SEC selects two companies for enterprise architecture program

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission awarded a multiyear contract to Troux Technologies and Integrated Systems to implement an enterprise architecture.

Working with the commission’s information technology office, the companies will document the SEC’s current architectural landscape, develop transition plans for a new architecture and then implement and maintain them.

Ray Ebert, director of Troux’s government solutions group, said the SEC purchased the company’s flagship enterprise architecture management product, Metis Enterprise, which allows users to define, describe and document all processes, mission goals, business objectives, organizational structure and other elements within an organization.

It will “describe your current state and [help you] look at where you’re trying to go and understand gaps and prioritize the transition process,” he said. The commission is expected to implement the new enterprise architecture this quarter, he added.

“I’d say they’re on a fast track,” Ebert said. “But I have to qualify that by saying they didn’t just start it with this award. They had been doing EA at what we call at a desktop level for months, probably for about a year. Now they’re moving to an enterprise level.”

The SEC purchased Troux’s software in May, he said. The commission in September selected ISI, a minority- and woman-owned small business, to be the systems integrator and Troux, which has extensive experience helping Treasury, Commerce and Health and Human Services departments with their enterprise architectures, to help support ISI. Ebert said his company will receive more than $300,000 for software services and training from the SEC implementation, but didn’t say how much ISI would be paid.

During the procurement process, SEC officials made it clear they would “not be satisfied with checking the box” – that is, just meeting the Office of Management and Budget’s requirements – for their enterprise architecture, Ebert said.

“They were challenging vendors to persuade them that their EA would have value to the business,” he said.

Don Riordan, Troux’s vice president of federal sales, said many federal agencies are not using enterprise architecture as a check box anymore because, with decreasing budgets, they have to do more with less. With mandates, OMB leadership and more power among chief information officers to force change, he said federal agencies are much further along than the commercial sector in using enterprise architecture to help in their decision making and business operations transformation.