Industry given say on architecture

The Office of Management and Budget has asked the Industry Advisory Council (IAC) to serve as the primary venue through which vendors can provide input on the government's enterprise architecture strategy.

As part of its strategy, OMB is in the process of identifying opportunities for agencies to collaborate on various systems, rather than having each agency build its own.

Some vendors are likely to find themselves on the losing end of such decisions, and OMB decided IAC, which has been following the strategy closely, was the best forum for soliciting industry input.

Many people in industry did not believe OMB would follow through on its so-called component-based architecture approach and the inevitable consolidation of technologies and contractors, but now "they've got to wake up and get their voices out there," said Bob Woods, IAC chairman.

The impact of consolidation on vendors could be significant, said Olga Grkavac, an executive vice president at the Information Technology Association of America.

IAC's enterprise architecture special interest group has already been providing input to OMB by developing white papers that address different aspects of the federal enterprise architecture.

Future input is likely to come through several new subcommittees of the CIO Council's Architecture and Infrastructure Committee, through which OMB plans to push most future policy developments on enterprise architecture.

Norm Lorentz, OMB's chief technology officer, said last month that it was important for those groups to seek input from the private sector and state and local governments.