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There are numerous new mandates for transforming government organizations that respond to changes in global political and business environments as well as to take advantage of the rapid technological advances that promote new capabilities such as e-government. In this paper we analyze, drawing upon case studies from the federal and the defence sectors in the United States, how governmental agencies utilize Enterprise Architecture for planning, the implementation of change and the management of knowledge within their agencies and across government. Enterprise architectures are 'blueprints' for systematically defining an organization's current and to-be planned environments, and are essential to evolve its business, knowledge, information and technological systems to fully optimize its capabilities and mission. This is accomplished both in logical business terms by visually modelling mission, human communication systems, business functions, information flows, and systems environments; and in technical terms by modelling software, hardware, networks and communications. In the United States, enterprise architecture is mandated by Congress for all federal agencies, including the Department of Defence, through the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act. This law requires all federal agencies to establish an architecture program that creates "an integrated framework for evolving or maintaining existing information technology and acquiring new information technology to achieve the agency's strategic goals and information resources management goals" In our paper we examine using case studies in federal agencies (Homeland Security, Internal Revenue Service and the Forest Service) and several Defence related projects how enterprise architectural changes the nature of interactions and institutional dynamics within these organizations. In doing so we discuss the implications for how organizational cultures are transformed into learning organizations that are agile in their management decision making with lower risk and become more efficient and effective.

Stream: Communication

Paper: Enterprise Architecture and Government Transformation

Dr Beryl Bellman is a tenured full Professor of Communications at California State University at Los Angeles and is the co-founder of the FEAC Institute in Washington DC, which provides education and certification in the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework and the Department of Defence Architectural Framework. Dr Bellman has over twenty-five years consulting experience in communications and enterprise architecture related projects consulting to the Executive Office of the President of the United States, Forest Service, Department of Energy, Immigration and Naturalization Service, US Postal Service, US Department of State and other federal agencies; as well as was a contract consultant for Ptech, NCR, AT&T, ASK and the Digital Equipment Corporation on projects both for their internal and external customers.. He also was the Research Director of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla and helped manage its School of Management and Strategic Studies. He also served on the faculties of the University of California at San Diego, State University of New York at Stonybrook and California Institute of the Arts and was a consultant in the Institute for Information Revolution Analysis at RAND where he organized the World Design Forum. Dr Bellman received his doctorate from the University of California at Irvine in 1971 in Social Science and has published three books and numerous articles in both academic journals and edited volumes, and also in industry related professional publications. He has extensive international research and consulting experience in Africa, Latin America, China, Korea and Europe.

Felix A. A. Rausch is the Executive Director of the FEAC Institute for the past 3 years. He is developing the programs for training and certification of Enterprise Architecture practitioners in the Federal and Commercial space. Felix started his career in aerospace developing a quantitative aviation safety model for the C-5A at Lockheed. He was a consultant for Booz Allen Applied Research and Westinghouse doing work for the Navy and DOT. In 1972, he joined the FCC and became an expert in managing large projects in software conversion and systems reengineering that included the first ever successful fixed price large application software conversion at the FCC. In 1979, he was responsible for transitioning ten acres of computing infrastructure, software, and people at the Social Security Administration to a new Data Center, the largest logistics and systems engineering project ever undertaken at the SSA without interruption of service and completed under budget. Back in Washington, Felix became Assistant Commissioner for Systems Integration at INS. He was the CIO at Interpol and became Deputy CIO at the White House (EOP) for four years. In 1990 he began development of the FAA National Aviation Safety Data Analysis Center (NASDAC), the first Data Warehouse in Government, before moving to Systems Engineering and taking over the missionary task of developing a National Airspace Space Information Architecture. After retiring from government, Felix was appointed as Director for Government Services at Ptech in August 1999 where he was responsible for managing and expanding the Government Solutions EA Consulting market for the Federal Government and State Government. During 2001 and 2002 he was also the Business Development Manager. Felix has an Applied Math degree from the University of Alabama and an MS in Information Science from Georgia Tech and has done graduate business courses at Loyola in Baltimore.