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Assessment of Enterprise Architecture Implementation Capability and Priority in Public Sector Agency

The objective of this study is to assess the capability and priority for Enterprise Architecture (EA) implementation in the context of Malaysian public sector agency. This study uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based on the judgments and opinions of EA team members from three different agencies at federal level. There are 27 assessment criteria which are grouped into six categories, Internal Process, Learning and Growth, Authority Support, Cost, Technology and Talent Management. The top capability of all cases is Internal Process and the top criteria for priority assessment is Authority Support. From the findings it can be concluded that AHP is a useful and cost effective method to assess, priorities and plan for EA implementation. Addressing the capability and priority criteria will ensure the optimum EA is implemented thus it shall reduce the risk of EA implementation failure.

Evaluating Enterprise Architecture Frameworks Using Essential Elements

Enterprise architecture (EA) frameworks offer principles, models, and guidance to help one develop an EA program. Due to EA’s flexible and abstract nature, there is a proliferation of EA frameworks in practice. Yet, comparison studies to make sense of them are far from satisfactory in that they lack a theoretical foundation for comparison criteria and do not meaningfully interpret the differences. In this paper, I propose a comparison approach using EA essential elements—the underlying key features of EA programs—to distinguish EA frameworks. Based on the extant literature, I identify eight elements, each with its own theoretical justification and empirical evidence. I illustrate how to use these elements to evaluate eight popular EA frameworks. The results show three ideal types of EA frameworks: technical, operational, and strategic EA. Each type has a different focus, set of assumptions, and historical context. The essential elements offer a more systematic way to evaluate EA frameworks. In addition, they shift attention from the maturity models often used in EA development to focus on particular EA elements being implemented by organizations.

Enterprise Architecture Management: Toward a Taxonomy of Applications

Despite the growing interest in enterprise architecture management, researchers and practitioners lack a shared understanding of its applications in organizations. Building on findings from a literature review and eight case studies, we develop a taxonomy that categorizes applications of enterprise architecture management based on three classes of enterprise architecture scope. Organizations may adopt enterprise architecture management to help form, plan, and implement IT strategies; help plan and implement business strategies; or to further complement the business strategy-formation process. The findings challenge the traditional IT-centric view of enterprise architecture management application and suggest enterprise architecture management as an approach that could support the consistent design and evolution of an organization as a whole.

Modeling Contextual Concerns in Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise Architecture approaches are used to provide rigorous descriptions of the organization-wide environment, manage the alignment of deployed services to the organization’s mission, end ensure a clear separation of the concerns addressed in an architecture. Thus, an effective Enterprise Architecture approach assists in the management of relations and dependencies of any components of the organization environment and supports the integration and evolution of the architecture. However, the quality of that approach is strongly influenced by the precision of the architecture context description, a fact which is not always recognized. This paper focuses on the architecture context description and addresses the gap between the stakeholders’concerns and the resulting architecture. Based on a combination of established references and standards, we show how an explicit integration of the architecture context into the architecture model improves the linking of concerns and key elements of the architecture vision. We apply our approach to a subject of increasing concern in the Information Systems area: longevity of information. Digital preservation is an interdisciplinary problem, but existent initiatives address it in a very domain-centric way, making it impossible to integrate documented knowledge into an overall organization architecture. We analyze several references and models and derive a description of the architecture context and a capability model that supports incremental development through an explicit distinction between systems and their capabilities. The presented approach allows not just any organization to assess their current digital preservation awareness and evolve their architectures to address this challenge, but in particular demonstrates the added value of an explicit architecture context model in an Enterprise Architecture approach.

Model-enabled design and engineering of organisations and their enterprises

This editorial is concerned with the need for an integrated approach to the design and engineering of organisations and their enterprises. Organisational Design originates from the organisational sciences, while the notion of Enterprise Engineering results from the engineering sciences (most notably information systems engineering, business (process) engineering, business process optimisation, and enterprise architecture). The Organisational Design and Enterprise Engineering journal (ODEE) is built on the premise that there should not be an either-or relation between Organisational Design and Enterprise Engineering, but rather an integrated approach that brings out the best of the two. A driver for the creation of the journal was the observation that the either-or mindset was (and still is) a major obstacle to the development of organisational thinking, and that this artificial divide must be abolished. In achieving more integration between Organisational Design and Enterprise Engineering, we suggest to take a model-enabled approach, where models should act as boundary objects between the social processes involved in organisational design processes, and the more analytical and rational side of enterprise engineering.

Business Architectures in the Public Sector: Experiences from Practice

Government agencies need to transform the way in which they are organized in order to be able to provide better services to their constituents and adapt to changes in legislation. Whereas much e-government research has a technology focus, our goal is to investigate whether business architectures can help governments to recreate agencies to make them robust in dealing with political preferences, and further, whether their adoption can guide the realization of IT-oriented enterprise architectures. In this article the concept of business architecture and its implications are analyzed by investigating the case study of the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Services. The case demonstrates the mediating role business architectures can play between policy and strategy on the one hand, and enterprise IT architecture on the other. Business architectures help: (1) to define business domains and the events connecting them, and (2) to use principles to integrate the domains and ensure synergies. Business domains can be designed and operated independently, which enable higher levels of adaptability. Our case analyses show that the pluriformity of the political visions, public values, and actors involved and the division of responsibilities complicate the creation of a business architecture.