The NIH Enterprise Architecture is built on consensus, as reflected by NIH’s approach to enterprise architecture governance. This approach for creating standards is a product of NIH’s size and diversity. Furthermore, the program hinges on a community of knowledgeable, informed technology professionals.
Therefore, Office of the Chief Information Technology Architect (OCITA) has established channels both for collaboration on standards development and for sharing experiences and best community practices, which may become NIH-wide standards over time.
NIH has two processes for developing standards, both based on consensus building processes. The first, the domain team process is built around collaborative development facilitated directly by OCITA. The second is a structured to emulate the processes used by the Internet to develop its consensus standards and can be started and led by any member of the NIH community. This latter process develops NIH Requests for Comments (NIHRFCs) - a document series for the collaborative documentation of standards or best practices. NIHRFCs are then submitted to the community at large for review and comment. Following resolution of comments by the author, the NIHRFCs are reviewed and approved by the appropriate governance bodies.
The NIH enterprise architecture team also supports a portal community for less formal collaboration. This is an online collaboration environment for the NIH Enterprise Architecture, including discussion areas for specific enterprise architecture topics.
