Got anything to say about the relationship between government EA and connected government- Consider submitting a chapter!

Call for Chapters

Proposal Submission: 15th February 2011
Full Chapter Submission: 15th May 2011

Enterprise Architecture for Connected E-Government: Practices and Innovations

A Book Edited by Chief Editor, Dr. Pallab Saha, National University of Singapore

INTRODUCTION

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is the inherent design and management approach essential for organizational coherence leading to alignment, agility and assurance1. Structured EA approach is often used to plan and implement efficient and effective transformation efforts. However, the strongest driver for EA is to improve service delivery and overall performance within the organization’s business segments. Most governments worldwide are in the midst of substantial public sector transformation activities. A majority of these initiatives are triggered by the need to have better and seamless government services delivered online. The focus on automating government services often is largely limited to specific ministries and agencies. However, such initiatives lack the cross-ministry / agency viewpoints and coordination. This creates challenges in taking a Whole-of-Government (W-O-G) approach with its concomitant benefits, which are much more than benefits derived by taking agency-centric viewpoints. These shortcomings are clearly evident in the findings of the UN Global E-Government Survey 2010. According to the UN, the value of e-government will be increasingly defined by its contribution to national development. Lack of coherent strategy is often cited as the primary reason for under-development of e-government. Moving forward, more and more countries are adopting national e-government strategies and multi-year action plans, and EA is the strategy that governments are increasingly looking toward.

The United Nations (UN), in its Global E-government Survey of 2008, used connected governance as its primary criteria by which to evaluate and rank national e-government programs. According to the survey report, the concept of connected government is derived from the W-O-g approach which utilizes technology as a strategic tool and enabler for public service innovation and productivity growth, the two key outcomes being innovation and productivity. Government transformation is a long term endeavor that is seldom impacted by any short term technology trends. In their transition toward connected government, all governments typically traverse through the four primary stages of e-government capability and maturity, each stage representing a progressively higher level in the government transformation continuum. EA is a critical success factor for all types, scale and intensities of e-government programs. The key goal of EA in government organizations is to make them citizen-centered, results-oriented and market-based. Governments usually pass through different evolutionary stages in their EA journeys. The MIT Center for Information Systems Research identifies four such evolutionary stages; business silos, standardized technology, rationalized data and applications and business modularity. Interestingly, there exists a positive correlation between the desired level of e-government capability and maturity and the required level of architectural maturity.

OBJECTIVES

This book addresses the gap in current literature in terms of linking and understanding the relationship between e-government and government EA. Within this broader context, the focus is specifically on uncovering and comprehending the relationship between government EA and connected government. The primary reason for focusing on connected government is that it is the area where government EA has the highest potential to influence and as a result the highest levels of benefits derivation. With the intention of balancing theory and practice, this book aims to:

1. Demonstrate and disseminate the importance of government enterprise architecture in elevating the effectiveness of e-government programs.
2. Capture and bring forth the current advancements and thought leadership in the area of enterprise architecture in the context of connected government.
3. Provide national e-government initiatives with evidence-based, credible, field tested and practical guidance in crafting their respective architectures.
4. Showcase case studies and experience reports of innovative use of enterprise architecture in enhancing national e-government initiatives.

INTENDED AUDIENCE AND POTENTIAL USES

1. Government CIOs, IT/IS Managers, Chief Architects, Analysts and Designers seeking better, quicker and easier approaches to respond to needs of their internal and external customers.
2. Line-of-Business Managers concerned with maximizing business value of IT and business competitiveness.
3. CTOs of business software companies interested in incorporating government EA to differentiate their products and services offerings and increasing the value proposition to their customers.
4. Consultants and practitioners desirous of new solutions and technologies to improve the productivity of their government clients.
5. Business management, public policy and IS management educators interested in imparting knowledge about this vital discipline.
6. Academic and consulting researchers looking to uncover and characterize new research problems and programs.
7. E-government professionals involved with organizational technology strategic planning, technology procurement, management of technology projects, consulting and advising on technology issues and management of total cost of IT ownership.

