Cleaning out the IT garage

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers recommends

a "pragmatic" approach to migrating to an enterprise architecture within

available budgets.

The approach also should involve categorizing existing technical standards

and legacy systems to see what should be kept and dumped, according to NASCIO.

The architecture can still use technology already deployed, but the aim

is to graduate to new standards over time.

The four categories of technologies are as follows.

* Emerging: These include new standards, along with recently released

technologies that are projected to become industry standards.

* Current: These are the tested and generally accepted industry standards.

* Twilight: Technologies that still may be in use in agencies, but that

could prevent reaching the goals set for the architecture and that need

to be phased out.

* Sunset: Those that have been phased out and cannot be considered.

Robinson is a freelance journalist based in Portland, Ore.