Intervista Journal

US OMB Pushing Forward With EA Assessment

As recently reported, the US Office of Management and Budget's Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office (FEAPMO) is continuing to move forward with assessment of federal government agencies enterprise architetures. The newest aspect of this push is the release of the FEAPMO assessment tool for the evaluation of enterprise architectures.

Jason Miller of GCN reported that

"The EA Assessment Framework Version 1.0 will let agencies rate the capability of their modernization blueprints. OMB said it complements the General Accounting Office’s EA Management Maturity Framework, which assesses EA capacity."

The FEAPMO's EA Assessement Framework (see PDF) seeks to mesaure the enterprise architecture relative to its orientation toward

• Change -- how well the architecture can support change
  
• Integration -- how well the architecture flexes through standardization of information, interoperation, interfaces, and connectivity
  
• Convergence -- how well the architecture accords with the agency's already established Technical Reference Model (TRM)
  
• Business Alignment -- how well the architecture ensures alignment with the agency's strategic intent.

We anticipate that there will be quite a lot of controversy about the assessment tool, and its application.

GCN on Popkin’s System Architect Follows Federal EA Model

A recent interview with Popkin Software's Jan Popkin shed light on the growing need for EA tools to support the Federal EA model:

"[Popkin Software's] System Architect 9.2 has an option for automating business-case reporting to match the Federal Enterprise Architecture reference model, said Jan Popkin, chief executive officer of the New York company.

An analysis feature called Enterprise Explorer Diagram visually depicts relationships among applications, technologies and locations, Popkin said. Via open-standard Scalable Vector Graphics images, it highlights redundant and overlapping systems. The Depiction Manager lets users globally change the symbols that represent systems in the framework to speed editing.

...

The optional FEA Reference Model Support interface organizes an agency’s enterprise architecture to comply with Office of Management and Budget requirements, Popkin said. The company will update the software as OMB revises its FEA reference models."

We plan to touch base with Popkin Software on these developments in the near-term.

GAO Says E-Government Initiaitives fall Short

In a recent InformationWeek article, Eric Chabow GAO: Administration Too Optimistic On Success Of E-Government

"The General Accounting Office told a House subcommittee Wednesday that the administration might have been overly optimistic about achieving one of the President Bush's management priorities: E-government.

Overall, the GAO--Congress' investigative arm--gave the White House Office of Management and Budget mixed grades in achieving the 91 objectives originally defined for the 25 OMB-sponsored E-government initiatives.

"Given that OMB's stated criteria in choosing these initiatives included their likelihood of deployment in 18 to 24 months, the substantial number of objectives that are still unmet or only partially met indicates that making progress on these initiatives is more challenging than OMB may have originally anticipated," said Linda Koontz, GAO's information management issues director, in remarks prepared for delivery to the House Government Reform Committee's Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations, and the Census."

Seems that those projects that have brought in more stakeholders, and established a better working collaboration among all invoved -- cutting across agencies -- have fared better.

This accords well with what we have learned about enterprise architecture and its realization, and the Government's challenges to deliver on E-government are serious:

"[Karen] Evans, the highest-ranking IT executive in government [OMB's administrator for E-government and IT], defended the presidential E-government initiatives as having delivered measurable results to citizens. More is to come. "Through the analysis of the federal enterprise architecture," she said, "we have launched five task forces which are laying the foundation for future opportunities to improve service, reduce costs and identify duplicative investments."

We'll keep our eye on that.