RECOMMENDED TOPICS AND THEMES

In the context of connected government the book intends to include, but is not limited to, chapters in the following broad topics and themes:

1. Government EA for compliance, complexity, innovation and coherency.
2. EA and portfolio management, public sector governance, government performance, investment management.
3. Economic value and impact of connected government.
4. Frameworks, reference models, methodologies, languages, tools and other supporting aspects of government EA.
5. Future of EA and its role in the government.
6. Government 2.0.
7. Government EA in countries with initial levels of e-government capability and maturity.
8. Government interoperability.
9. Government service innovation.
10. Government transformation and modernization, public sector reforms.
11. Open data initiative.
12. Policies, regulations and mandates for driving government enterprise architecture programs.
13. Public private partnerships with EA.
14. Segment architecture (e.g. healthcare, defense, education, disaster management, manufacturing, transportation and services).
15. Strategic (systems) thinking in the public sector.
16. Transparent and open government.
17. Whole of government EA (with emphasis on multi-layered federated structure of government).

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE

Academic Researchers and Senior Industry Practitioners are invited to submit no later than 15th February, 2011, a two paragraph proposal briefly explaining the mission and concerns of the proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by 15th March, 2011 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter organizational and submission guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by 15th May, 2011. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis.

PUBLISHER

This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference,” “Business Science Reference,” and “Engineering Science Reference” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2012.

IMPORTANT DATES AND DEADLINES

15th February 2011: Proposal Submission Deadline

15th March 2011: Notification of Proposal Acceptance

15th May 2011: Full Chapter Submission

15th August 2011: Notification of Chapter Acceptance along with Review Comments

15th September 2011: Final Chapter Submission along with signed Copyright Agreement

15th October 2011: Final Deadline

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

The Chief Editor will be advised and supported by an Editorial Advisory Board (EAB), consisting of leading specialized experts from the academia and industry. The current members of the EAB include:

1. Dr. Scott Bernard, Federal Chief Enterprise Architect, Office of E-government and Information Technology, Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President, AND Professor of Practice, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
2. Prof. Terry Buss, Executive Director and Distinguished Professor, Heinz College of Public Policy and Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA / AUSTRALIA.
3. Dr. Saleem Zoughbi, Regional Adviser, Information and Communication Technology, Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, UNITED NATIONS.
4. Prof. Jukka Heikkilä, Vice Dean, Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyvaskyla, FINLAND.
5. Dr. John Gøtze, Chief Editor, The Open Group Journal of Enterprise Architecture AND Associate Professor, IT University of Copenhagen, DENMARK.
6. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Habil. Jorge Marx Gómez, Chair of Business Information Systems, Department für Informatik, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, GERMANY.
7. Prof. John Mo, Discipline Head, Manufacturing and Materials Engineering, RMIT University, AUSTRALIA.
8. Dr. Andrzej Sobczak, Consulting Enterprise Architect to the Government of Poland, Warsaw School of Economics, POLAND.

Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically by e-mail to:

Dr. Pallab Saha

National University of Singapore
Institute of Systems Science
25 Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Singapore 119615

Telephone (DID): +65 6516 2516 | Facsimile: +65 6778 2571

E-Mail: pallab@nus.edu.sg

About the Chief Editor: Dr. Pallab Saha is with the National University of Singapore (NUS). His current research, consulting and teaching interests include Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Governance. Dr. Saha has published three books, Handbook of Enterprise Systems Architecture in Practice; Advances in Government Enterprise Architecture; and Coherency Management–Architecting the Enterprise for Alignment, Agility and Assurance. His books are widely referred by practitioners and researchers around the world, making it to the Top Seller list in 2008 and 2009. His papers have been translated and published in Korean, Russian and Polish.

