Defense drafts Business Mission Area Federation Strategy

The Defense Department’s Business Transformation Agency has approved the Business Mission Area Federation Strategy, which outlines how the enterprise architectures in the military services and agencies will tie into DOD’s overarching business enterprise architecture.Dave Scantling, director of information and federation strategy for the Business Transformation Agency, said the strategy was needed because it is impossible for the department to build a BEA that could tackle all the requirements for the four services, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, Transportation Command and the Defense Logistics Agency.“The evolution for the department is, we realize that it’s physically impossible for us to build an architecture at the BEA level that can address all of the requirements and standardization all the way down to the program level,” Scantling said. “But nonetheless, we have to have certain standards that are adhered to across the enterprise.”The goal is to get to tiered accountability by providing incentives for the services, agencies and TRANSCOM to align their business rules and processes to the overarching BEA.Specifically, the federation strategy requires the seven components to:To get the word out about the federation strategy, BTA officials will spend June and July on the road, visiting CIOs and their architecture staffs at each of the services and agencies to solicit their comments on the strategy.From the consultations, the BTA will incorporate some of the feedback in an updated federation strategy to be publicly released by Aug. 31, Scantling said.