Gotze.eu

Category: Enterprise Architecture

  • 2003 E-Gov Round-Up

    As the year is ending, we look back. I haven’t yet seen much year reviews on eGovernment apart from E-GOV: A year in review from FCW. It’s about US, but would apply for Denmark too: “Talking the talk, but a long walk to walk”, and “Focused on architecture, fuzzy on funding”. In the printed press, ComnputerWorld Denmark had a special section about 2003. There they said something like “A Good Year for e-Government”, and listed all the things that happened during 2003, and that’s actually been a lot, just here in Denmark. Going through my archives gave a pretty good overview, I’d say. I chose to make a number of nominations for “Of the Year”-highlights.

    E-Gov Strategic Choice of the Year
    Government-wide Enterprise Architecture (EA)
    Not just because it the only new category in my blog, and what I do 60 hours a week, but because this is indeed what I see from around the world. As the nominations below will show, not least in the US. Also the Canadian Government is working with EA , namely under the heading business transformation, and has eatablished a Business Transformation Enablement Program (BTEP).

    E-Gov Video of the Year
    NASCIOs Enterprise Architecture video library (link)
    NASCIO�s architecture videos are intended to serve as a resource for CIOs, architects and other IT experts in their efforts to present a compelling message describing the value of enterprise architecture. I have asked NASCIO for permission to translate/subtitle them into Danish.

    E-Gov Quote of the Year

    “It’s about architecture, it’s about focus on the customers, and it’s about results”

    Said Mark Forman, former e-government chief for the US Office of Management and Budget.
    Mark could also have gotten the “Biggest Loss for E-Gov of the Year” award, were it not for him continuing to come with good commentary from “the outside”. Here’s a more recent but also good one from Mark:

    The future of technology is signaling a shift in focus from proprietary systems to architecture, and the government needs to be ready for the change.
    Mark Forman, 11 Dec 2003

    Mark argues that government is beginning to move away from using massive data centers to manage systems, and that we see a commoditisation of technologies which is allowing agencies to take standardised systems and open source options and link them to business processes, hereby becoming an adaptive enterprise. To facilitate this development, Forman pinpoints the federal enterprise architecture as providing a framework, and pushing agencies to think in terms of architecture. He refers to the reference models in the architecture, with which agencies can move away from building their own components and instead customise those available and share solutions across the government.

    E-Gov Survey of the Year
    Accenture’s eGov Leadership Survey
    The survey ranked Denmark as number four in the world on e-gov maturity. Canada was – and is – number one.
    Runner-ups: Two reports: TNS-Global Survey, which shows that more than six out of ten adults in Denmark use government services online (hightest of all) and the RAND US/EU Benchmarking Report, which shows that Danes have to most positive attitude towards e-government services.

    E-Gov Publication of the Year
    “The E-Government Imperative”, OECD’s Flagship Report on EGovernment.
    The report and the related policy brief goes through policy lessons from current experience in OECD member countries and suggests 10 guiding principles for successful e-government implementation:
    1 Leadership and Commitment
    2 Integration
    3 Inter-agency collaboration
    4 Financing
    5 Access
    6 Choice
    7 Citizen engagement
    8 Privacy
    9 Accountability
    10 Monitoring and evaluation

    Excellent advice. Read the publication!

    E-Gov White Paper of the Year
    No doubt 🙂 That is our EA White Paper (get it here)

    E-Gov Reference Model of the Year
    Federal Enterprise Architecture Business Reference Model, BRM 2.0
    The Business Reference Model is “a function-driven framework for describing the business operations of the Federal Government independent of the agencies that perform them.” It is also called Wedding Cake because it is illustrated like this:
    FEA-BRM

    E-Gov XML Initiative of the Year
    The Danish Infostructurebase
    Our Infostructurebase (ISB) got world-wide attention recently, when we published the Microsoft Office 2003 Reference Schemas after an agreement between Bill Gates and Helge Sander, minister of science. Confused? Read the FAQ.
    Although XML in government is progressing, few governments have embraced XML at a policy, strategic level as well as a practical level. In Denmark, we think we’re different, and the ISB is central to briding the gap between policy and practice. As a repository, a community, an infosite and a discovery tool, it is unique in the world.