Dr. Saha is the primary author of the Methodology for AGency ENTerprise Architecture (MAGENTA) and Government EA Guidebook for the Government of Singapore and has led them to international prominence. They are available in IDS Scheer’s ARIS Toolset. He is a recipient of the Microsoft research grant in the area of Government EA supported by the UN and the World Bank. He consults extensively both in the public and private sectors. He has provided consulting services to the Ministry of Defence, Defence Science and Technology Agency, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, Integrated Health Information Systems, IP Office of Singapore, CPF Board, Singapore Healthcare Services, Governments of Oman and Kazakhstan and Great Eastern Life Assurance among others. He has been invited as a keynote / distinguished speaker to the World Bank, Carnegie Mellon University, UN University, The Open Group, Microsoft, SAP Labs, Denmark IT Society, Korea Institute for IT Architecture, IEEE, Nanyang Business School, Governments of South Australia, Jordan, UAE, Macau, Korea, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Auditor-general’s Office of Singapore, Singapore Workforce Development Agency and Singapore Government CIO Forums among others. His work has been featured and cited by the UN, WHO, United States Department of Defense, Carlsberg and The Open Group and has contributed to the World Bank’s EA Guidelines for Vietnam. Featured as an Architect in the Spotlight by the Journal of EA he has been an external examiner for doctoral research degree to the University of New South Wales and a Visiting Researcher to the UN University.

Earlier, as Head of Projects and Development he has managed Baxter’s offshore development centre in Bangalore. He has had engagements in several Fortune 100 organizations in various capacities. Dr. Saha holds a Ph.D in Management (Information Systems) from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and has received the best research design and best thesis awards. He is an alumnus of the MIT Sloan Executive Program.

This week, the European Commission announced an updated interoperability policy in the EU. The Commission has committed itself to adopt a Communication that introduces the European Interoperability Strategy (EIS) and an update to the European Interoperability Framework (EIF), “two key documents that promote interoperability among public administrations”, part of EUs Digital Agenda.

Timeline for EUs interoperability work (from EIF2)

I have followed, and been part of, the EU work on interoperability since the early days. I worked with the Bangemann Report during my PhD research. In the late 1990s, I worked for the Swedish government, and provided policy inputs to the Lisbon strategy. Fron 2001-2005, I worked for the Danish government, and was in the IDA workgroup that created EIF v1 in 2004. I also created the first Danish National Interoperability Framework (NIF). As the updated EIF notes, NIFs are “more detailed and often prescriptive than the EIF, which operates at a higher level of abstraction, as a ‘meta framework’ and, in line with the subsidiarity principle, does not impose specific choices or obligations on the Member States”.

EIF v2 defines an interoperability framework as ”an agreed approach to interoperability for organisations that wish to work together towards the joint delivery of public services”, and notes that “within its scope of applicability, it specifies a set of common elements such as vocabulary, concepts, principles, policies, guidelines, recommendations, standards, specifications and practices”.

Quick overview of EIF v2

Chapter 2, dealing with the ‘underlying principles’, sets out general principles underpinning European public services. For example:

Underlying principle 7: Transparency

Citizens and businesses should be able to understand administrative processes. They should have the right to track administrative procedures that involve them, and have insight into the rationale behind decisions that could affect them.

Transparency also allows citizens and businesses to give feedback about the quality of the public services provided, to contribute to their improvement and to the implementation of new services.

Chapter 3 presents the ‘conceptual model for public services’, and suggests “an organising principle for designing European public services, focusing on basic services that can be aggregated to form aggregated services and help establish other European public services in the future”:

Chapter 4 on ‘interoperability levels’ covers “the different interoperability aspects to be addressed when designing a European public service and provides a common vocabulary for discussing issues that arise”. See the figure to the right.

Chapter 5 presents an approach “to facilitate cooperation among public administrations to provide a given European public service by introducing concepts of ‘interoperability agreements’, formalised specifications and open specifications”.

Chapter 6 on ‘interoperability governance’ sets out “what is needed to ensure interoperability over time when delivering a European public service and to coordinate interoperability activities across administrative levels to support the establishment of European public services”.

