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July 31, 2005
Summing Up: Understanding EA Management and Implementation in Government
My recent study of EA management and implementation in government illustrates the importance of understanding EAGov from an IS and e-government perspective. The e-government field emphasizes the distinct characteristics of government coordination and maturity stages that now call for vertical and horizontal back-office integration. And the IS literature emphasizes how IS researchers in the past have theorized about the global planning of IS in organizations. EA is not a new phenomenon with no heritage. EA stands on the shoulders of many years of IS research and it is important to acknowledge this heritage and not to let ourselves be blinded by the flashy, one-dimensional consultancy reports when we manage and implement EA’s in government. The e-government literature must study government in a systems perspective (cf. Grönlund & Horan, 2005) that emphasizes the importance of interoperability, standards, change management and reorganization when we want to improve the social aspects of e-government and strengthen the relation between government and citizens.
Many governments around the world are establishing EA programs to deal with interoperability and integration issues. The question is whether EA is the right medicine for public organizations. Rigorous EA frameworks, vague definitions and organizational adoption are some of the largest challenges. There are no guaranties for success. Tomorrow’s EA programs in government must encompass public sector dynamics (and limitations) as well as being agile in the application of interoperable e-government services.
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July 20, 2005
Understanding the IS Heritage for EA
Contrary to what most practitioners (and some academics) seem to assume, the definitions of EA that we see in the emerging IS literature on EA should not be seen in contrast to IS traditions like Information Engineering, Information Systems Architecture or Strategic Information Systems Planning.
Traditional ISD and much of the IS literature about IE and ISA has a technical focus where the basic idea is about producing a project plan, not choosing the project or, even better, providing the framework in order to choose. This type of planning is practical at the systems level but leads to lost business opportunities and incompatible systems, data stores and architectures. Here, a typical EA encompasses an overview of the entire information systems – including software and hardware. According to Schekkerman (2004) modern EA is a master plan which “acts as a collaboration force” between aspects of business planning such as goals, visions, strategies and governance principles; aspects of business operations such as business terms, organizational structure, processes and data; aspects of automation such as information systems and databases; and the enabling technological infrastructures of the business such as computers, operating systems and networks. In this sense, EA is a multidimensional discipline with an extensive scope that needs to cover a wide variety of viewpoints, deliverables, and processes across the whole enterprise. A fully articulated architecture constitutes enterprise architecture: the integration of business, data, information, and technology into a coherent whole. In the figure below, I have tried to illustrate this distinction between a business focus and a technical focus placing the different IS traditions into a simple two-by-two matrix.
The Y-axis in the figure represents the business and process focus that is evident in the SISP approach. Along this axis IS business needs and the possibility to gain a competitive advantage from implementing IS is considered while the technical implementation “details” and alignment is less important. The other axis in the matrix, the X-axis, has a technical focus where data and technical ISA’s are considered most important in the development of IS. Here we find the data focus in IE and the technically focused ISA’s.
EA is placed in the upper right corner of the figure because it claims to have both a technical and a business focus. The dotted read arrow illustrates the IS evolution; starting as a technical discipline in the 1960’s, IS began to focus on business needs in the 1980’s and 1990’s with SISP and trends like BPR, and we now see EA claiming to encompass all the different domains in the IS discipline in on holistic perspective, including enterprise design from organization, information, systems, products, processes to applications.
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July 18, 2005
First Verion of My Status Report
The reason that my blog has been silent for a while is that I have been working hard to get my PhD-status report ready before I go to the US in September. The status report describes the current state of my 4-year PhD project initiated in February 2004. The main body of the report deals with the theoretical foundation for studying the use of enterprise architectures (EA) in government, while the appendix holds four articles produced in the first year of the PhD-program. The report is available here and I have inserted a table of contents below:
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Formal Report Requirements
1.2 Motivation and Research Focus
1.3 Project Background and Current Status
2. RESEARCH FIELD: UNDERSTANDING ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURES IN GOVERNMENT
2.1 Electronic Government
2.2 Enterprise Architecture
2.3 Discussion and Implications
3. RESEARCH RESULTS
3.1 Paper I: Enterprise Architecture in Government – Towards a Multi-Level Framework for Managing IT in Government
3.2 Paper II: Extensible Architectures: The Strategic Value of Service-Oriented Architecture in Banking
3.3 Paper III: How To Make Government Agile to Cope with Organizational Change
3.4 Paper IV: Establishing Enterprise Architectures in Government: A Case Study on Interoperability
4. RESEARCH DESIGN: ENVISIONING THE THESIS AS A WHOLE
4.1 Research Process
4.2 New Institutional Theory
4.3 Outlining a Paper Model Dissertation
LIST OF REFERENCES
APPENDIX 1: ESTABLISHED ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE FRAMEWORKS
APPENDIX 2: RESEARCH PAPERS I-IV
The final deadline for the status report is August 5. Please feel free to post your comments to the first version of the status on my blog or send me a mail.
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