Enterprise Architecture in Government

Hey Kris, you are so right! I don't understand how the gurus can just think that one size fits all... Do you have any suggestions on how to "fit" the EA to the institution? - Rob

Pushing my own research, I can suggest reading my article about institutional patterns of EA adoption in the eGov journal Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy.

The three adoption patterns (accepters, improvers, transformers) identified in the multiple case study illustrate that the adoption of EA does not create administrative or political reforms in itself. Compliance with the national requirements for EA planning drives the adoption process in all the agencies studied, while fundamental changes to the tasks performed in government may only be achieved if the institutional force at the micro-and macro-level promotes transformation.

EA is still perceived as a technical exercise in many Federal agencies in the USA, and it is unlikely that the IS planning development in the public sector will resemble the development in the private sector…

-Kristian

In my view the "lazy architect" is one that fails to realsite that anything but constant change is to be assumed.

There are some important leassons on what NOT TO DO to be learned from the danish government architecture.

I am very critical to the way we build government arthictecture in Denmark as it is practising what I would call dictated standardisation around legacy models. The alternative to this is smenatic interoperability - the recognition that there are multuple DIFFERENT ways to solve the same problem and the system has to be open to (as) many of these.

Especielly government system which is forced upon society cannot be single stadards as it will slow down society and force anti-innovational tendencies upon all activities.

This is exactly what we see happening in Denmark. There might be a short-term pull towards digitalisation which are claimed to be progressive, but at the same time it create ever stronger lock-ins and barriers to effectiveness and renewal of fundamental society processes.

The strange part is that are no positive lasting effects of the paradigm preached. Security is rapidly deterorating as the concentration of risk grow explonentially without ANY security mechanisms to balance this.

The paradigme is 100% command and control economics based on centralised one-size-fits-all without any mechanisms for adaption and needs-driven allcoation and innnovation.

The paradigm depends on a near-total elimiantion of citizens protection mechanisms meaning that the public sector is turned into one big exclusion from fundametnal and very sensible legislation such as the european data directive. The best excampl is in healtcare where the right to consent is elimianted wihtout any security mechanisms put in place.

The biggest problem is the way the public sector is ignoring the problem that is is a monopolly damaging the innovative market forces to solve problems. The architecture is preventing varaition and parallel solutions, the purchasing is increasingly centralised and destructive to experimentation and needs-driven processes, the it-structed are ditating dis-empowering of the "customers" of public services.

And we even see this disaster beeing forced upon the private sector. With "DanId" the public sector are forcing and legitimising a cetralsied id strucvtyre where a monopolly commercial entity dictate and control digital signature and thereby prevent any securty model not based on 100% dis-empowerment of citizens, blocks for innovation in the critical field of identity under apid change and block all value-creating digitals services with payments to the gatekeeper most interested in creating lock-ins and controls.

What we are witnessing is a society DESIGNING itselv in is architecture paradigm into loss of competetiveness, loss of security, loss of fundamental dmeocratic principles, loss of taxpayer money vasted on every more inefficient public services.

And for what? Some grand claim that architecture should be a based on centralising paradigm ignoring the very fact that all innovation in the end is based on individual needs forced upon complex process through INDIVIDUAL CHOICE of different ways to deal with complex needs?

We see lots of command and control rethoric and within this community lost of "prizes" for "best practice" - but it does not stand to the reality tests. And when the bill is to be paid, who will send it on to the "lazy architects"?

In the ned, the identity structure is where all of this is controlled and decided. You either empower the citizen or sacrifice competitiveness of society on some alter to favour technocrat command and control.

Denmark is mass-producing examples of what NOT TO DO. Only sad that nobody will pay for this and provide us with a future productive platform to carry the burdon of the wellfare state.

To me it sounds as if the "lazy architect" is actually the "disconnected architect", as
1) change is implemented via people
2) the environment keeps changing while planned changes are being implemented
3) the organization (often) contain players that initiate changes in addition to the changes introduced by EA.

People (1) adopt changes very differently. Some react with frustration and anger, some are eager to learn, some understand some parts of what you are trying to accomplish differently than you intended, and some might even have better ideas than you had initialy ;o) If you implement via people you need to be in contact with them all the time to see how they are interpreting the changes you are trying to implement - if you are too "lazy" to talkt to them all the time the changeprocess will certainly transform little by little into something you did not intend - simply because people are people. The "lazy architict" avoids realizing this by disconnecting from the target organization.

The initial change planned may not stay relevant throughout the change process as new opportunities and roadblocks will emerge (2) when the environment changes. The "lazy" architect is blind to this through disconnectiong from the outside world.

The organization in witch the EA i situated has lots of other change agents. Managers at all levels strive to improve their part of the business so the organisation and its needs are always changing (3). The "lazy" architect disconnecting from the internal customers ever changing demands isolates himself from this source of "moving target" frustrations.

Thus models can be created by the "lazy" architect, printed out and hung on the office wall. The models will not change (as long as they are just hangign there) and the "lazy" disconnected architect can marvel at his creation and wait for the world to allign to his vision.

I think he can wait a long time...