Key EIF observations

EIF v1 talked a lot about open standards. EIF v2 talks about ‘open specifications’, and makes it sound almost as if they prefer consortium standards to actual de jure standards (accept FRAND or royalty-free basis in a way that allows implementation in both proprietary and open source software). Besides, “public administrations may decide to use less open specifications, if open specifications do not exist or do not meet functional interoperability needs”. This basically means that the EIF endorses that the National Interoperability Frameworks (NIFs) can adapt fluffy ‘comply or explain’ rules similar to the current Danish government policy. It is also a loop hole to standardise on certain open, or closed, platforms (“Due to functional interoperability needs you all need to use Word 2010″).

EIF v2s principles are interesting reading, but leaves more questions than answers. As principles (“general rules and guidelines, intended to be enduring and seldom amended, that inform and support the way in which an organization sets about fulfilling its mission”, TOGAF), the EIF principles are pretty useless.

It so happens that the EIS document has some problems showing the document properly on my three Macs. I am not very familiar with the inner workings of the PDF format, but it seems that someone in the commission should help user “hauscbe” set his/her Windowns-based Adobe Distiller 9.0 to save a less less open standards based PDF file!

Although it is referred to a foot note and a few hints, administrations who seek a policy endorsement for running amok with “Service-Oriented Architecture” can use the EIF. The seemingly ‘innocent’ “conceptual model for public services” is, as I read it, one big endorsement of SOA and shared/common services. EIF becomes almost mysteriously vague on these issues, but EIS offers some hints:

Interoperability Architecture

To develop a joint vision on interoperability architecture by first defining its scope and the needs for common infrastructure services and common interface standards;

To provide guidance on architecture domains where Member States share a common interest;

To ensure the systematic reuse of architectural building blocks by the Commission when developing services to be used by the Member States. Here, existing infrastructure service components (EIIS)5 along with generic applications (IMI6, early alert systems, grant management, etc.) could be reused and rationalised. Additionally, a catalogue of architectural building blocks available for reuse by the Member States and the Commission could be set up with contributions from the EU and Member States.

Unfortunately, it seems as if the folks writing the EIF didn’t get the EIS memo; we are left to guess how they see architecture in play. With v2, EIF points to four interoperability levels – legal, organisational, semantic and technical. The organisational level includes business process alignment, organisational relationships and change management. Consequently, administrations must use an architectural approach that embraces all the levels; that would of course be enterprise architecture, I would argue. Unfortunately, rather than going that direction, EIF ends up in giving vague and uncommitted recommendations in east and west.

Others’ reactions

I haven’t seen any, official nor non-official, mentioning of the Communication/Strategy/Framework in Denmark yet, but that doesn’t surprise me, since interoperability has been the non-word of the year here.

Internationally, there are plenty of reactions. As when the original EIF was launched, much of the debate/commentary about EIF v2 is about open standards and open source. Below, I have collected some illustrative quotes:

Glyn Moody: European Interoperability Framework v2 – the Great Defeat:

EIF v2 is a victory for the powerful and well-funded lobbyists who have attacked the European Interoperability Framework from the start, just as was predicted at the time. It shows that the European Commission is still pathetically in the thrall of big foreign companies and their proxies: I can’t wait for Wikileaks or the new Brussels Leaks to provide us with the details of what exactly happened behind the scenes when EIFv2 was being drawn up.

Trond-Arne Undheim, Oracle Director, Standards Strategy and Policy: European Interoperability Framework – a new beginning?:

Considering the controversy, the delays, the lobbying, and the interests at stake both in the EU, in Member States and among vendors large and small, this document is pretty impressive. As with a good wine that has not yet come to full maturity, let’s say that it seems to be coming in in the 85-88/100 range, but only a more fine-grained analysis, enjoyment in good company, and ultimately, implementation, will tell.

Mark Bohannon, Red Hat Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Global Public Policy: European Interoperability Framework Supports Open Source:

Is the new EIF perfect? No. Due to heavy lobbying by vested proprietary technology interests, some key sections of the EIF have been made confusing (indeed, the definition of ‘open standards’ has been watered down from the 2004 version and no longer includes the requirement of being ‘royalty-free’). The definition of “open” standards or specifications remains a matter of some contention in the IT industry. An example of a more accurate definition of open standards can be found in the recently released India Standards Policy for E-Governance, which specifies that intellectual property should be licensed royalty-free and that any required specifications should be technology-neutral.