    Standardisation Project of the Year
    Atom, the up-and-coming format for editing, syndicating, and archiving weblogs and other episodic web sites.
    OK, it is not clear from that blog entry that the Real-time Simple Standardisation I talk about ended up as Atom, which is making real progress these days. Atom aims at being 100% vendor neutral, implemented by everybody, freely extensible by anybody, and cleanly and thoroughly specified. See the Atom Wki and the Cover Page for more information. Atom is interesting on many levels – as a standard for XML-feeds, but also with much wider potential. Atom is also leading the way to finally getting better blogtool APIs. It is no good that we’re stuck with XML-RPC. The Atom API was designed with several guiding principles in mind:
    – Well-defined data model — with schemas and everything!
    – Doc-literal style web services, not RPC
    – Take full advantage of XML and namespaces
    – Take full advantage of HTTP
    – Secure, so no passwords in the clear

    Some say that Atom is BigCo thinking. That’s not how I see it. OK, IBM staffs Atom work, and SOAP is a possible transport protocol, and it’s more complex than RSS, but it still doesn’t exclude anyone from anything, as it uses a REST Architectural Style. I think it is stuff like Atom that helps us understand SOAPs many layers – from Simple Object Access Protocol to Service Oriented Architecture protocol.

    Runner-up: RSS 2.0
    Dave Winer took RSS to Harvard, a bold move. He licensed the RSS spec under Creative Commons. Today is the One Year Anniversary of the Creative Commons tools and licenses, so CC is basically a 2003 thing.

    Global E-Gov Infosite of the Year
    Directory: O e-Government no Mundo
    Blog: David Fletcher’s Government and Technology Weblog

  • EA around the world

    Kristian and I have returned from Washington, where we spent a week catching up on the international enterprise architecture scene. Mainly the US scene – from Homeland Security over Engraving and Printing to Veterans Affairs and many others -, but also a good day with inputs from other countries (Japan, Canada, UK, Sweden, Mexico, and Korea). We’re going to write a report of kinds sometime soon. There will also soon be a public announcement resulting from this trip …

    Suffice it to say that EA is on top of the agenda all over the world. But EA has also manifested itself in a variety of ways; in some countries, they don’t even call their approach EA. In others, most notably US, EA is almost so strong it has become the mission itself, with such a tight coupling of EA and capital planning/governance that EA has developed into a critical business-strategic activity for agencies and departments – No EA, no business (no funding).

    On the US situation, a survey conducted by The Association for Federal Information Resources Management (AFFIRM) – the eighth annual CIO Challenges Survey – reports that the senior federal information technology (IT) community has identified the top 10 most critical challenges facing the federal CIO are:

    1 Obtaining adequate funding for IT programs and projects
    2 Hiring and retaining skilled professionals
    3 Formulating or implementing an enterprise architecture
    4 Implementing IT capital planning and investment management across the agency
    5 Unifying “islands of automation” within lines of business (across agencies)
    6 Making the business and cultural changes necessary for full e-government transformation
    7 Aligning IT and organizational mission goals
    8 Consolidating common IT functions
    9 Simplifying business processes to maximize the benefit of technology
    10 Balancing public access to information with the need for information security.

    The US approach to EA is perhaps best illustrated in the NASCIO Enterprise Architecture Video Library. This is a four volume video series that provides a library of messages that direct the message of enterprise architecture toward policy makers and technical professionals. The videos are available online. I think I’ll show one of them to our architecture committee. It might overshadow the “EA for dummies” leaflet we’ve been working on, but I’ll take the risk. I wonder if NASCIO would allow us to put Danish subtitles on the videos?

