Technical Architecture Guide

Establish the evolving technical blueprint and accompanying guidelines to manage the integration and interoperability of the old with the new across the HS Agency

This guide defines the key activities, artifacts, and roles that are necessary to create and maintain a Technical Architecture for the HS Agency. The HS Agency's Technical Architecture guides the HS Agency's activities for the definition, purchase, creation, modification, integration, deployment, operation, and retirement of the technical infrastructure and the supported applications. It affects both technical management and engineering practices in use within the HS Agency.

The Technical Architecture is described in a comprehensive set of reference materials, called the A-TARS. The A-TARS provides guidance for system design and development staff during all phases of the application systems life cycle. This includes the standard technologies and practices needed to support three typical environments: business (HS programs such as TANF, development (software engineering and management practices), and operations (administration and support).

See the Organization of the IT Planning and Management Guides for the relationship of the Technical Architecture processes described in this guide with those of the other guides. Background on the fundamental concepts and principles upon which the approach is based is also available. For information on how to customize this guidance view the Application of the IT Planning and Management Guides pages .

Technical Architecture Background

Processes
This guide defines the key activities, artifacts, and roles for the HS Agency Technical Architecture development, maintenance, and oversig ht processes. The activities are illustrated in the figure and described in the text below.

• Manage Technical Architecture Activities - This part of the Technical Architecture process establishes the Architecture Team and the management structure for architecture-related activities. Oversight and use of the Technical Architecture are also the responsibility of these activities.
• Conduct Architectural Studies - These activities pursue engineering tradeoffs and other studies to obtain information necessary for making Technical Architecture decisions.
• Establish the Technical Architecture Reference Set - These activities create and maintain the individual architectural descriptions, ensure their integration, and transition them into use.
  
  • Describe Technology Boundaries - These activities characterize the external user and automated entities and their interaction across the Agency's Technology Boundaries.
  • Establish Agency System Properties - These activities establish the essential system-wide characteristics that will guide all design decisions.
  • Establish Agency Technical Reference Models - These activities create and update the Agency's Technical Reference Model describing the technical elements to be incorporated into the Agency's systems.
  • Describe Integrated Technology Blueprint - These activities describe the system and application architectures.
  • Describe Technology Elements - These activities describe the elementary building blocks that are used to compose the Agency's application systems.
    
    • Describe Services - These activities define the functionality to be reused across the HS Agency's systems.
    • Describe Data Sources and Business Rules - These activities establish the top-level design and technologies used for the HS Agency-Wide data sources, messages, and business rule processing.
    • Describe Platforms, Equipments, and Packaged Solutions - These activities define the platform configurations, including major equipment and pre-packaged solutions that are used across the Agency.
    • Describe Networking - These activities describe the networking configurations to allow interoperability across the Agency.
      
      
  • Develop Technical Guidelines -These activities establish the guidelines on technology management and engineering practices that are used across the Agency.
  • Integrate, Review, and Release the A-TARS - These activities compile the individual descriptions into a consistent set and transition them into use.
    
    

Technical Architecture Guide Resources - A consolidated set of items that can be used to implement the activities defined in this guide are listed in the consolidated resources.