Openforum Europe: European Interoperability Framework – a bold move to spread the benefits of open standards and interoperability:

“EIF will help public authorities escape from the sort of technology lock-in into one single vendor that until now has been the norm across Europe,” said Openforum Europe chief executive, Graham Taylor.

Karsten Gerloff: Assessing the new European Interoperability Framework:

So what we have now is a strategy statement, without the level of detail that made EIFv1 such a useful document. But this strategy generally goes in the right direction, and it’s much more powerful than before, thanks to its official status.
I’m guessing that the change we’ll see across Europe will be slow, but that it will be continuous and very broad. EIFv1 provided a rallying point for those member states and public bodies that were interested in Free Software and Open Standards. EIFv2 is a general push for everyone to use more Open Standards, even though it contains generous get-out clauses.

What do you think?

The Danish Government Business Reference Model - FORM (in Danish) – is an overview of what the Danish public administration does, which services it provides, and which legislation that regulates these services.

I have been ‘playing around’ with the dataset FORM makes up. In the blog menu, you will find links to pages about Project NemFORM.

To demonstrate how the reference model can be used, I have created this simple application (autosuggesting services; reference), which can also be used on a mobile device (tested on Android only, so far).

If you are interested in the geeky details, read about my experience with FORM XML, and JQuery-empowered FORM usage. You can also read about my implementation of the new FORM widget from Digitaliser.dk.

My project is mentioned in a news story on Modernisering.dk, the Ministry of Finance’s website for digitization of government (and owners of FORM). ‘Innovative use’, they call my project. How nice of them

Full disclosure: The Ministry of Finance is a client of EA Fellows. NemFORM is however a private project of mine.

I am pleased to announce that the book, State of the eUnion: Government 2.0 and Onwards, is now in production and will be available for ordering in your favorite bookshop very soon.

But wait, there’s more: On 18 November, the free, online version will be available from 21gov.net.

Read the press release.

Follow the book @gov20book on Twitter. The book’s twitter hashtag is #gov20book. Also, follow the list of contributors.

Now the Coherency Management book is out, my next book project has ben launched. With the working title “State of the eUnion – Government 2.0 and Onwards”, the book will be published in min-November this year (reason), so it needs to be written in a rush. I have already invited a number of contributors, but now take the Call for Participation open for a couple of days for anyone to submit an abstract.

We will accept legitimate and relevant remixes and reuses of stuff that deserves to be in a book. But we have pretty high standards, so do not be offended if we reject your proposal. In general, we want thoughtful, wellwritten contributions, shorter or longer, that discuss new business models for government and democracy. Contributions about technical matters are not likely to make it into the book, unless they are really wellwritten and ‘important’. I realise I personally will even have to struggle to build bridges over to, say, Coherency Management, but you just wait and see

As co-editor, I have teamed up with Christian Bering Pedersen, a young professional and digital native, who I supervised in his Master thesis project a few years ago. Christian has a sharp eye and tongue, and will be great to work with.

Confirmed contributors to the book are:

• Don Tapscott, Canada
• Mark Drapeau, USA
• Alexandra Samuel, USA
• Olov Östberg, Sweden
• Tommy Dejbjerg Pedersen, Denmark
• Tim O’Reilly, USA
• David Weinberger, USA
• Chris Potts, UK
• and several others, whose names will be published in the near future.

The book will not be a heavyweight like the coherency managment book (540 pages). It will probably have nearly as many collaborators and contributors though, but typically with shorter chapters (essays).

Follow the book project via its infopage/website.

As indicated in a 140 char note on Twitter, I’m leaving Europe. For a month, that is. I am going on a flight/roadtrip, part work, part vacation. Locationwise roughly as follows:

• Toronto from July 17th to 25th.
• Washington, DC from July 26th to 31st.
• Ottawa from July 31st to August 6th.
• Boston from August 7th to 14th.
  oh, and then a stopover in Iceland:
• Reykjavík from August 14th to 18th.