    The RAND US/EU Benchmarking report is interesting in this international context. The report is perhaps especially interesting to us in Denmark, since the survey results shows that, among US and EU countries:

    • Danes have to most positive attitude towards e-government services.
    • Danes are second to the US those who use the internet the most.
    • Danes like tax services online (highest), but not job search services (lowest next to Portugal)
    • Danes see convenience as important, and don’t feel unsafe doing online business with government.

    The Danish EA approach should – and will, and does – recognise the potential for e-government in the service of the citizens. Arguably, we have the best conditions in the world (OK, US/EU is not the whole world, so let alone Singapore, New Zealand and Australia, which potentially might have even better conditions) for this mission.

    This week’s Office 2003 schema news sure made the headlines, BTW.

  • Gotze goes to Washington

    I will be in Washington, DC around 17-21 November for some meetings. I will also attend the 2nd Annual GCN Management Enterprise Architecture Conference in Washington, DC on 18-19 November.

    Anyone interested in meeting up?

  • The science, management, and art of architecture

    Check out Steve Gillmor in Enterprise Architect:

    The role of enterprise architect is of equal parts science, management, and art. The science is akin to chemistry – combining ingredients to produce a controlled reaction. The management is about people – mixing minds, experience, and intuition in search of solutions. And the art? That’s the secret ingredient that separates the winners from the losers, the magic from illusion.

    In music, it’s Miles Davis. In film, it’s Kubrick or Hitchcock. In baseball, it’s DiMaggio or Durocher. For each, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. By turns seductive, aggressive, persuasive, and just plain lucky, they realized a vision that only seems obvious in hindsight.

    But, that’s three things. Maybe that’s the key challenge in enterprise architecture: To make the three disciplines work together. Science and art can co-exist, we know, although that’s enough of a challenge in real life. But managment? Scientists and artists – the experts, the architects – hate managment. At best, management is a necessary evil, at worst, well, it’s much worse …

    It never becomes very specific on this issue, but somehow I get the impression that IAC’s Advancing Enterprise Architecture Maturity got this point. Much more could be said and done on this issue, for certain.

    In my collection of Enterprise Architecture links I found Gartner’s Build Your Next-Generation Enterprise Architecture, which had Gartner’s attempt at defining enterprise architecture:

    … a definition of architecture is: the harnessing of grid, bricks, patterns and styles in service of an enterprise’s business strategy. A working architecture can no longer be a snapshot at a point in time. Effective use of enterprise architecture embraces the increasingly dynamic character of business and technical innovation by sustaining continuity while organizing innovation and the interconnected nature of system elements within an enterprise and in enterprise-to-enterprise interconnections.

    That doesn’t help too much …

  • Deliverables from the office

    I’ve been busy with a number of deliverables in the office. Most are in Danish, and not public, so not much I can say about them. But I’ve also released a number of public deliverables, most notably the Danish e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF), the Reference Profile. It’s a consultation draft, and we’re very keen on getting comments. We chose to do the original document in English (will be translated into Danish soon)

    For those who read Danish, we’ve also released a consultation draft of a handbook on enterprise architecture, which has been made in collaboration with architects from major players in the Danish IT-industry. We (ehm, I) decided to take the current version public, so the rest of the world can see what we’ve been up to with all the handbook. It is clear that we need more work, so in that sense, it is truly an open consultation, we are out after. In fact, we’re going to run a pilot in our agency’s new e-democracy service, Denmark Debate, as part of the deliberations.

  • Interoperability frameworks

    Phil is blogging about Interoperability frameworks. The Danish Interoperability Framework, which we call the Reference Profile, is being made as we blog. We’re going to implement Utah style status indications.

    Phil raises some important issues about governance and adoption etc. I’d be interested in how frameworks work in other countries. The Danish approach is going to be the usual pragmatic way, no legislation, no big programmes, no funding, but lots of facilitation and pro-active deliberations. It’s going to be some busy months, when we launch the Reference Profile …

    I’m now also officially looking for good reference implementations and best practices. For example, could someone please send me a list of web service implementations that are critical?

