The #entarch league was the first public round of The EA Game, and after 6 rounds, the game has now ended. There were 22 active teams playing, and the final scores were:
Congratulations to team deathstar! And thanks to all for playing.
Morten has been working on the game engine, and we will now soon launch a new version of the game with additional features.
Until then, I have added a number of running games which updates as various intervals (game “4hours” updates every 4 hours, etc). Feel free to sign up for these games to play your own game. You are welcome to play several games, but you need to select a unique username for each game you play.
Select “Create a team”. You need to provide some information:
Team name (publically shown name, also your username)
Team Captain (you, not shown publically)
Team Captain Telephone (not shown, not used (but required field, so fill in something))
Password (not shown, duh)
Email (not shown)
Liga (select #entarch league)
Login. You should now see the ‘game board’ (a form). This is where you make your decisions.
Click “Team Overview” to see the scores you get. Hint: Open this in another window, so you can look at both this and the decision form. (this is more useful after round 1, of course)
Remember to save your decisions before the round deadline (weekly, first round a bit shorter).
That’s it, really. Then come back when the round turns, and review your scores and spend some days considering your future decisions. Then do steps 3-5 again.
About the game
The game was originally developed for usage in class room exercises at the IT University of Copenhagen, and version 1 of the game have been tested with succes there. The next phase – version 2 – is to make the game also work in an online, distributed and asynchronous environment. While version 2 is still work-in-progress, we have decided to launch the site now, and invite everyone to participate in the game, and help us gain experience with it and find out what to improve.
Here below is a list of titles of ongoing projects by students at the IT University.
Most of the students are always interested in speaking with experts and practitioners in their areas, so if you are such and want to speak to students, let me know. If you are looking for a fresh graduate to hire, also let me know.
I can connect you to specific students, but am also happy to arrange (virtual or local) seminars etc with relevant clusters of students. See also my unofficial ITU Enterprise program.
Portfolio management as a strategic lever
Architecture Frameworks and Value Creation.
An organic change mangement project – a systemic approach
Customer at the center – enterprise architecture in a media house
Agile Procurement in Government
BPMN in a public perspective
Digitilisation in a system theoretic perspective
EA in Greenland
EA in a public company
Evolving Business Process Management (BPM) Strategies in Enterprise Architecture (EA)
Free and discout CrewManagementIT
Policy for securing of It architecture, data and Intellectual property
Preanalysis of the business and design aspects related to developing a smartphone (web) app.
Project Portfolio Management in a Strategic Perspective
SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management Security Policies
Service Oriented Architechture (SOA) for a small business
Should one of the leading Faroese IT Enterprises have an IT strategy?
Strategy, Governance, and Enterprise Architecture in Private and Public Organizations
The single version of the truth
The value creation of IT-projects of the Capital Healthcare Region with focus emphasis on Enterprise Architechure
Analysis of Scrum in practice
Applied Enterprise Architecture in Ørestad Airways
Business Opportunities with Cloud Services
Strategisk IT i Koncernservice – EA med forhindringer
Private EA. versus public EA. – A comparative analysis
Digitalization in the name of democracy – potential and barriers
Establishing an effective project management for outsourcing projects
Producibility an Industry Paradigm: Reforming the Approach to Enterprise Architecture and Systems Integration
Public procurement of IT
Systematic Harnessing of Collective Intelligence and Web 2.0 on the Stock Market
A Case Study of Applied Enterprise Architecture
Many organisations opening up for students require confidentiality agreements (NDAs), which is understandable and no problem administratively.
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:
Demonstrate and disseminate the importance of government enterprise architecture in elevating the effectiveness of e-government programs.
Capture and bring forth the current advancements and thought leadership in the area of enterprise architecture in the context of connected government.
Provide national e-government initiatives with evidence-based, credible, field tested and practical guidance in crafting their respective architectures.
Showcase case studies and experience reports of innovative use of enterprise architecture in enhancing national e-government initiatives.
INTENDED AUDIENCE AND POTENTIAL USES
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.
Line-of-Business Managers concerned with maximizing business value of IT and business competitiveness.
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.
Consultants and practitioners desirous of new solutions and technologies to improve the productivity of their government clients.
Business management, public policy and IS management educators interested in imparting knowledge about this vital discipline.
Academic and consulting researchers looking to uncover and characterize new research problems and programs.
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:
Government EA for compliance, complexity, innovation and coherency.
EA and portfolio management, public sector governance, government performance, investment management.
Economic value and impact of connected government.