Along the way I will attend The Open Group’s 23rd Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference in Toronto, where I have three contributions: Particapant in Panel Discussion and podcast on Architecture’s Scope Extends Beyond the Enterprise, my lecture Coherency Management and the Future of Enterprise Architecture, and participant in Panel Discussion: Enterprise-Centric Architecture and the Role of “Business”.

I will probably sneak in a bunch of meetings around the Coherency Management book, which is now with the printer, and with a bit of luck, will be able to announce a few events around the book as I travel on. And then I’m planning some meetings around a new book project I plan to announce shortly. Which reminds me: allow me to introduce two new tags: Government 2.0 and Open Government.

If you are located – or happen to be – in one of the locations I visit, and are interested in any of the tags to this post, and want to meet, get in touch.

Overall: I recommend the following three books.

In Advances in Government Enterprise Architecture, my good friend Pallab Saha over in Singapore has made a seminal compilation of 18 chapters on government enterprise architecture written by practitioners and practicing academics from Australia, Germany, Greece, Ireland, The Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, United Kingdom, and United States of America. Several of the contributing authors also have chapters in the Coherency Management book that Pallab and I, together with Gary Doucet and Scott Bernard, are releasing very soon.

If I should emphasise one chapter from the book, it has to be Pallab Saha’s own chapter about Singapore’s e-government initiative and the Methodology for AGency ENTerprise Architecture (MAGENTA), “a rigorous, disciplined and structured methodology for development of agency enterprise architectures that enables agencies to align to and fully support the government’s transformation objectives and outcomes”. Very interesting read.

With its 502 pages, Advances provides a very solid view on governmental EA. It is a perfect book for students and researchers of e-government and governmental EA, alas its cost ($195 at Amazon) means that the students have to wait for their libraries to get the book. This is without doubt the reference book for government EA.

In Enterprise Governance and Enterprise Engineering, Dr. Ir. Jan A.P. Hoogervorst from Sogeti in the Netherlands presents a competence-based perspective on governance, where “employees are viewed as the crucial core for effectively addressing the complex, dynamic and uncertain enterprise reality, as well as for successfully defining and operationalizing strategic choices”. Hoogervorst sees enterprise engineering as “the formal conceptual framework and methodology for arranging a unified and integrated enterprise design, which is a necessary condition for enterprise success”.

Hoogervorst defines Enterprise architecture as “a coherent and consistent set of principles and standards that guides enterprise design,” and he argues that EA is a communicative bridge between the functional and constructional perspectives, that is between a functional, requirements-oriented, black-box system perspective and a constructional, realization-oriented, white-box perspective. I like Hoogervorst’s approach to EA. It’s neither IT-centric nor business-centric; if anything, it’s enterprise-centric.

The last chapter is about a fictitios case, an energy company. While this certainly helps in understanding enterprise governance and enterprise design in practice, it is in my opinion still leaving the reader with unanswered questions about enterprise engineering. As if Hoogervorst or Springer ‘forgot’ some additional chapters of the book. Or maybe it’s just a ‘cliffhanger’ to forthcoming books? Hoogervorst’s book is the second to be published in Springer’s Enterprise Engineering Series (I reviewed the first book in the series back in December). This series is aimed at academic students and advanced professionals. I’ll certainly recommend Hoogervorst’s book to my students.

The third book I’ll talk about here has been on my book shelf for a while, as it was published in November 2007, and I bought it right away, but must admit that it didn’t really catch me on the first reading back then. Recently, I was prompted to pick it up again, and am actually happy I did.

In Lost in Translation (book’s site), Nigel Green and Carl Bate from CapGemini describe a simplified ‘language’ for preventing loss in translation from business needs to IT solutions. This language is called ‘VPEC-T after the five dimensions it focuses on: Values, Policies, Events, Content and Trust. VPEC-T is presented as a common language that is natural for both business and IT, and is “straightforward enough to use, yet sophisticated enough to work in today’s connected world.”