  • Framework for Web Services Implementation

    InfoWorld: OASIS to build Web services framework:

    The OASIS Framework for Web Services Implementation (FWSI) Technical Committee plans to design a template for Web services deployment to enable systems integrators, software vendors, and in-house developers to build e-commerce solutions more quickly, according to OASIS. The committee will define functionality for building Web services applications and service-oriented architectures.

  • Ownership

    Sean McGrath agrees with me on EA ownership, and makes some important additions:

    Most critically, what is needed is not simply XML. XML is just a fancy alphabet. It gains you very little in terms of ownership and control unless you apply it intelligently.
    You need standards – your standards – for semantic representation of business data – completely independent of any technology stack. You need to understand how data conforming to these standards will flow around your enterprise architecture. You need to tuck these into Appendix A of your RFT.
    That is the only way you will ever get true ownership over your own enterprise. Without it, your just constantly posting (expensive) bail to take the handcuffs off something you always thought to owned but you didn’t.

    I didn’t mention XML, did I? Well, Sean might know that in the Danish context, XML is high-priority in our e-government work. I shouldn’t be caught criticising our own work, but I must admit that I sometimes wonder why our politicians and top-executives need to learn all our acronyms.

    Sean argues that we need standards for semantic representation of business data. True, so true. But we need much more than that. First of all, we need to “sell” the whole enterprise architecture concept as a strategic process that involves several architectural disciplines that must interoperate and build a bridge between business and technology. By using standards for semantic representation of business data, and perhaps taking the next step and making business patterns, the business is “packaged” in a way that the technology guys – for example the XML-integrators – can work with. We also need bridge builders from the technology side, and also here, standards and patterns would be a good contibution. For example, technology stacks could be measured against enterprise standards and patterns, and/or against government-wide such. A forthcoming deliveable from our EA Programme is the Reference Profile, a list of technical standards that we recommend, and that we suggest agencies to “tuck these into Appendix A of your RFT”. By thereby, hopefully, leveraging the technology side to at least a shared common denominator, we hope not only to achieve “more interoperability” across government, but also allowing enterprises/ministries to focus more on their business development and help them govern the technology development.

  • Power and Architecture

    I’ve been adding a few New links in GotzeLinked. Among them, Gartner: Megavendors will ‘handcuff’ your enterprise architecture which has a good point: Increases in componentry and openness in packaged application architecture belie a megavendor agenda for greater architecture ownership and customer lock-in.

    Architecture ownership. Exactly. That’s what it is all about.

    So, how do you take ownership over the architecture? how do you avoid vendor lock-in? By having a good and active enterprise architecture. Gartner sells their “New Enterprise Architecture”, and other analysts and consultants and vendors sell EA en masse, so it is not that we lack a market for getting “help”. But the point is exactly that you must take ownership, and that it doesn’t really matter how rich you are, enterprise architecture cannot be bought (like happiness and love).

    Having said that, you do need money to play this game. To get a taste of how “buying EA” works, I’ve just bought META Group’s $4000 EA Bible (EA Desk Reference). That’s one expensive book!

  • Permanent Chief Architect

    The US is going to get an official permanent chief architect (GCN: OMB to name permanent chief architect). Bob Haycock, acting chief architect since last year, is a leading candidate. Good luck, Bob.

    OMB also wants to add six analyst positions under the chief architect. These analysts will help with the day-to-day work of creating and maintaining the five Federal Enterprise Architecture reference models, which have been rolled out one by one (three out so far, but the rest are coming soon).

    We’re consolidating the Danish National EA (NEA) programme, and working on our reference models. As a project manager I can see why Bob wants six analysts. I have three and a few loosely coupled helpers, and we’re too busy.

    I think I’m going to write Bob and suggest we join forces. When we met last year, we found we had the same priorities. Maybe we could team up and do a joint reference model?