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Director's Message September 16, 2005
To: DHS employees From: Bryan Johnston, Interim DHS Director "Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not." ~Oprah Winfrey "
You are in integrity when the life you are living on the outside matches who you are on the inside." ~Alan Cohen
Last week, I wrote that I intended to explore the DHS Core Values with you over the next five weeks. The core values are those that are central to DHS. These five values are the principles that this department chooses to use to guide our actions. Besides writing to you about the first core value, there are a few other items to cover this week:
Hurricane Katrina: Survivors of Hurricane Katrina began arriving at Washington High School in Portland on Saturday seeking help. It was not the mass of 500 individuals who at one time were scheduled to be flown in from the Gulf Coast; these folks came mostly by bus. Some were encouraged to come here by church groups, others came because of relatives or other connections to Oregon.
Since Saturday morning, the DHS team on site has served about 100 families -- many of whom seem shell-shocked by their experience and all very tired. Some were dehydrated and in need of such basic medical help as insulin. DHS workers who directly helped clients this weekend included: Belit Stockfleth, Audray Minniweather, Frances Sallah, Danielle Donohue, Marilyn Hansen, Amra Biberic and Amy Betrand. Rick Dunbar of OIS helped ensure that the technology connections in the makeshift service center worked. SDAs 15 and 16 helped plan a tri-county effort on behalf of the evacuees. The Office of Public Affairs coordinated information with the Governor's Office and the Joint Information Center in Portland. Many other parts of DHS, the Red Cross, Salvation Army, volunteer medical workers, Employment Department and many community volunteers composed the weekend service contingent.
Dozens of DHS staff have signed up on lists for potential help if needed. Many others throughout the department have provided and continue to provide support and are working with the multiple agencies involved. This has been a team effort and one in which our staff members have been willing to step up and help where needed.
Business Continuity Planning: As we all cope with the impact of Katrina on the residents of the states of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, many of us are asking how prepared we are in Oregon to deal with a disaster. The preparedness of the state and local response agencies will of course impact how businesses and individuals pull through a disaster. With the help of many DHS staff who serve on the Business Continuity Planning (BCP) Group, DHS has been working with other state agencies on Enterprise Projects such as the Statewide Business Impact Analysis, piloting an electronic data collection tool for BCP plans and looking at dependencies between agencies. You will be hearing more about this in the future.
In the interim, there are steps you can take now to prepare for business interruption in your office, which will be merged into the DHS BCP efforts. For more information on the plan, including a link and other preparedness requirements, see the Emergency Preparedness Policy at http://www.dhs.state.or.us/policy/admin/safety/080_010.htm
Your computer: DHS is performing mandatory workstation maintenance now on Wednesday nights. This maintenance time will be used to update systems and scan for viruses. Leaving systems on during this window will allow maintenance to run overnight instead of during the workday. For desktop systems, the monitor should be turned off to conserve energy, but the computer itself should be left on. Laptops should be brought in and connected to the network and left on Wednesday evenings if possible. If you miss the Wednesday night window, make sure your system is left running another day of the week. All DHS systems are required to connect at least once a week to receive antivirus and other critical security updates.
DHS Core Values - Integrity: My intent here is not to give you the definitive statement of what DHS means by any one of the 5 Core Values. I can't do that. My opinion is mine. I get to contribute to the DHS definition, not set it. We define our values together - and they define us. What I'm offering here are my observations, this week on "Integrity."
The first of the DHS Core Values is INTEGRITY. It is one of the words that none of us has trouble using, but few of us can adequately define. We use it in a variety of ways. Oprah is using it, in the quote above, in probably its most common application, "doing what is right even though no one is watching," a self-assigned, and self-enforced, obligation to do the right thing. Alan Cohen's quote is talking about integrity as a state of being where one's actions match one's beliefs. One could also say "the bridge has integrity," meaning the bridge can carry the weight it was designed to carry.
Integrity comes from the Latin integer and means "wholeness," as in an integer is a whole number. It has come to mean being complete. At DHS, we think of that type of integrity as meaning a person acts with loyalty, courage, justice, self-respect and humility. That would sum up the type of person we want our DHS staff to be.
As it says in the value statement…"we maintain the highest standards of individual and institutional integrity." It's our first value. We're complete. This message is intended for all department employees. Please read it electronically, if possible. Managers and supervisors are asked to share the message each week with employees who do not have email access.
If you have a disability and need this message to be provided to you in another format, please send an email to dhs.forms@state.or.us, or call (503) 947-5107. You can also fax your request to (503) 373-7690, or call (503) 947-5080 for TTY service. If you know of others who need this accommodation, please let them know it is available. |
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