OMB rates agency EAs higher than ever

The Office of Management and Budget gave agencies’ enterprise architectures their highest ratings since the assessment program began in 2003.Under Version 2.1 of the Enterprise Architecture Assessment Framework, 19 agencies earned a green rating, one earned a yellow rating and four earned red ratings, OMB said in a release posted on its E-Gov Web site.The six agencies with the highest enterprise architecture scores were the National Science Foundation and the departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, and Veterans Affairs.OMB rated agencies on a scale of 1 to 5 in three major categories -- completion, use and results -- and 13 subcategories.Overall, agencies averaged 4.0 in the completion category, up from 3.3 in 2006. OMB also said agencies’ overall scores improved from 3.2 last year to 3.7 this year in the use category and from 2.9 to 3.6 in the results category.Of the 13 subcategories, OMB said IPv6 in the results category and business architecture in the completion category had the highest average scores.“More than half of the agencies are on track to achieve the June 30, 2008, deadline” for IPv6, OMB said. “However, the remaining agencies need to provide additional evidence to demonstrate they are achieving milestones set forth in their IPv6 transition plans.”The agencies might be on track, but they did not provide enough evidence to demonstrate progress, OMB’s release states.The two subcategories with the lowest scores were transition strategy performance, and cost savings and cost avoidance -- both in the results category.Still, OMB said 19 of 24 agencies demonstrated information technology cost savings, cost avoidance and/or satisfactory program performance.The latest enterprise architecture assessments show that data management and information sharing are improving and maturing, OMB added. It credits some of the improvement to its requirement that agencies develop enterprise architectures that inventory, categorize and standardize information assets.