The periodic reports will define business architecture in state government, showcase real-world applications, provide practical guidance and promote collaboration through cross-agency and public-private partnerships. They will be released throughout the year.
“NASCIO has published on enterprise architecture for a very long time and there is a new emphasis these days on business architecture,” Eric Sweden, NASCIO program director, enterprise architecture and governance, said via email. “We’re opening the dialogue on how enterprise architecture and business architecture plays a very important part in the continued emerging role of the state CIO as a business executive working on business strategy.”
The association took a deep dive into business architecture and its definition about two decades ago. Business architecture, today’s report indicates, bridges a gap between states’ missions and their strategic objectives, facilitating cohesion between policy goals and providing necessary guidance.
It can enable delivery of services that can positively impact resident experience — defining opportunities that might otherwise not have been recognized around interoperability, service integration and resource sharing, and nurture a resident-focused approach. Sweden, the report’s author, noted in it that transformation is “an ongoing journey” with business architecture as a “structured framework” to help ensure responsiveness.
“We’ll be releasing a few more reports in this series this year and the work will continue in subsequent years with more details on methodologies,” Sweden said. “The state CIO community — and the broader global CIO community — will see the importance of business architecture. It’s not just about technology; business architecture is a management discipline.”
Ending with a call to action, the report asks that members of the state CIO community establish a shared understanding of this topic, communicate those principles, share best practices and develop road maps, and join in the organization’s Enterprise Architecture and Governance Working Group.
