The graph Acquisition Security Related Policies & Issuances Chart (acq.osd.mil, PDF version) by the Office of the Director, Defence Research and Engineering is meant to increase the awareness of existing policies, in order to improve compliance, and to get policymakers to reflect about writing “one more policy” now that they are able to observe the huge existing “heap” they actually contribute to. The chart’s designers are interested in your constructive feedback to make it better (and maybe help your country at the same time?).
The chart organizes acquisition security policies and guidance by purpose and the responsible offices. It shows all policies a typical acquisition program may need to comply with, and links them directly to the appropriate texts. The bins or categories for the policies emerged during the creation process itself: some policies clearly spanned multiple bins, and were placed appropriately, by overlapping across multiple bins.
The creators of the graph (3 people who worked over a period of more than 3 months) claim they have gotten positive feedback from the “operational crowd”, that is the people who actually “use” this to do their work. The target audiences are DoD “acquisition program managers” and “security people” who are responsible for complying with these policies, and DoD “acquisition security policy makers” who contribute to this rich policy universe.
The chart was designed in Microsoft Visio, which enabled including hyperlinks from policy boxes to their full texts, making the graph interactive and more “than just wall art”. In the future, they like to make the chart more interactive such that users could tick certain criteria and only the relevant policies would stay visible.
Any ideas for improvement?