GAO urges better architecture leadership

On a scale of one to five, the average maturity stage of 93 agencies has improved only to 1.76 from 1.74 two years earlier, according to officials from the General Accounting Office.

Federal agencies have made only limited progress toward effectively managing enterprise architectures, according to a General Accounting Office report released today.

In a review that Reps. Thomas Davis (R-Va.) and Jim Turner (D-Texas) requested, GAO officials found that agencies have made little improvement since an earlier report in 2001. On a scale of one to five, the average maturity stage of 93 agencies has improved from only 1.74 to 1.76, officials found.

GAO's enterprise architecture maturity framework measures how far an agency has come in managing its architecture. A score of one is ineffective, while a five signifies highly effective management.

Only about half of the agencies are satisfied with the Office of Management and Budget's leadership in addressing enterprise architecture challenges, GAO officials found.

The GAO report recommended that OMB officials create a method to identify agencies that have overcome enterprise architecture challenges, and to share the best practices of those agencies with others that continue to struggle.

GAO officials also reiterated their recommendations from a February 2002 report that advised OMB officials to work with agencies to use GAO's maturity framework and baseline information to measure progress. GAO officials also advised OMB to require agencies to file an annual written update of their progress.