HUD to establish program office

The Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to create a management office to oversee enterprisewide projects.

Under HUD's office of the chief information officer, the enterprise program management office would execute cross-department programs, oversee quality assurance and guide program and project managers in implementation.

The new office has been proposed and officials await top-level approval, said Dick Burk, HUD's chief architect.

"There seems to be general support in the organization," Burk said. "I think it makes a heck of a lot of sense."

A few years ago, the department began to build their enterprise architecture program and found there was not a central oversight area for enterprisewide programs. The current review system for programs is "undocumented and piece meal," Burk said. "It's not uniform across, and our attempt now is to standardize this and make it uniform."

Burk spoke today at the E-Gov Enterprise Architecture conference in Washington, D.C.

"We found there is no home for an [information technology] program at HUD," said Graham Barrowman, founder and principal of Consortia Enterprise Architecture LLC. "Where does an initiative go when it crosses the organization?"

The new management office would be responsible for the program every step of the way. The program managers, while they won't be in the office, can report to the office to make sure they are following the architecture and policies, Burk said.