Abstract
The purpose of this case study is to outline and analyze the types of Enterprise Architecture (EA) assessment methodologies available to the United States Federal Government. This will consist of defining “assessment,” describing the two primary EA assessment methodologies that exist within the Federal Government to date, and analyzing the purpose and benefits of these assessment methodologies. These assessment methodologies are the Government Accountability Office (GAO) Enterprise Architecture Management Maturity Framework (EAMMF) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) EA Assessment Framework. The GAO EAMMF is a more complex methodology based on the number of and relationship among the framework components. The scoring is based on identifying the maturity level of an organization’s EA program according to a scale of 1-5, including half-stages. The purpose of the EAMMF is benchmarking and comparing EA program evolution within an organization. Overall, the EAMMF is good to use when an EA is still in development to ensure the appropriate foundation and building blocks exist. In contrast, the OMB EAAF is a more straightforward framework with a more complex scoring algorithm that requires a score interpretation matrix. Overall, the EAAF framework is good to use for organizations that have established EA programs that are seeking improvement in the results from their Enterprise Architectures. Finally, this paper will conclude with a detailed example of applying the EAAF evaluation methodology to a specific agency. This example illustrated how meticulous and exacting performing an Enterprise Architecture assessment can be, but it also shared the benefits and type of information that an organization will learn from doing so. Hopefully the case study will provide readers with a better understanding of the available assessment methodologies in the public sector and which type would provide the feedback and assessment results suitable for their organization.
Journal of Enterprise Architecture