Key players at the NBC Enterprise Architecture: Barbara Whitford (member of the Interior Business Architecture Team - IBAT), Charles Nethaway (NBC and OS Chief Architect, Richard Sullivan (NBC and OS Senior Architect) and Joan Kimmel-Frantz (coordinator, NBC and OS Capital Planning Investment Board - CPIB).
	Dolores Chacon, Lynn McPheeters, and Marianne Narick attended the Enterprise Architecture briefing for the DOI University management team.
	Charles Nethaway (NBC and OS Chief Architect) presenting information to DOI University.

NBC's Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office (EAPMO) is involved in a great deal of activity in 2004, with much accomplished and much to do. With directions from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and from DOI's Office of the Chief Information Officer, NBC has named Charles Nethaway as its full-time Chief Architect and Richard Sullivan as its full-time Senior Architect. After establishing the EAPMO, NBC also accepted the role of CIO for the Office of the Secretary, and Charles has assumed the role of Chief Architect for the Office of the Secretary.

EA includes many aspects of the Federal government, its agencies, bureaus, and offices. The Department's EA repository includes the Department's Strategic Plan and its strategic outcomes; lines of business and business sub-functions; DOI ABC/M work activities; performance criteria; a complete inventory of systems, both DOI-tracked and bureau-only; security information; investment information; the DOI's Technical Reference Model (what technology is approved for inclusion in future purchases), and how all of these items are related to one another.

OMB's goal is to develop a Federal Enterprise Architecture Management System, FEAMS ("FEEMS") whereby agencies can provide information and discover reusable systems and system components for sharing across agencies. According to a recent briefing from OMB's FEA Program Management Office, dated February 2004, the Federal Enterprise Architecture was commissioned on February 6, 2002 to: · Define and align Federal business functions and supporting IT via a set of common models. · Identify opportunities to reuse and re-deploy IT assets across the Federal government. · Improve effectiveness of IT spending to help yield substantial cost savings and improve service delivery for citizens.

In the NBC, the EA effort is a multi-pronged activity, with several offices contributing to its success. EA meetings have included representatives of Customer Relations, Budget and Finance, and Planning and Performance. Tony Queern, Planning & Performance Management, says, "EA provides a structure with which, if we continue to work collaboratively, we can capture, align, or crosswalk our NBC business processes in a standardized manner for analysis and management decision making in multiple areas, such as customer relations, planning, cost accounting and pricing, performance management, management control reviews, and budget and performance integration."

A new website has been developed for the EA program, EAWeb, at www.nbc.gov/eaweb. This site includes information about policies and plans, a large glossary of terms, questions and answers, policies and plans, and the actual reference models that are followed to capture EA information.

   
NBC Enterprise Architecture Web resources: EAweb (left) and EASL (right).

DOI is the only agency hat has a full architectural meta-model (every bureau and office connected into an agency-wide architecture) that has been put into an electronic model. The model has been developed into a Department Enterprise Architecture Repository (DEAR). Richard Sullivan, senior architect for NBC, led the process that made DEAR operational in January 2004. Colleen Coggins, the DOI Chief Architect, has named Owen Ambur, Chief XML Strategist for DOI, and Charles Nethaway, Chief Architect for NBC and Office of the Secretary, to be the co-chairs of the DOI-wide DEAR Integrated Project Team. This team will provide the leadership and change control for all EA models at Interior.

In addition to the EAWeb, NBC is piloting a Web-based "Enterprise Architecture Stakeholder Listing," or "EASL," that will be a front-end to DEAR. This will more easily allow stakeholders, business managers, IT professionals, and others, to access the information in DEAR and to provide information to DEAR.

There is an aggressive schedule for EA in DOI. By the end of September 2004, each bureau and office is expected to place a complete systems inventory into DEAR, place all its IT capital investment information in the repository, and map systems and investments to all models of the Federal Enterprise Architecture. Charles and Richard will be visiting all offices within NBC and the Office of the Secretary to discuss their baseline and target architectures. Through these visits and the automated systems of DEAR and EASL, NBC and OS are expected to meet the many 2004 deadlines.

For more information

Charles Nethaway

Charles_D_Nethaway@nbc.gov