Subtitled “A handbook for information systems in the 21st century”, the authors do not hide their interests: They provide a tool (‘language’) for how IT-people can become better at capturing what the business wants from IT. In this sense, it’s classic Information Systems thinking (chapter 2), and VPEC-T does indeed come across as, yes, yet another IS-approach. But also, as one that may well take some IS-territory, perhaps especially from IS-practitioners. I will certainly follow VPEC-T. I follow @taoofit on Twitter. I’ve also joined the VPEC-T Google Group. Also, google the acronym and you’ll find a few good things by adopters of it, for example the VPEC-T mindmap which seems quite useful.

I’m very pleased to announce that The IBM Center for The Business of Government has selected me as a recipient of a research stipend in the area of Transforming Government.

As a grantee, I must write up a report (monograph) presenting new approaches to improving the effectiveness of government, and it should assist public sector managers in effectively responding to their mission and management challenges. In my case, it will be a report about how enterprise architecture can be used to improve the effectiveness of government.

The Center’s reports are generally of a very high quality, so I realise I’m up for a challenge. But what a great one it is!

Speaking of changes … the Danish central administration is facing some major changes.

Yesterday, Computerworld broke the news (Gigantisk it-revolution pÃ¥ vej i staten): The government will establish two centralised, state-wide administrative service centres, one for IT service, and one for HR, travel admin, financial management, etc. Today, the Minister of Taxation came out and presented the IT service centre plan. Estimated savings: 425 million DKK annually, a lot of money compared to the US. Significant staff reductions are planned: In IT, from current 1.576 FTE to 1.132 over three years. The IT-consolidation will reduce today’s 4.000 servers to around 700.

On Tuesday, the Minister of Finance presented the central government budget proposal for 2008, which enforces a 1% spending freeze. Hmm, guess they’ve read Kotter’s eight steps to change management, where step one is to create a sense of urgency for changes.

Michael Karvø and other experts applauds the plan. And so do I. But just as Kim Viborg Andersen, professor at Copenhagen Business School, I do also see some if not many pitfalls and significant risk elements. The central government administration is a darn complex beast, and only rarely acts as one enterprise. On the other hand, over the past several years there has been many attempts at enterprise solutions at the state-wide level, especially with administrative services, so in some areas, these changes are just “natural” next steps towards “the state as an enterprise”.

Been there, done that? Dorte Toft reminds us that it is barely a decade ago since the Danish state had its own, central IT-service centre, the Datacentralen, which was then sold out to CSC. Whether the new plan is in fact a revival of Datacentralen – Datacentralen 2.0? – is quite unclear to me. From what I can read (also I haven’t seen the actual proposal/report) the plan will not necessarily mean more insoucing and “home taking” of tasks and operations. It’s more about re-souring, if you want – moving tasks and operations from individual ministries and agencies to the new service centre.

IMO, it’s a good strategy to go with Area 12 in this process of enterprising the state. “Area 12″ is the call name for the service area called “Administration and Management” in the Government Business Reference Model, FORM, which the Ministry of Finance released late last year. FORM must now be seen as a very essential tool in the implementation of the plan, and I really hope the decision makers will understand that. Basically, they need to understand what is administrative IT and what’s not, and that is exactly what FORM can help with.

Have you noticed how relatively little is written about enterprise architecture in government? Time to change that …

We started writing this report as a final deliverable from the ICA Study Group on Enterprise Architecture in Government, which we co-founded back in 2003. Having done that, we then thought, why not keep writing. So we did.

The result is, we hope, a report that anyone concerned with transformational government will find worthwhile reading.

Our concern is government enterprise architecture, which in our view is far from “a big fat joke”1. Having said that, we also find a gap between what we see in government EA around the world and what we would like to see.

That’s how Olov Östberg and I start off our report, Interoperability, Change and Architecture (PDF, 1,2MB), to the International Council for Information Technology in Government Administration, ICA, and the EA world at large.

We would love to get comments on the report.