Enterprise Architecture in Government

Enterprise Architecture in Government: Fad or Future?

Together with Professor Jan Pries-Heje I have just had an article accepted for the 42th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences in January 2009.

To answer our research question on the purpose and drivers of EA, we used two research approaches: In the first part we gathered two focus groups, one with CIOs and one with chief enterprise architects in the Danish central government. In the second part we interviewed two experts – or “Gurus” – and analyzed official documents, newspapers and official websites.

We found the causal direction reversed from EA being transformative and prescriptive in its nature to EA being reshaped and adopted in step with the institutional forces in public organizations and their macro environment. To be more than just another fashion fad, future EA programs in government must provide a comprehensive and coherent view across business, information, and technology; not just to guide the design of IT systems – but to deliver business change supported and enabled by IT.

Abstract:

Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been promoted as a key tool for transformation and modernization of government. In this paper we study what has driven the use and adoption of the EA concept in the Danish central government. Based on analysis of focus group and ‘guru’ interviews with government CIO’s, enterprise architects, and consultants, as well as extensive document studies, we find that there are two streams in public sector EA programs: a stable element of it-architecture and a fashion driven business architecture element – used in parallel, but with different focus, approach and artifacts. We conclude that EA in government to a large extend is driven by fashion. Finally, we discuss the role of EA in the future and point out that EA can not transform government by itself. Fundamental transformation to the tasks performed in public organizations is only achieved if institutional forces promote transformation.

Let me know if you want further details.

Thought Leaders

Cisco IBSG just released a case study about Denmark’s business architecture program. My boss (Denmark’s version of a public sector CIO) and my self are quoted in the case study. A good read I think :-)) Download here – or find here.

The Lazy Enterprise Architect – Vision or Reality?

I recently attended a Gartner EA seminar in London. Hosted by the EA gurus Philip Allegra and Brian Burke, the seminar outlined the ”ideal” planning and implementation of an enterprise architecture program (great seminar – try to attend if you can some time).

During the seminar Phil introduced the idea about the ”lazy architect”. The role of the enterprise architect is to ensure that the business and IT are in alignment. And ”ideally”, when an EA program has been well established, the enterprise architect can sit back and just make sure that this alignment is happening.

However, as noted previously on this blog, my practical and academic expertise is that EA is often performed very different in different organizational settings. As Phil and Brian also noted, EA is not a clear-cut movement that can be adopted by any organization with similar results.

EA implementation is context dependent and typically comes with as much frustrations and desperation as accomplishments and joy. Working with many different stakeholders, both leadership and subject matter experts, to build a holistic view of the organization's strategy, processes, information, and information technology assets is not just a walk in the park in most organizations.

EA is still a fairly new discipline, and many organizations have just recently created the role of the architect. Maturity is probably a key word when we want find what Weber would call the ideal type ”lazy architect” – however, in my world the ”lazy architect” is still more vision than reality...

Please let me know how you experience your role as enterprise architect. In my research I try to understand how EA is adopted and your feedback is therefore very valuable to me. Post a note here or drop me an e-mail.

Guest Editor in Real Life

Clearing ones desk before the summer Holidays can be a rewarding experience. I just found my physical copy of the special issue on E-government Process Integration and Enterprise Architecture that I guest edited in the International Journal of Cases on Electronic Commerce with Vishanth Weerakkody and Marijn Janssen. Now I can show my wife that all the late hours that I spend editing the issue also materialized in something tangible.

In an entry last year I announced the call for papers and we received a bunch of quality papers – all good candidates for publications. However, in the end we decided to publish the following five papers:

- A Comparative Account of Joined-Up Government Initiatives in Dutch and Belgian Social Security
By Homburg, V. M. F.

- Integration and Enterprise Architecture Challenges in E-Government: A European Perspective
By Weerakkody, V.; Janssen, M.; Hjort-Madsen, K.

- Managing E-Government Application Evolution: A State Government Case
By Kung, H. J.; Tung, H. L.; Case, T.

- E-Mexico: Collaborative Structures in Mexican Public Administration
By Luna-Reyes, L. F.; Gil-Garcia, J. R.; Cruz, C. B.

- The E-Government Development, IT Strategies, and Portals of the Hong Kong SAR Government
By HO, K. K. W.

You can find all the papers here.

It was fun to work with Vishanth and Marijn and a great learning experience for me to edit a special issue in a journal. Hopefully, it will not be the last time I do that.

Piling Higher & Deeper Again, Again...

