 June 30, 2022
Dear DHSS Employees,
Well, after talking about this and planning and preparing for a long time – enough already – let’s do this!
As of tomorrow, July 1, the department split becomes a reality. Happy birthday to the Department of Health (DOH) and the Department of Family and Community Services (DFCS)!
Hopefully you saw yesterday's big news: Governor Dunleavy appointed Kim Kovol as acting commissioner of DFCS. Commissioner Crum will continue as commissioner of DOH.
While the new departments become legal entities tomorrow, our on-the-ground reality isn’t going to change as dramatically. For FMS staff we will continue to work together through reappropriation as we always do. For those in other divisions, we will also continue to work together to coordinate care and services for vulnerable Alaskans as we have before. There are some formal pieces of collaboration that we have been planning for, but we’re going to continue to help and support each other in a thousand little ways as we get through this unprecedented change.
Exciting things are on the horizon as the new departments mature and gain their independence! As always, if you have questions or concerns related to the department reorganization, please email us at dhssreorg@alaska.gov.
Marian Sweet, Assistant Commissioner,
Department of Family and Community Services
Sylvan Robb, Assistant Commissioner,
Department of Health
Welcome to DFCS Commissioner Kim Kovol! We look forward to getting to know you and seeing where you can take DFCS.
Prior to her appointment as DFCS commissioner, Ms. Kovol was a special assistant to Governor Dunleavy. She helped launch the governor's People First Initiative and worked on projects addressing the needs of vulnerable Alaskans including domestic violence, sexual assault, missing and murdered indigenous persons, human and sex trafficking, homelessness, foster care, early childcare, eldercare, opioids/fentanyl prevention and suicide prevention.
Ms. Kovol is part of a military family and has lived in Alaska for more than 26 years. Before joining the governor's team, she worked for 25 years in the private sector with experience that included executive leadership, management, organizational development, logistics, operating childcare facilities and working in human and social services with youth and adults. Read more about our new commissioner in the governor's press release.
In other great personnel news, all 13 new positions created for the executive order and all 10 reclassifications for the executive order are through the classification process. As you know, many of the positions have already been filled, some are in the interview phase, others are posted, and the final positions are in the queue awaiting posting. We look forward to continuing to expand the team to support both departments.
Website Update: Earlier this week we updated the DHSS website to reflect the department reorganization. This process took several days but is now mostly complete. The current home webpage of DHSS is now the reorganization page. It redirects visitors to the two new department websites. The URLs for the department’s webpages have changed and the department’s existing webpages have been rebranded to reflect the reorganization to two new departments:
- Webpages that belong to divisions within DOH (Public Health, Public Assistance, Behavioral Health, Heath Care Services and Senior and Disabilities Services) are now part of health.alaska.gov.
- Webpages belonging to divisions within DFCS (Juvenile Justice, Alaska Psychiatric Institute, Alaska Pioneer Homes and Office of Children's Services) are now part of dfcs.alaska.gov.
We made this change in advance of July 1 to ensure everything would be working smoothly before the new departments became a legal reality. Existing dhss.alaska.gov URLs should still work and will automatically redirect to the new department webpages. If you are experiencing difficulties or notice something that is not working as it should be, please email hsswebmaster@alaska.gov.
DHSS Policies: We have been working to update policies for the new departments. A refreshed set of policies will be available for both new departments this fall. Until you receive communication about the updated departmental policies being rolled out, current DHSS policies remain in place. Internal policies may be found on the DHSS Policy & Procedure page of our intranet. If you have any questions about policies, please send your question to the reorganization email address: dhssreorg@alaska.gov.
State Identification Cards: For those staff members who need an identification card demonstrating they work for the state, updated cards are available through the DMV reflecting the new departments. Work with your division to request an updated card if you have a DHSS card.
Timesheets: Ever since the state transitioned to bi-weekly pay periods several years ago, the end of a pay period doesn’t always align with the end of a fiscal year. Obviously, that has an even bigger impact this year since we all transition to a new department on July 1.
As you know, timesheets were just due at the beginning of this week so a pay period just ended. Since the current pay period straddles the end of the fiscal year and the department reorganization, you are likely wondering how to submit your time.
- For the pay period ending July 10 – timesheets should be submitted for DHSS for the entire pay period as normal. There is no change from what you have been doing. Clearly the majority of this pay period will be for work in the new departments. FMS has been working closely with our partners at the Department of Administration, Division of Finance to care for this situation. Your time will be apportioned to the correct new department on the back end. You don’t need to do anything, we’ll handle it!
- For the pay period ending July 24 – timesheets will be submitted for the new departments. For those staff who do positive timekeeping, there will be new labor distribution profiles (LDPs) to code time to the respective new departments, but otherwise nothing will be changing. We will send a link to the new timesheets for DFCS and DOH as soon as it is available. Information about the updated LDPs will also be sent at that time.
Email Changes: As we’ve shared before, IT is doing a great deal of behind the scenes work to redirect email addresses after June 30. Staff with HSS sponsored email addresses are included in the update and will move to their new department along with the rest of our email addresses. This work is going well and we expect email addresses to transfer smoothly to ones representing the new departments.
Also, email groups (e.g. all division staff, etc.) and topic specific mailbox addresses that have HSS or DHSS in the name will continue to work after June 30 but will be rebuilt over time to represent the new departments. You do NOT need to manually recreate those groups in Outlook contacts; the existing addresses will still work and will be rebranded to represent the new departments at a later date. An example of one of these box email addresses is hss.ethics@alaska.gov. This email will still get to the right person after June 30 but IT will eventually set up a separate email address for each department.
If you experience any difficulties after June 30 with your email, please email the IT helpdesk hss.itshelp@alaska.gov or visit https://helpdesk.dhss.alaska.gov/.
New Letterhead Templates: The Public Information Team has updated letterhead with the new department names. Those updated templates are available on the Office Template Library via the intranet. To open or download them, you will need to right click on the template name. If you have any questions or edits for those templates, please email Publication Specialist Debbie McDonald at debbie.mcdonald@alaska.gov.
|
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 reorganization and localized to just you, here are the people to contact for assistance:
|
