Aligning enterprise architecture guides

Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office

Members of the CIO Council's former enterprise architecture working group are working to revise a 3-year-old information technology enterprise architecture guide to better fit with the Bush administration's Federal Enterprise Architecture.

The CIO Council's 1999 Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework is the outline that — paired with the council's Practical Guide to Federal Enterprise Architecture from 2001 — many agencies use to help form their own architecture plans.

However, the Office of Management and Budget now says that all agency architecture work should fit within the Federal Enterprise Architecture effort as part of the administration's E-Government Strategy.

Members of the working group are still debating how the Federal Enterprise Architecture and its reference models can complement the framework. The reference models are still under development, but are intended to help align agencies' architectures with the different business lines, services, technologies, data and performance measures across government.

Determining how the two efforts can work together is particularly complex because the 1999 framework originally was intended to focus on interagency architecture initiatives, and the Bush administration's Federal Enterprise Architecture emphasizes that same issue, said George Brundage, chief enterprise architect at the Treasury Department.

But the framework revision will address other concerns as well, such as the need for more security guidance, special guidance and assistance for small agencies, and new "products" or models based on those used at the Defense Department and other organizations, Brundage said.