OMB breaks down e-gov projects using enterprise models

The Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office is running some of the 25 e-government initiatives through two of the latest architecture reference models, an OMB official said.Bob Haycock, OMB’s chief architect and acting director of the program management office, said a handful of e-government projects are being examined using the Service Component and Technical reference models. “We are looking at what components the projects have or will include and their technical infrastructures such as J2EE or .Net or portal technology,” said Haycock, who spoke today at the E-Gov Web Enabled Conference in Washington. “This still is a work in progress.”OMB’s use of the reference models on the Quicksilver initiatives comes as the office released the draft versions of these models to agencies for comment. Haycock said agencies received a four-hour briefing in late January and have until March 7 to comment. OMB expects to release the first versions of the models in late March, he said. He also said the second version of the Business Reference Model, which will include information from the Defense Department and intelligence agencies, could be released by the end of February. The Performance Reference Model will go to agencies in the next two weeks for comment too.The final piece of the Federal Enterprise Architecture, the Data Reference Model, is a couple of months away from being finished, Haycock said. He said the model may include four interrelated levels of data that independently classify information for use by agencies. “How far down do we go to get the information that people will find useful?” Haycock said. “If we tried to go develop a data model for all of government, we would never finish it.”Haycock said the model might include the data area and data class layers, which would give agencies information at the metadata level, such as Extensible Markup Language schemas that can be shared among agencies in similar business lines.