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Connected Government, Technology

Aligning business IT needs in the public sector

15 January 2010

Miscommunication between the business and IT teams is a prevailing problem in most enterprises. Implementing Enterprise Architecture provides a framework for the organisation’s Business-IT Alignment under changing circumstances.

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From this Section

• SPOTLIGHT

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is not rocket science. Jonathan Koh, Director, Solutions & Consulting, CrimsonLogic, likens it to a “blueprint for your organisation. Metaphorically, an EA is to an organisation’s operations and systems as a set of blueprints is to a building. Just as a blueprint for a house lets you know where the load bearing walls are, where the wiring goes and where you can add an extension, so an EA framework specifies business and technical aspects upon which an organisation designs and builds its IT systems. EA allows the organisation to view and manage their processes and see which parts are put under the most stress. It provides a platform for management to understand the consequences of their decisions and allows simple questions to be asked about complex systems.

“EA allows you to align your IT investments to the business strategy. It is the business strategy that drives business processes and functions. Therefore, the IT strategy will need to enable these business processes and functions, which in turn will align with the business strategy,” continues Koh. With your applications, data, hardware and servers all aligned to achieve the business goals of the organisation, reaching your goal is much easier to track and achieve.

So in essence, EA is a blueprint that provides a mechanism for the alignment of your IT and business requirements. When the IT team speaks to the management team, they have a common reference point that they can use to communicate with each other to meet the desired outcome. In a public sector organisation, this alignment enables greater efficiency and flexibility in processes and business practices. Processes are integrated and better collaboration is enabled across departments, which results in faster adaptation to changes in government policies. “In a nutshell,” Koh explained, “EA enables agility.”

EA allows an organisation to be dynamic and react to changes in the most efficient and effective way. “When you need to make changes you can make them easily. This is because you know what your current IT architecture is, where you want to be, and how you need to change it to reach the desired outcome,” says Koh.

The ability to evolve and adapt quickly is vital in the public sector. Governments are constantly attuned to the public sentiments. You need to keep up with the changing requirements of your constituents and provide tax payers with the best service possible. This is especially important in countries that are undergoing rapid modernisation and those that undergo regular changes in political power. The department or ministry may still be there. But how will its mandate change with a new political party? An EA framework gives you the agility to adapt to the policy changes dictated by shifts in the political landscape.

CrimsonLogic’s EA expertise stretches from the consulting phase through to implementation. It started in Singapore with agencies such as the Central Provident Fund (CPF) and the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF). From this solid start, CrimsonLogic produced an EA methodology framework, specifically tailored for public agencies. A unique aspect of CrimsonLogic’s methodology entails the use of state-of the-art business modelling techniques. A great deal of thought, supported by practical experience, was put into the EA methodology that offers benefits in terms of architecture reuse and ability to query the architectural model.

The EA methodology serves to standardise the EA framework so that anyone can use and implement it. If you use a standardised framework, the organisation has freedom to choose a vendor based on its merits, not because they are the ones that put the framework together and are the only people that can understand it.

A desired outcome of implementing an EA framework is an EA repository. This becomes the Intellectual Property (IP) of the enterprise. All your business processes, experience and knowhow – how you attend to a customer, how you process a case, how you facilitate trade – becomes the EA repository. The advantage of this is that the organisation will then have what Koh calls a “living blueprint” which can be continually updated and improved.

The EA repository also serves to encourage alignment within an organisation.

CrimsonLogic has also honed the use of ‘reference models’. In simple terms, these models enable standardisation of business processes. Agencies can take the best pieces of an existing EA framework that will match its own specific needs while conforming to a ‘wholeof- government’ concept, then roll out that approach across the different agencies of the government. Drawing from CrimsonLogic’s expertise with a similar agency in another country, an EA framework can be customised to the country’s needs. So by taking a country and an agency functionality model, CrimsonLogic is able to create an EA framework that is proven to have been successful.

Two Critical Success Factors
Top-down direction: Most organisations have a rough idea of how their EA framework should look. But how does an organisation go about implementing it? “This is definitely a senior management decision,” says Koh. “They must realise that they need an EA framework to enable the organisation to handle change, drive alignment, and for the IT teams to move in the same direction as the management and business teams.”

Bottom-up Buy-In: In mapping out the business and IT processes of an organisation, the biggest challenge is bringing together those on the ground - the operational staff. Those at the frontline who deal with the day-to-day handling of the organisation are the ones who can best articulate how the business processes are executed in an organisation. “They are also best placed to offer enhancements and improvements to how they do things,” says Koh. Once this is done the rest of the EA is made easier. So getting their buy-in is essential to a smooth EA framework implementation.

For more information on how CrimsonLogic can help you align your business and IT requirements please contact sales@crimsonlogic.com or visit http://www.crimsonlogic.com