From the NAVAIR Public Affairs Office

A joint AIRSpeed Black Belt project between the NAVAIR Public Affairs and Security offices has streamlined NAVAIR’s Security and Policy Review (SPR) process for authorizing material for public release. The new process affects all NAVAIR personnel – all military, civilian and contractors supporting NAVAIR at any site or business unit.

Just to be clear, this is not a new requirement; the Dept. of Navy has required public release clearance for decades – but this is a new process.

This latest SPR process will bring a NAVAIR AIRSpeed Type I savings of $163,700 and reduce cycle time needed to review and authorize material for public release from an average of 11 days to seven business days or less. Type I benefits have a direct and certain impact on the Naval Aviation Enterprise (NAE) resources made available to the Navy for recapitalization.

Joyce Marstaller, a NAVAIR Supervisory Security Specialist and an AIRSpeed Blackbelt since November 2004, ran the SPR project as her first Black Belt project.

“The Public Affairs Office had already begun looking at the process prior to my involvement, since they are ultimately responsible for public release,” said Marstaller. “However, they can only authorize release of information once the security department has provided approval for release.”

That dilemma, according to Kelly Burdick, of the NAWC Public Affairs office, led to the new procedure.

“PAO can only release material that is known to be accurate and presents no security issues,” said Burdick. “This is why the technical and security reviews must be conducted, and why they should be conducted before PAO receives the material.”

Another perceived problem was the turn-around time for information to be approved.

“We heard from our customers that it takes too long to get information approved,” said Marstaller, “and that customers wanted no more than a two-week turn-around.”

Getting customer feedback or the “voice of the customer” occurs during the “Define” portion of the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) process – used to improve processes across naval aviation.

“But,” continued Marstaller, “during the “Measure” phase of our project, when we looked at the actual numbers, the process was already meeting the two week turn-around with the exception of a few requests held up waiting for the correct documentation.”

During the “Analyze” phase Marstaller and the team took into account those reported customer issues and tried to figure out why there were exceptions that were skewing the metrics and preventing timely authorization for release.

“We also developed guidance that was more simplistic,” said Marstaller, “giving the customer a checklist and approval criteria up front of the documentation needed to successfully get their information through the approval process quickly.”

That checklist and the coordination chain before the document leaves the program office are two of the biggest changes to the process – another being that the new authorization portion of the process begins in the security office instead of the public affairs office.

According to Marstaller, another major improvement of the process is the NAVAIR-wide adoption of a NAWC-WD database to track all SPR requests.

“The database will be useful by providing the ability to, first, have a single resource to identify all public release authorizations processed throughout the command,” she said. “Secondly, it will provide the ability to research historical request to determine subject matter that has previously been approved or denied for public release.”

Richard Bee, a Reliability Engineer within AIR-4.4.7.2, is very pleased with his recent SPR experience. Bee needed a document approved for public release for a conference in June.

“I had not used the process before,” said Bee, “but I was told (by colleagues) to expect it to take four-to-six weeks.” In fact, Bee’s item was back to him with public release approval in less than one week.

“The experience was significantly above my expectations,” he added. “The new form is straight forward and I have no hesitation in using the process again.”

Barbara Vaughan is a NAVAIR Security Specialist. She believes that with publicity of the new process – especially since it is an AIRSpeed project – the understanding of a need to protect Command information will improve.

“Awareness has increased,” said Vaughan, “and people are aware that penalties could occur if they don’t get their information through the SPR process. As long as we continue to review our processes (and keep on making them more efficient), we should continue to see increased awareness within NAVAIR.”

As the Security and Public Affairs Offices across NAVAIR begin implementing the new process, users should be aware of the specific steps in the new process. They are:

1. The requestor fills out the new Public Release Authorization Request (PRAR) form – and submits the form and the intended materials to his/her supervisor. The PRAR form will soon be available on MyNAVAIR and on the official NAVAIR forms database.

2. The requestor’s supervisor reviews the material, and if he/she agrees that there are no issues preventing its release, the supervisor signs the PRAR form.

3. The supervisor then forwards the PRAR form and the material to the cognizant program office where a thorough technical review and approval for the material must be obtained.

4. Once the designated program office reviews and approves the material and signs off on the PRAR form, the form and material is sent to Security (7.4.1). If the document is to be posted on a public website, the request is also forwarded to IMD (7.2.6) for approval.

5. Security reviews the request. If the information is appropriate for public release, Security will approve, sign the form and forward the request to Public Affairs (7.5) for review.

6. PAO will conduct its review and, if no issues are found, will sign off on the form and return the document to the requestor with a distribution statement to be added to the material. The material is then considered authorized for public release.

7. If there is a problem with the request, it will be returned to the requestor for correction.

For more information about the new SPR process, please contact your public affairs office, [email protected]. For more information about NAVAIR AIRSpeed and AIRSpeed Black Belts, go to http://www.navair.navy.mil/navairairspeed/.