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Enterprise Architects In Focus

What is the Role of the Enterprise Architect?

An enterprise architect in the federal environment collaborates with the EA community in the development, execution, and maintenance of business-driven FEA blueprints to achieve the vision of a citizen-centered, results-oriented, and market-based government organization.

What is the Enterprise Architect's Framework?

The agency enterprise architect designs and develops segment architecture for the agency's core lines of business and common IT services. The enterprise architect uses the structure of the FEA Performance Reference Model (PRM) to develop segment architecture that implements the IT Strategy Plan and its projects. To reach 2005 - 2006 FEA goals, the enterprise architect ensures EA designs align with FEA goals to replace agency-centric systems and processes with integrated, citizen-centric applications and processes.

Richard Burk's Career in Public Service — Results-oriented and Citizen-centric

In December 2004, the OMB appointed Richard Burk to the position of Chief Architect, Office of E-Government and Information Technology, and to lead the Chief Information Officers Council (CIOC) Architecture and Infrastructure Committee (AIC). By March he had established the agenda for the FEA's business-oriented action plan.

Burk's productivity in such a short time drew on his 29 years of experience at the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Department, where he became Chief Architect, Office of the CIO. There he oversaw the development and execution of the agency's EA ensuring it used standardized terms and data to optimize its IT systems consolidation effort. His recognition of the EA value proposition for cross-agency information sharing and collaboration began at HUD. "It is clear that we have to share information across programs and even across government," Burk told the Federal Times (FT, 3/8/04) a year ago when he was the agency's Chief Architect. "The architecture tells us how we can do that."

In his new role at OMB, Burk plans to move EA out of the back office and into the hands of business managers and to make EA jargon meaningful to business. "I've had some success at HUD being able to do that," Burk told Federal Computer Week (FCW, 12/6/04). He reiterated this point to Government Computer News (GCN, 12/13/04), which reported that Burk "wants to use his new position at OMB as a bully pulpit to spread the benefits of enterprise architecture to incoming federal managers and political appointees."

Burk also indicated that he may take a second look at parts of the FEA reference models. "The Business Reference Model and the Performance Reference Model is where I think we should start to make sure agencies are getting the most out of them," reported GCN (12/13/04).

See the entire FCW article on Richard Burk by David Perera.

See the GCN article on Burk by Jason Miller.

See the Federal Times article on Burk by Karen Robb.

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