New chief architect faces daunting challenges

After a vacancy lasting eight months, Office of Management and Budget officials named Dick Burk the new chief architect. Burk, who is the Department of Housing and Urban Development's chief architect, begins his new duties at OMB Dec. 13.

Burk was the best-qualified person for the job, said Karen Evans, OMB administrator for e-government and information technology.

"He has a lot of experience at HUD, and it seems like he has great communication skills," Evans said.

The OMB architect's job has been vacant since Bob Haycock stepped down in April. Richard Brozen, an employee on loan from NASA, served as de facto architect until he returned to his home agency in October. The position came under fire in September, when House lawmakers approved a recommendation to eliminate it. They relented after Evans visited Capitol Hill in October.

Burk said he plans to use his tenure at OMB to encourage officials at more federal agencies to implement enterprise architecture. "What's near and dear to my heart is the whole idea of a mission of an agency and using enterprise architecture as a tool to achieve [agency] objectives," he said.

Moving enterprise architecture out of the back office and into the hands of business managers is another goal, Burk said. Architects must translate "the jargon into words that are meaningful to the business. I've had some success at HUD being able to do that."

"He has a huge job to do, and everybody is waiting for the hiatus to be over," Brozen said. Among the chief architect's immediate tasks are assessing whether the federal architecture reference models and OMB's agency self-assessment tool need to be update, he said.

A larger task will be to integrate enterprise architecture into program performance. Architecture should be a road map for program managers — not only IT managers — for achieving strategic goals, Brozen said. "That is a huge, huge challenge, to try and incorporate all of that."

Burk's experience means he'll be able to tackle problems almost immediately, said Norm Lorentz, former OMB chief technology officer and now a senior vice president at BAE Systems. "He's very motivated," Lorentz said. "He's very knowledgeable. He's been part of the process. He also knows what he's getting himself into. OMB is not a sweetheart."

Updating the architecture's business and service reference models should be a high priority, Lorentz said, adding that the business model needs annual revision, he said. Both models are crucial to OMB's lines of business initiatives, which seek to save costs by standardizing agency business processes and consolidating IT systems, he said.