Blueprints for Business

Agencies struggle to get a handle on enterprise architecture planning.

Two years ago, the idea of developing an agencywide blueprint for running the Food and Drug Administration seemed impossible. Many of the agency's scientists were unfamiliar with how FDA's business processes worked, but senior managers were entrenched in those processes.

Nevertheless, following the federal mandate to implement enterprise architecture in 2002, the FDA got to work, naming Gary Washington chief enterprise architect. Reporting to the chief information officer, Washington heads the group planning how to manage the information necessary to operate the FDA and the transition to new technologies to respond to its changing needs.

At first, creating one template for the entire operation was a tough sell. But gradually, senior managers began to understand that it would improve work plans, work processes and work life. Today, the FDA is in the midst of full-scale enterprise architecture planning and implementation at headquarters and at each of its eight centers.

Washington and his team created a planning group that acts as a liaison between the operating and information technology departments to identify processes that could be standardized. The FDA also developed an online repository of information about enterprise architecture that's open to other agencies. The FDA and countless other agencies are making progress, but government and industry watchdogs say they could improve their planning to get quicker results. During the past year, reports from the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Management and Budget emphasized agency leaders' lack of understanding of enterprise architecture and a paucity of staff to make changes.

The biggest barrier is a lack of strong executive sponsorship, according to a recent report by the Enterprise Architecture Shared Interest Group of the Industry Advisory Council. The Fairfax, Va.-based council represents private sector organizations that sell IT products and services to the government. The group's report found that in many cases, planning is delegated to a chief information officer with little involvement by agency heads and senior executives after the initial kickoff.

"Understanding the performance of your program is fundamental to making decisions about it," says Dan Twomey, chairman of the Shared Interest Group and director of marketing for enterprise solutions at Altarum, a nonprofit research institute in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Ira Grossman, chief enterprise IT architect for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, agrees. "It's not necessarily understood outside of the engineering community. They don't see how it ties to the business strategy and mission goals. . . . They just see it as IT and money taken away from other things," he says.

The industry council urged OMB to require agencies to document plans for executive involvement and sponsorship, and ensure that resources are provided to maintain momentum. Many plans are not adequately funded, the council noted, recommending that OMB set guidelines for preparing and investing in enterprise architecture. "At NOAA, Congress wants a lot of this effort, but funding isn't necessarily there to have the appropriate staff and resources to get it all done," Grossman says.

Sharing lessons learned and best practices across government would help, the industry council noted. One place such information can be shared is the CIO Council's Chief Architects Forum, a group of federal chief architects. Grossman is the chairman. "It's a perfect example of where there are thoughts and ideas shared about what can be done to set up a repository of artifacts, documents, reusable lists-things architects can use and not have to re-create from scratch," says Mike Tiemann, Industry Advisory Council member and principal for enterprise architecture at AT&T Government Solutions.

A lack of clear and consistent guidelines has hampered enterprise planning across government, the council said, recommending a coordinated presentation on approaches to developing departmental plans. "The guidelines are pretty clear to someone involved with [enterprise architecture], but somehow we need to be able to communicate those guidelines better to others in a clear and concise manner," the FDA's Washington says.

The council called for more consistency and less redundancy between the enterprise architecture frameworks provided by OMB and GAO. "One is in left field and one in right field," Grossman says. "GAO's is more process-oriented . . . while the OMB model looks at products and deliverables."

Bill Wright, chief technology officer for Troux Technologies in Austin, Texas, which supplies the Metis visual modeling tool for enterprise architecture development, sees shortcomings across government. "They almost universally don't approach [enterprise architecture] with the same mind-set and discipline they might apply to a software systems development process," he says. "And they don't think of EA as a project with a mission and a charter and deliverables and measures. The whole idea is to treat EA as a series of incremental projects with measurable objectives."