The best first response is not panic and it is not policy-template shopping. Your job is to get oriented before the audit becomes the first time you discover your own gaps.
Read the notice like it matters
The obvious advice is also the advice people skip: read the entire audit notice and every attachment. Identify the audit date, any requested pre-audit material, deadlines, required participants, auditor contact information, and the office or agency actually in scope.
If the notice first went to an elected official, supervisor, administrator, or LASO before it reached IT, record that workflow too. A surprisingly practical lesson from small government is that audit communication can sit in somebody's inbox because the person receiving it does not know who else needs to see it. Fix that now instead of during the next audit cycle.
Identify the people before you identify the fixes
Confirm the LASO, the agency representative, the IT representative, and anyone else explicitly required. Then think one layer beyond the obvious names: facilities may own alarms and physical access, HR may own personnel processes, training staff may own records, procurement may own vendor documents, and the vendor itself may be the only party that can answer a technical question.
The purpose of an early kickoff is not to create a committee. It is to prevent a control from belonging to “everybody,” which is usually another way of saying it belongs to nobody.
Open the current sources
Do not begin from the folder you used three or six years ago. Texas DPS maintains a current CJIS documents page that identifies the policy versions and audit materials agencies should be using now.
As of September 2, 2026, Texas DPS says audits through March 31, 2027 use CJIS Security Policy v5.9.5, while agencies should begin gap assessment against v6.1. The important habit is bigger than those dates: always start from the current source page, because today's exact version statement will eventually change.
Create one evidence workspace
Before the screenshots start flying, create one working location for audit preparation. A practical structure might separate official communications, policies, systems containing CJI, network documentation, personnel/training, endpoints, vendors, physical security, evidence screenshots, open auditor questions, and findings/remediation.
This is not about making a pretty binder. It is about preventing “we have that somewhere” from becoming an hour of searching during the audit.
Build an initial scope list
List the obvious systems that process, store, or transmit CJI, the locations where they operate, the primary vendors, remote-access methods, mobile devices, and external services. The current Texas technical audit begins by asking whether the agency understands that the scope includes all systems used to process, store, or transmit CJI.
You do not need perfect completeness on day one. You need enough orientation to know where the deeper inventory and interviews should begin.
What not to do in the first 24 hours
Do not rewrite every policy blindly. Do not buy hardware because you vaguely suspect everything is old. Do not force a yes answer before you understand the control. The fastest way to make the audit feel impossible is to treat every unknown as a catastrophe.
Write down the unknowns. They are not failures yet; they are questions. The next phase is translating those questions into reality, evidence, and finite work.