OMB releases Part 2 of federal architecture model

The Office of Management and Budget will release the second section of the federal enterprise architectural model in the next two months. Bob Haycock, OMB’s chief architect, said the performance reference model will include outcomes and metrics agencies will use to measure performance against business practices.Haycock yesterday discussed the progress of the federal blueprint at the Interagency Resources Management Council conference in Hershey, Pa.This section of the federal architecture follows the business reference model, which OMB released in July, and outlines the lines of business and the subfunctions agencies perform.“You can’t have a business reference model without the performance piece,” Haycock said. “That really is the business layer of the enterprise architecture—those two pieces together. Once you know your common outcomes then you can begin to drive down through the business layer and performance layer to the technology layer. Then you start to see the patterns line up with those performance outcomes. Then you will start to see the technology needed to pull it all together.”Haycock said he expects the first versions of most of the reference models—data and information, application and capabilities, and technology and standards layers—to be finished by the end of the year and available for agencies to use in their fiscal 2005 budget preparations.“The architecture has to be embedded in the way the agency does its work,” he said. “It has to be staffed, structured and have funding. Today, it has been a tough road because IT still is not out of the back room in many agencies.”