The next three weeks I am working on my PhD (more about academic life here). Buried in books at the IT-University of Copenhagen, I will try to get my hands around my research question, my publications and the red thread in my research.

My first challenge is to reflect on my research question. The blurry question that I am working with these days is “Why and how is enterprise architecture adopted as an information systems planning trend/innovation in the public sector?” It needs to be more focused and linked with my publications.

The goal of my PhD-project is to produce a paper model dissertation that contributes to the scare research carried out in the area of EA in government by conducting various studies in public agencies in Denmark and the USA. So fare, I have a couple of decent publications under my belt. But, I need to produce a plan for 1)which publications to include in my PhD-dissertation and 2)which articles I can/must write to tie it all together.

I am very motivated and will try to keep you all up to date on my progress in the lab.

Public Sector History

Accroding to Computerworld.dk, our wiki is the first ever public sector wiki… Read the article here.

Public Sector 2.0

I have just pressed the ”publish” button on an national wiki about the integration model that I have been working on for the past eight months in the Digital Task Force. You can find the wiki at oim.modernisering.dk (in Danish).

The idea is to use the wiki to allow my colleagues in the public sector (and their commercial vendors) to comment add, remove, and edit content in version 0.5 of the integration model like a real Web 2.0 tool.

The integration model describes how all public portal services can be integrated with our two national portals for citizens (borger.dk) and businesses (virk.dk). What we are trying to do is to build a kind of “third way” architectural style that enables decentralized autonomy and minimal constraints. We are using a minimal specification of easily applied identifiers, formats, and tools.

I hope the wiki will facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing between the portals, the public agencies, and all the commercial vendors. I will blog more about my experiences later – stay tuned!

Framing National Enterprise Architectures

Visiting Dr. Marijn Janssen, I am in Delft this week working on a framework for analyzing national EA programs. We are trying to enrich a model that we developed earlier this year for a HICSS 2007 conference paper. The paper was accepted for HICSS and I presented our model at the EA Summit earlier this year. But, we still need to work with it if we want to submit it to a journal. Especially our theoretical foundation needs to be developed further.

The framework should results in a better understanding of national EA efforts. We hypotheses that an analysis of national EAs should at least encompass five elements, 1) Policies, actors and strategies, 2) Governance 3) Architecture model 4) Architecture principles and standards and 5) Implementations. We test this framework by analyzing the EA efforts of two European countries. Our analysis shows that EA should be framed within the institutional environment and governance aspects determine the adoption and diffusion of EA.

Below, I have inserted our original HICSS abstract. The new version of the paper that we are working on will focus more on the theoretical framework than the national case studies. I think we are on to something interesting here – so stay tuned ;-)

National enterprise architectures (NEA) promise to fill the gap between policy and implementation. NEAs are embedded within an institutional environment consisting of active players capable of responding strategically and innovatively to architectural initiatives, which might complicate NEA adoption. In this paper we analyze the efforts of two European national governments in developing enterprise architecture. Grounded in institutional theory and practice we develop an analytical framework and use this framework to analyze the fforts of two countries, Denmark and the Netherlands. Our framework and analysis draws the attention to the need to take a broader perspective on enterprise architecture, especially governance aspects determine the adoption and diffusion of NEA.

The First 30 Days...

The first 30 days in the Ministry of Finance have been stressful, frightening, and a lot of hard work. But, it has also been a lot of fun. In many ways my new job is what I expected; very smart new colleagues, a visionary new boss/project manager, and a place where I can make EA in government happen. Working with the new e-government strategy for Denmark is interesting and I am starting to get my hands around the integration model for the new (2008) borger.dk portal.

In the Digital taskforce, Prince2 is the de facto standard for project management and I have, therefore, been Prince2 certified. It was tough to take the exam. But, there are some great tools in Prince2 and I am trying to figure out how EA can be integrated better with the Project Initiation Document (PID). The PID is used to define the project, form the basis for its management and the assessment of overall success. Therefore, we need to work on a "standard" PID for EA program management. I know that some private enterprises in Denmark are working on this link and I am continuously working on this missing link. I will be back with more news when things calm down in the Ministry... Cheers!

Eating My Own Dog Food

The next couple of years I will be eating my own dog food in the Danish Ministry of Finance. Next week I will start a new job as enterprise architect in the national Digital Task Force. The Task Force assists the Danish national steering committee of joint cross-government co-operations in carrying out the adopted e-government projects, and it prepares the basis of the decision-making on the background of cooperation with the involved parties.

