U.S. Department of Labor E-Government Strategic Plan

The enterprise architecture component of DOL’s E-Government strategy is designed to ensure that technology is managed in the way that best serves the mission, goals, and objectives of the Department. DOL’s enterprise architecture is a blueprint that describes the Department’s business, data, applications, and technology architectures and how they interoperate. This blueprint is mission driven and enables the Department to better serve its customers by ensuring that all layers of the enterprise architecture support the Department’s mission.

In addition, the architecture helps ensure that initiatives like common e-mail and PKI deliver Department-wide benefits through better integration with other initiatives. Through the enterprise architecture effort, DOL is continually identifying cross-cutting functions for Department-wide standardization and implementation. The DOL architecture ensures that the Department is fully compliant with the PMA, PPIs, and the FEA. This section addresses the establishment of the enterprise architecture and the building of DOL’s E-Government technology foundation.

ESTABLISHING THE ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

DOL is now the only Department in the Federal Government that is implementing a “federated” enterprise architecture, that is, one designed to be successful in a decentralized environment in which agencies’ missions vary. Managing information technologies in a dispersed environment can result in individual agencies’ making individual technology-related decisions that are not in the best interests of the overall Department. The Department’s enterprise architecture efforts are designed to address this fundamental problem and will ensure that agency-level architectures are consistent with the Department’s enterprise architecture.

The Department is implementing this enterprise architecture through a three-phase approach that focuses on universal and independent functions⁵ , implementation plans, technical standards, and principles. DOL focused on universal functions first because they provided the greatest Department-wide return on investment. Successive phases have focused on independent functions and on implementation plans.

To date, the Department has completed Phases I and II of its enterprise architecture, which involved establishing a baseline and targets for the business, data, applications, and technology architectures at a logical level. DOL has also established nine enterprise architecture guiding principles and 37 standards, as well as a Technical Reference Model. In addition, the Department has developed a standards life-cycle management process and identified stakeholder interactions. It has also populated a new system, the Enterprise Architecture Management System (EAMS), with enterprise-level data. This use of EAMS is intended to automate the enterprise architecture to facilitate real-time analysis of how DOL data and technologies can better support Department business lines.

Phase III of the enterprise architecture effort, which is now under way, is focusing on developing a complete target architecture and transition strategy. Some DOL agencies have already completed Phase III.

The Department is leveraging the knowledge gained through the enterprise architecture efforts and has begun to identify opportunities for intergovernmental collaboration to improve services to customers. The Federal Enterprise Architecture is a new tool to help identify these opportunities. Additional opportunities are expected to surface as the Department continues to develop its CRM program and to integrate its disparate enterprise architecture activities. DOL will continue to be able to characterize its enterprise architecture within the context of all FEA reference models once they are released.

Integrated Information Management

The Integrated Information Management (IIM) System is a Department-wide, cross-cutting IT initiative that will provide seamless integration of disparate data sources on an enterprise scale and provide the strategic advantages needed to ensure continuity of operations in natural or manmade disasters, regardless of the data’s source or the storage format. The IIM will provide enterprise-wide standardization and maintenance of DOL’s business definitions and business rules for data. It also will enable information exchange among agency business applications, both vertically and horizontally, and within the Department’s information architecture.

⁵ Universal functions are those performed throughout the Department. Independent functions are performed by only one or two departmental agencies.