look ahead, we are confident we will grow more independent and efficient over time, but we will always work together and partner as sister departments. The need to collaborate to serve the public will be ongoing as many of our current clients will continue to be clients of both departments in the future. Plus, we’ll just miss our other-department friends and colleagues!
We appreciate your hard work and patience as we continue to work through all the needed changes to become two departments. If you have questions or concerns, please email us at dhssreorg@alaska.gov. Your questions help us know what employees need to know and help inform the content of these newsletters.
Thanks for all you do and we hope you're enjoying the summer!
Marian Sweet, Assistant Commissioner,
Department of Family and Community Services
Sylvan Robb, Assistant Commissioner,
Department of Health
This week we're pleased to announce we’re filling more positions in advance of the department split. We are very excited to announce the following hires:
- Department Technology Officer 3 for DOH: Myria Shakespeare
- Division Operations Manager for DFCS DSS: Janelle Earls
Congratulations to everyone on their new role!
In the near future we will be posting to backfill the positions currently held by Myria and Janelle so if you know (or are!) an information technology or budget whiz, be sure to check Workplace Alaska! Other positions continue to move through classifications with speed so there will be more positions posted in the near future. Positions posted right now include: Administrative Officer 2 for DOH.
Who will be commissioner?
The position everyone keeps asking about – commissioner for Family and Community Services – has yet to be announced by Governor Dunleavy. Rest assured, we’re waiting with bated breath just like you. As soon as it's announced, it will be the headline of our newsletter!
Commissioner Crum will also need to go through a process to be named and confirmed as commissioner for the Department of Health. We expect both announcements to be made soon by the governor.
Will positions be renamed?
We received a question about whether the Health and Social Services Planner job class will be renamed. Renaming these positions and others is not in the works right now but may be in the future if deemed appropriate (but will be in the queue behind a fair amount of other classification work.)
Stakeholder Outreach: Outreach to stakeholders and partners on the Executive Order has been robust and ongoing. Many different advocacy and provider groups have had meetings with department leadership to hear updates on progress on the work needed to implement the split (they don’t get our cool newsletter) and to answer any lingering questions. These conversations have been well received and productive. We appreciate the time our valued partners have made to meet with us. Just like with you all, we couldn’t do this without them.
Website Update: Information Technology and the Public Information Team have been working behind the scenes to to prepare to split our current website into two new department websites. Minor rebranding to reflect the reorganization – such as updated logos, new banner graphics and navigation changes – will roll out with the site launch, and the URLS will reflect the new department names.
On and after June 27, the current home webpage of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services will point to the DHSS Reorganization home webpage All pages that belong to divisions within the Department of Health (Public Health, Public Assistance, Behavioral Health, Heath Care Services and Senior and Disabilities Services) will become part of the DOH website, health.alaska.gov. Pages belonging to divisions within the Department of Family and Community Services (Juvenile Justice, Alaska Psychiatric Institute, Alaska Pioneer Homes and Office of Children's Services) will become part of the DFCS website, dfcs.alaska.gov.
The homepages will be the biggest addition, but there are supporting pages for each department such as new department contact lists, newsroom archives and more. The Commissioner's Office and FMS pages will also split out. If you experience any difficulties after June 27, please email hsswebmaster@alaska.gov.
Sharepoint Migration: This project to migrate from SharePoint 2010 to the SharePoint 2019 environment for our public-facing website, intranet, extranet and collaborative sites is ongoing and separate from the department split. However, we know it is of interest to DHSS staff and thought we would provide an update here as well. The IT team working on this project is making progress and recently reported that they expect the project to be initiated soon and hopefully complete by the end of summer.
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Q) Does everything have to be done by June 30?
A: Boy, we sure hope not! Thankfully our partners at the Department of Law, who wrote Executive Order 121, knew we couldn’t make the switch literally overnight from June 30 to July 1. They included transition language in the executive order to allow some time for things to transition. While we certainly want to have as much completed by July 1 as we can, nothing needs to grind to a halt on July 1 if it still says DHSS. We’ll have more on this topic as it relates to our outside partners in the next newsletter.
You can continue to give out business cards with DHSS on them and refer people to any of our thousands of webpages that will be gradually transitioned from DHSS branding to the new department. If you have questions about something specific related to the split and the timing to make the transition, please ask by emailing dhssreorg@alaska.gov.
We shared this last newsletter but it's worth sharing again. In July, if there is a global problem that’s impacting a large group we will send an email alerting you and let you know the timeline for resolving it. If you are experiencing trouble that seems related to the department split and localized to just you, here are the people to contact for assistance:
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