My job there will be too give (EA) input too the national e-government strategy and assist different projects with concrete IT/EA architectural thinking. It will be a huge and exiting challenge too be part of the “real” work in the Ministry of Finance - and too see how/if my thoughts will influence the national EA work. Communicating the value of EA will be one of my key challenges. I have spent the last couple of years preaching how fantastic a tool EA is. The interesting question will be: Will the dog eat the dog food? I will try too keep you all posted…

Gartner UPdated

Please find my updated Gartner pitch here. The conference was great hype and I will be there again next year!

The Missing Link Between Application and Enterprise Architecture

I very often meet frustrated project managers and application architects complaining about smart-ass enterprise architects armed with high-level PowerPoint slide-ware about transformation, innovation and consolidation. It is unclear to these people how enterprise architecture (EA) can help them in their daily lives and they therefore see EA as a gatekeeper and resist the enterprise-wide perspective. But, why do we see this missing link again and again and how can we bridge the gap?

An EA tells the organization where they are on the IT map and identifies a transition plan for building a desired “to-be” architecture whose scope encompasses all of the computing of an enterprise. Application architecture designs, implements and maintains specific IT-systems. Hey, what is the problem?! The way I see it, the problem is the missing link is between the top-down EA work that defines and sponsors strategic IT projects and the bottom-up needs of business managers and innovative application architects.

I think governance and communication is two of the key ingredients if we want to bridge the gap between EA and application architecture. We need to define a clear link between processes for system development, project management, vendor management, capital planning, and strategic planning. It must be clear for the project managers and application architects how the EA program will help them in their daily lives and it must be clear to the EA program that they can not live in an ivory tower disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life in the IT engine room.

I have seen some great example of how EA programs are reaching out to application architects. But, unfortunately, most of the programs I have seen are struggling to find the missing link. If any of you have experiences with this “missing link” please let me know. I will be working with my colleagues from IBM on this issue. Maybe they have some shelf-ware that can help us ;-)

Enterprise Architecture As Strategy

I have just started read a new book by Ross, Weill and Roberts called Enterprise Architecture As Strategy. I think the book will give EA a lot of momentum - like IT-Governance gained momentum after Ross and Weill’s book IT-Governance. But, the managerial presentation of EA in the book also echoes in form and substance the traditional definitions of Management Information Systems (MIS) – and the early work of Zachman and Spewak. This kind of research and consulting activity associated with strategic IT alignment does not deal with two fundamental questions:

- IT planning has been around for many years. But alignment is still a problem – why is it so difficult?

- Successful Strategic Information Systems seem to show that tinkering, not conscious alignment, was behind successfully aligned IT-applications – can we really find one right medicine?

Sceptically open-minded, I will read the rest of the book and get back with my evaluation. I recommend thinking about the two questions above if you read the book. And please do not jump the buzz wagon tomorrow – EA has a lot of potential, but it is no silver bullet!

Four misunderstandings about Enterprise Architecture

Modernizing government institutions with Enterprise Architecture (EA) has proven much more difficult than the evangelists have claimed. EA is not a clear-cut movement that can be adopted by any organization with similar results. EA implementation is context dependent and typically comes with as much frustrations and desperation as accomplishments and joy. Against the background of cultural theory – and the writings of Hood – four misunderstandings about EA can be identified:

1) EA is a clear-cut movement
2) EA is unavoidable and irreversible
3) EA will lead to convergence, with the same ’methods’ appearing everywhere
4) EA is beneficent and welcomed by all

My practical and academic expertises with EA have told me that people often want to be deceived. We worship new things that we can associate with progress and/or innovation. But, powerful forces of path-dependency and self-disequilibration – that is the, the capacity of management reform initiatives to produce the opposite of their intended results – often come in our way. If we can clear up the four misunderstandings I outlined above we might achieve more accomplishments and joy than frustrations and desperation in our EA endeavours. Lets give it a try!

Pitching for Gartner

Gartner has asked me to present my research at their Enterprise Architecture Summit 2006. The conference will be held in London September 27 – 28. Here is a description of my pitch:

Government EA Programs In Action: From Vision to Implementation

Government EA programs come in different shapes and sizes. Countries around the world have approached EA differently and the results vary across public agencies. Based on research in the USA and Denmark, this session focuses on best practice strategies for EA implementation at national and agency levels. What value are governments getting from their enterprise architecture? How can governance be used to promote EA success? What are best practices for effective change management in the public sector?

I hope that a lot of you will be able to attend the conference. The program looks very exiting – and I look forward to meeting a lot of sceptically open-minded practitioners!