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Contents on this page: - What's the value of EA? | 
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What's the value of EA?
To improve a complex organization, first you have to understand it. EA highlights what's important so that decision-makers can base their decisions of facts, not anecdotes. The aim of EA is to come as close as possible to the most efficient, most effective architecture within the time and funding allowed. There are benefits along the way such as a better understanding of what's out there, models to experiment with, better response to customers, and easily shareable data.
Minimize redundancy
When you are working as a team, you need to know that everyone else is reading from the same book. As all kinds of missions were assigned to Interior over the years, Interior's bureaus ended up doing similar work in different ways.
As in the examples below, redundancy may result in anything from confused customers to an escaping wildfire. EA looks at all the ways a business process is performed, finds the best practice and most efficient way to work, and recommends that as the Interior standard. If Interior decision-makers choose to take the recommendation, the DOI will change toward the new way of doing things. This is also called "streamlining and standardizing the architecture".
Who Manages Wildlife?
Many bureaus in the Interior have wildlife management responsibilities. Our customers shouldn’t have to know our internal organizational operations to figure out how to conduct business with Interior or find the right information. For instance, a citizen who found an abandoned nest of ducklings might immediately think to look at the Fish and Wildlife Service's page about birds habitats, etc. 
, but the USGS also has a very helpful page about bird habitats and migration . Who would think to check the USGS for duckling information? EA helps connect these lines of business so it's easier for customers to find information.
Follow the Money
Accountability is important; when you ask for more money it's important to be able to show good use of the money you've already been given. But in an organization as complex as the Interior, it's very hard to know what's being spent for what. What's driving accountability:
- The Interior's statement on management excellence says, "By striving for accountability, we aim to accurately and consistently measure and communicate what we do so the public can evaluate our performance."
- One of the Interior's strategic goals for 2002 was "Ensure financial and managerial accountability."
The Interior uses Activity-Based Costing (ABC) to track where time and money is spent. ABC answers the question "Where is our money going?" EA works together with ABC to answer the vital question, "Is our money going toward our mission?" EA compares the ABC work activities with Interior business architecture, showing which time is actually spent on the mission. In the same way, EA compares ABC with system architecture, to find out whether all our systems contribute to the mission.
For more background on why EA is needed, read this article by Jakob Nielsen, usability expert. The article explains the implications of the maturing IT industry, such as new features being introduced more slowly, and companies focusing their attention and resources on making existing technology work better for users.
OMB Requirements
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"Many agency Enterprise Architectures lack focus on business results. As a result, many agencies, bureaus and operating divisions cannot share information or systems; this shortfall increases operating costs as well as burden on citizens and businesses." |
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"Many have expressed specific concerns about the funding....The Administration has sufficient funding for cross agency e-government projects if we simply stop funding what is redundant or not working." |
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"The EA will define principles and goals and set direction on such issues as the promotion of interoperability, open systems, public access, compliance with GPEA, end user satisfaction, and IT security. " |
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"The EA will [ensure] interoperability of business processes, data, applications and technology as agencies integrate proposed information systems projects with one another and with existing legacy systems. " |
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"The FEA is a business-focused framework developed for OMB, federal agencies and Congress to use in improving the performance of government. The FEA framework addresses five important areas of enterprise architecture, tying together the business, performance, service, technology, and data layers." |
found that mission performance didn't improve in proportion to the money spent. In most cases, it came down to not having a good plan for IT investments and not knowing what assets were already out there. So agencies would, for instance, spend from two pots of money for two different pieces of software, to do the same job. Meanwhile, another job would go undone because there wasn't enough money for the tools it needed. The solution GAO recommended was EA. EA shows both how things are used now and how to make good decisions about IT for the future.
The OMB, being responsible for how funds are used, took GAO's recommendation very seriously, and tied funding to EA progress. With OMB Circular A-11, the OMB was already asking agencies to do the same work with 10% less money and time; by encouraging EA, the OMB actually helps agencies become more efficient. EA also fits in with the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act, which said that technology buys should be driven by business needs, not the other way around.
OMB's aim with EA is to streamline the whole federal government. Starting in 2004, business cases going through OMB have to show exactly how proposed IT will support the mission. It's a big change, and even changes that save money can cost money to start with. Tying EA to funding helps agencies past that hurdle, giving them a reason to try EA.
Besides streamlining, EA will give the government a common language. In some cases literally a language: defining disputed terms such as "weed" will help solve agency disagreements on what plants to preserve and what to attack. In other cases it will be figuratively a common language, as the same job is done the same way in different agencies. To help with the commmon language, OMB created a set of architecture templates, the Federal Enterprise Architecture models . The Interior EA work is using these templates.
Current situation
A citizen wants to know more about oil found within the United States. Should he look in
- BIA for oil wells on Indian land?
- NPS for wildlife and oil spills?
- MMS for oil and gas sales?
- BOR to apply for an oil or gas lease?
- FWS regarding oil and nature?
- BLM for oil and gas information?
- USGS for natural oil seeps?
- OSM for comparing benefits of oil and coal?
There are many areas where Interior bureau responsibilities overlap, and many more areas where there isn't overlap, but an average citizen would not know which bureau to get help from. Even after finding the right bureaus to talk to, the citizen may have to fill out the same information on different forms because bureau databases are different. The bureaus may have conflicting requirements, conflicting deadlines, and (because of different coordinate systems) even different results for measuring the same land.
From the customer (citizen's) point of view, it would be nice to deal with the Department of the Interior as a unit, instead of dealing with the separate interests of several bureaus. EA unifies lines of business across the Interior, so that though the customer may be working with several offices, they all do the same job the same way and can share data with each other. Ideally the customer would not even realize how many parts of the Interior were involved in a transaction; it would be one seamless event. EA is closely associated with the e-government initiative , which will help the customer even more. Instead of having to find and visit several Interior bureau offices, a customer can deal with just one of them on-line, with any necessary transactions with other offices happening behind the scenes.
Understand Real Costs
It's easy to get excited when a new system comes out that's better, faster, and cheaper than anything of its kind. Investing in the system seems like a no-brainer. But is it really cheaper? There are many things you have to look at:
- As a new system, it probably has a lot of bugs.
- Old reliable systems may need upgrades to be compatible with it.
- It may not meet Section 508 requirements.
- If it's different enough from the old system, users need training.
- It needs to be tested for conflicts with Interior software and hardware.
- It may not meet security requirements.
- The time to research, contract for, and install the system costs money.
- The overall process may not be ready to handle a faster product.
EA looks at the big picture, so that a system isn't considered cheaper unless the benefits outweigh all the costs, not just the price tag. It can be very frustrating to pass up what looks like a great system, but in the long run, it's the difference between a return on investment or being sunk when a hidden cost rips open a major money leak.