Frameworks, reference models, methodologies, languages, tools and other supporting aspects of government EA.
Future of EA and its role in the government.
Government 2.0.
Government EA in countries with initial levels of e-government capability and maturity.
Government interoperability.
Government service innovation.
Government transformation and modernization, public sector reforms.
Open data initiative.
Policies, regulations and mandates for driving government enterprise architecture programs.
Strategic (systems) thinking in the public sector.
Transparent and open government.
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:
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.
Prof. Terry Buss, Executive Director and Distinguished Professor, Heinz College of Public Policy and Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA / AUSTRALIA.
Dr. Saleem Zoughbi, Regional Adviser, Information and Communication Technology, Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, UNITED NATIONS.
Prof. Jukka Heikkilä, Vice Dean, Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyvaskyla, FINLAND.
Dr. John Gøtze, Chief Editor, The Open Group Journal of Enterprise Architecture AND Associate Professor, IT University of Copenhagen, DENMARK.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Habil. Jorge Marx Gómez, Chair of Business Information Systems, Department für Informatik, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, GERMANY.
Prof. John Mo, Discipline Head, Manufacturing and Materials Engineering, RMIT University, AUSTRALIA.
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
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.
I have launched a new service called EA Blogs, which is a thematic aggregator of enterprise architecture blog feeds. A ‘planet‘, or as Dave Winer would call it, a river. Or whatever. The EA Blogs engine fetches new blog entries from around 20 enterprise architects within an hour after they are published, indexes them, and shows them to the visitor. Simple, but nice to have, if you are interested in what is happening in the EA community. I apologize in advance to those EA bloggers, I have not approached and asked for permission to include your feed; just let me know.
EA Blogs puts everything in a database, which already contains over 160.000 words. Of wisdom. Use the site’s features to find your way around all these. Although the search function could be improved, it is fairly useful.
So I got WPTouch Pro 2.1. I haven’t made it live, but have tested it and found I have several issues with it on my iPad. First, it’s really nice, I have to say. However, I used it a specific use case, which proved to be somewhat problematic, and not ‘fit’ the way WPTouch works. Something with Pages, Menus and how landscape view works. Guess I have to ask in the support forums. It is still quite new there with the iPad support, it seems.
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:
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
Together with Rien Dijkstra and Pieter van der Ploeg, I have launched a new book project: The Sourcing Initiative: Enabling Collaboration. Read more about it on the new website, sourcing-it.org. The idea is that there are a lot of issues at stake in modern enterprises:
Our proposition is that the modern enterprise must fundamentally rethink its sourcing equation (Organization, Economics and Technology) to become or remain viable. We have dubbed this Right Sourcing.
This is a non-profit project, and the book will be published under a Creative Commons licence and be freely available online. We will use an agile approach and release iterations as we go along.
We seek contributors who have something to wise/clever/interesting to say about the theme(s). If you think you have and want to join us, please let us know.
Mikkel Mertz, Morten Gryning and Ambreen Khan have allowed me to share their masters thesis about Coherency Management in Carlsberg. I warmly recommend it!
Abstract
Even though the amounts of information in enterprises are rapidly increasing, it does not directly provide the organizations with competitive advantages. A paradox of the Information Age is that while information have never been available in such vast amounts as now, the vast volume has caused the organizations to lose sight of the overall picture; what is required is a way to enhance and manage the information to provide a coherent vision. This can be described as Coherency Management.
This thesis examines how the novel concept of Coherency Management (CM) can be enhanced based on pragmatic problems identified in a complex enterprise. Carlsberg, which is currently undergoing a major standardization transformation, provides a unique opportunity to assess the standardization process and the effect on the enterprise. The empirical data obtained is analyzed to enhance the Coherency Management concept described in (Doucet et al, 2009), advancing it to cope with those problems found to be inside CM’s scope.
On the basis of the identified problems and findings in the thesis, a CM framework has been developed. This framework represents a more pragmatic view on CM, and can be implemented in an enterprise to introduce CM there. In addition, the framework can be utilized as a foundation for the further development of the concept.
The thesis asserts that: Coherency Management should only to a lesser extend possess domain specific knowledge; it should not be included in the Enterprise Architecture discipline; and it should only concern the improvement of cooperation between the departments and programs in the enterprise – by using the three modes for architecture.
The thesis also discusses how the scope of Coherency Management is best determined and the differences between CM and Enterprise Architecture. The paper concludes by elaborating on the findings of the thesis and discuss if the problem statement has been sufficiently answered.
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).
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.
Congratulations to team deathstar! And thanks to all for playing.
