Blueprint for Change

Framework for Success
People, technology and vision combine to meet increasing demand.

At every level of government, it is common to hear officials discussing the need to supply citizens and government employees with a new standard of service delivery. The need for always-on, go-anywhere government access is rapidly growing. And with limited resources, government officials are pondering how to meet this demand.

The challenge is to do more with less. It's that paradoxical phrase that will test the mettle of today's government. There are countless projects under way that seek to address that challenge -- and a wide variety of strategies as well. Is there one right solution? Can governments agree on a strategy that will produce the results they need to survive?

For many, the answer is a resounding yes. Enterprise architecture -- the practice of creating a framework and methodology for meeting organizational goals by describing the structure of an organization and aligning its functions with enterprise goals -- is a promising tactic for introducing real transformation in government. Twenty-first century government has three primary needs it must address to stay competitive: meeting increased demand from citizens, deploying cost-effective and efficient information sharing, and managing reduced budgets. Where old strategies and infrastructures fall short, enterprise architecture presents a clear blueprint for change.

A common misconception of enterprise architecture is that it describes only pieces of technology. This is inaccurate and presents a limited vision of what enterprise architecture can accomplish. In truth, enterprise architecture is the practice of creating a framework that describes the role of every employee and piece of equipment in the enterprise, and aligning those elements to support the organization's mission. While the technology components certainly are critical to success, enterprise architecture is more about people intelligently applying information technology to achieve extraordinary results.

Improving Service
As government officials scramble to keep up with constituencies that have become accustomed to an online lifestyle, government organizations must adopt enterprise architectures to meet modern demands for service delivery.

"Citizens today want better, faster and lower-cost services from government," said Rick Webb, Accenture's chief technology officer for state and local government. "There's a tremendous amount of demand on governments to accomplish that objective. Citizens have become accustomed to doing things online, like banking and buying products. So they are expecting the same level of service that they are getting in the private sector, and so governments are being forced to address that in a very aggressive way."

Such demands place a heavy and costly burden on governments that rely on complex IT infrastructures and duplicative processes. With fewer funds available and higher expectations for service delivery, traditional methods of doing business in government are quickly becoming inadequate.

Much of government IT infrastructure is astoundingly complex. Layers of agency- and program-specific technologies have built up over the years to create an architecture that no one would have ever conceived or designed. As such, the mere movement of information within government itself becomes a costly, repetitive process.

"We must recognize that government is a service business. It is the most diverse service business in the world." said Aldona Valicenti, vice president of business development and strategy for Oracle Public Sector. "I think you need that governance structure. You need to build yourself a framework. What are we going to do? What are the critical issues? Are we going to go to a one-database structure, one accounting system, one HR system? Those are governance issues that lead to specific technical implementations."

Enterprise architecture addresses pitfalls of the traditional government business model -- impediments such as duplicate processes and built-in silos -- that hinder information sharing and obstruct unified service delivery. Enterprise architecture creates a governance framework that crosses agencies and systems. This enterprise