Collaboration Starts at Home, Extends Globally

Since we stood up the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in 2018, we have been breaking down barriers of government bureaucracy to quickly get the right information to the right people—enabling them to make well-informed decisions that raise our collective defense. As we saw with our recent Shields Up efforts, CISA is something different; something more akin to a public-private collaborative. And while our unique authorities position us to do this, we owe our success to our robust trust-based voluntary partnerships. Today, I am excited to announce the CISA Stakeholder Engagement Strategic Plan 2023-2025, which is going to help us broaden and strengthen those partnerships by unifying our agency’s approach to stakeholder engagement.

Our mission success starts with an internally unified and collaborative agency, as noted in one of the four goals outlined in the CISA Strategic Plan for CY 2023-2025, which the agency released in September. When we developed the CISA Stakeholder Engagement Strategic Plan 2023-2025, we focused on internal collaboration as a building block for enhancing external collaboration.

We are focusing on unifying CISA’s approach to engaging stakeholders and partners--and doing so in ways that develop and strengthen the trusted relationships that underpin whole-of-nation operational collaboration and information sharing. Integrating CISA’s offices around the nation is fundamental to this One CISA approach.

As the nation’s Cyber Defense Agency responsible for understanding, managing and reducing the risk to our critical infrastructure, collaboration is critical to everything we do with our external partners including other federal civilian government agencies, private sector companies, state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) governments, and the American people. With much of the nation’s critical infrastructure under private ownership, no single private or government entity has all the information necessary to manage systemic risk. To get the full picture of a cyber, physical, technological, or natural risk, we rely on the relationships we’ve built with our diverse stakeholder groups, to come together, share knowledge, and join efforts to drive down those risks.  

The key themes conveyed in CISA’s Stakeholder Engagement Strategic Plan are:

• We are committed to collaboration—within CISA as well as with all our stakeholders. The plan describes how CISA will collaboratively plan and implement stakeholder engagements and partnership activities to advance a unified mission delivery.
• We value stakeholder feedback and insights. We want to hear from you! Stakeholder feedback is incredibly important in shaping the development and delivery of CISA products and resources — which are critical for mission implementation.
• We believe in accessibility and transparency. CISA will make it easier for stakeholders to quickly find and access relevant products and services, including actionable decision support information. As we work towards this goal, keep an eye out for updates!

I encourage you to read the CISA Stakeholder Engagement Strategic Plan for yourself and join our efforts to help ensure the security and resilience of the critical infrastructure and essential functions that support the nation’s economic health and security.