Developing and Implementing Well-Defined Modernization Blueprints

A key to successfully leveraging information technology for organizational transformation is having and using an enterprise architecture—or modernization blueprint—as an authoritative frame of reference against which to assess and decide how individual system investments are defined, designed, acquired, and developed.

• GAO’s experience has shown that attempting to modernize (and maintain) information technology environments without an architecture to guide and constrain investments results in mission operations and supporting systems that are duplicative, not well-integrated, and costly to maintain, and thus are inefficient and ineffective in achieving institutional goals and performance measures.
• GAO’s work across the federal government shows that the state of enterprise architecture development and implementation continues to vary considerably across departments and agencies, with some having more mature architecture programs than others. However, overall most departments and agencies are not where they need to be, particularly with regard to the content of their architectures and their approaches to assessing each investment’s alignment with them. 

  Highlights of GAO-06-831 (PDF)

• Accordingly, GAO has made recommendations to departments and agencies that are aimed at improving the content and use of their respective architectures, and some progress has been made in recent years.

  Highlights of GAO-07-564 (PDF)

• As required by the E-Government Act of 2002, OMB continues to exercise leadership in overseeing federal department and agency enterprise architecture development, but much remains to be accomplished before agencies will fully realize the value of having well-defined and implemented architectures.

^ Back to topWhat Needs to Be Done

OMB continues to exercise leadership in this area by issuing guidance for federal department and agency enterprise architecture programs and using its federal enterprise architecture assessment framework as a tool for evaluating these programs. To advance the state of enterprise architecture development and use in the federal government, OMB needs to ensure that

• senior leadership in the departments and agencies demonstrate their commitment to using enterprise architecture as an organizational transformation tool, and
• the kind of architecture management controls embodied in OMB’s federal enterprise architecture assessment framework and GAO’s Enterprise Architecture Management Maturity Framework are in place and functioning.

  Highlights of GAO-03-584G (PDF)

^ Back to topKey Reports

DOD Business Systems Modernization

Homeland Security

Enterprise Architecture

Homeland Security

Information Technology

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