Towards Whole-of-Government EA with TOGAF and SOA

Abstract

Governments around the world have acknowledged the complexity associated with public sector transformation and have initiated enterprise architecture programs to help manage those complexities and enable the desired strategic transformation. Along with the EA program, governments have adopted some sort of EA framework and/or Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) individually or in integrated form. However, the majority of those EA programs are of limited scope in both EA and SOA practices, and are not comprehensive enough to deal with and manage the associated complexities. As a result, those EA programs suffer from the inability to leverage EA and SOA benefits across agencies or jurisdictional boundaries. Currently, the majority of government agencies use EA and SOA within the agency boundaries to deliver solutions by focusing on technical factors that define detailed blueprints of systems, data, and technology. What is needed rather is effective Whole-of-Government Enterprise Architecture (EA) that facilitates the alignment of individual agencies’ visions with the Whole-of-Government vision to enable sustainable government transformation. Research has pointed out that the Whole-of-Government EA is currently at the conceptual level and still has a long way to go to reach the maturity level required for value realization. This chapter first gives a brief analysis of the current state of enterprise architecture in governments to highlight the current challenges. It then discusses the various scopes of Whole-of-Government EA and recommends the plausible EA approach to enable sustainable connected government based on The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) and SOA.