ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

Capabilities

Sometimes it’s hard to get to where you’re going—even with a map. A few wrong turns and suddenly you’re off course, making it that much harder to reach your intended destination. On the road to achieving mission goals, federal agencies can get lost for any number of reasons, including lack of coordination, poorly defined or underutilized resources, decision-making and information bottlenecks, and incomplete documentation. Enterprise architectures (EAs) are dynamic documents that help an agency to define its business, the information necessary to operate the business, and the technology necessary to support the business operations.

Despite the attention the federal community gives to EA, many fail because they simply “blueprint” existing organizational processes. At LMI, we take a different approach—one that is not merely a compliance-driven, blueprinting exercise. We produce business-driven EAs—firmly rooted in the organization’s mission, operations, and customers—to solve specific information technology (IT) and business problems. To help structure our approach, we developed our own method, the LMI Enterprise Architecture Practice, or LEAP™. LEAP provides a structured, comprehensive process for evaluating the impact and consequences of changes in technology and business processes. We use it to ensure that an organization’s IT applications, data, and system platforms align with its mission and business needs. We use LEAP to help agencies

• streamline business operations,
• develop effective IT strategic plans,
• drive the IT governance process and make sound investment decisions,
• establish an EA program management office,
• develop architectures compliant with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office (FEA PMO) and Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF),
• support acquisition and implementation activities, and
• ensure data interoperability and standardization.

When building our EAs, we take a standards-based approach based on business process and information needs. Our team includes master certified architects and participants in standards communities, including DoDAF Methods, Data and Presentation Technical Working Groups, UN/CEFACT, OASIS, W3C, ANSI ASC X12, and other standards bodies committed to developing open standards for technical and information interoperability. Because of our desire to adapt to each customer’s priorities, we have accumulated broad experience using a variety of tools, including Popkin, ARIS, and Troux Metis.

CLIENTS AND SOLUTIONS

GSA—Effecting Multiple EA Initiatives

For the past several years, we have worked with the General Services Administration (GSA) headquarters and its three services—the Public Buildings Service (PBS), Federal Supply Service (FSS), and Federal Technology Service (FTS). For example, in the One GSA EA project, we worked with senior executives such as the chief financial officer, assistant commissioners, and business-line directors to socialize the value of the EA work for all of GSA. Prior to the One GSA EA effort, each staff and service office (SSO) had some type of EA, but the methods, depth, scope, and documentation varied widely. Today, GSA has an agency-wide “as-is” architecture that reflects business processes and supporting technologies and a target architecture based on an accepted GSA-wide value chain. GSA also has a governing body, consisting of members from all of the SSOs, which has worked with senior management to develop the direction and focus of the GSA EA. We are currently supporting GSA’s EA Program Management Office, helping GSA manage a blanket purchase agreement (BPA) for EA implementation services, providing One GSA EA repository maintenance and support, and providing technical support to the GSA EA program.

Army CLOE—Developing Interim and Target Architectures

Since 2004, LMI has worked with Army subject matter experts (SMEs) to create the Army Integrated Logistics Architecture (AILA) in support of the Common Logistics Operation Environment (CLOE) project. We followed our own LEAP Defense guidance to document a DoDAF-compliant EA using Telelogic System Architect (SA). Using LEAP Defense helped LMI's internal architectural and cross-functional SMEs analyze the scope and level of detail required for Army logistics, then guided the processes for creating the most efficient and effective EA repository to support this effort, including overarching, operational, systems, and technical data and models. Our internal group of architectural and cross-functional SMEs is working with Army counterparts to understand and analyze Army organizational structures and information exchange requirements in support of Army logistics and future development and acquisition decisions. The team also has begun to identify touch points, and in some cases detailed logistics information exchange requirements, with systems and other defense agency and service architectures external to the architecture. LEAP Defense also provides the analytical tools (such as gap and system interoperability analysis) in the form of matrixes, reports, and models created or run in SA to allow for in-depth analysis of the architecture during various stages of construction. LMI expects this effort to continue until the logistics architecture has been fully developed and is completely linked to architectures external to the Army.

GPO—Enterprise Architecture Support

During the past year, LMI helped the Government Printing Office (GPO) establish and mature its EA program. LMI established the GPO EA framework and process to support GPO IT management, including strategic planning, IT governance, and system development life-cycle support. LMI documented the GPO baseline and target architectures to provide the high-level and in-depth representations of the GPO EA needed to make sound IT decisions. The analysis and documentation performed as part the GPO EA program identified specific GPO projects that are part of the transitional efforts toward achieving the target architecture, including major system implementations. The GPO EA program will renders the support needed for IT governance and integration of new systems. LMI assisted the GPO EA program in providing visibility of the GPO product from order to delivery, allowing for visibility into integration needs critical to the transitional efforts of major system implementations.

GSA—Developing XML Strategy and Solutions

LMI has a long-standing relationship with the GSA Office of Governmentwide Policy (OGP). LMI and OGP are working to promote data standardization and reach common solutions. LMI facilitated several multiagency workgroups to develop XML schema for interagency exchanges. We used an international standards-based approach to define reusable terms and developed full schema. We submitted these components to the GSA federal repository for reuse by other agencies. We also participated in the Federal XML Community of Practice, a group that is developing an XML set of naming and design guidelines to encourage a more cohesive government schema design.

IRS—Preparing Concept of Operations for XML Registry

LMI facilitated an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) internal working group that prepared a concept of operations for an XML registry. We made recommendations on how to implement a registry, user roles, and governance requirements. We used our knowledge of existing open standards and our experience in dealing with other agencies to add valuable input to the final concept of operations document. The document will be used to implement a pilot project for an XML registry.