Description
The California Enterprise Architecture Framework (CEA/F) guides the effective implementation of EA programs within and among state agencies and promotes professional practices. The four core building blocks include:
- Digest
- Program
- EA Service Catalog
- Architectures
Digest
Enterprise Architecture helps agencies organize their assets, systems, and processes.
Just as a project manager provides high-level organization for a single project, EA provides high-level organization for an entire agency or department. This “bird’s eye” view helps agencies avoid duplication of effort, standardize processes and technologies, and follow industry best practices.
In California, our EA framework is the California Enterprise Architecture Framework (CEA/F), which is based on the federal EA framework (FEAF).
Although EA is often considered an IT discipline, CEA/F is concerned both with technical and nontechnical aspects of the business.
Program
California is the world’s fourth largest economy. As you might expect, our public sector is complex. It’s not reasonable to ask every software engineer or project manager to understand everything happening in every state agency; doing so would make change almost impossible.
Instead, many state agencies have their own enterprise architecture program, which organizes EA at the departmental level.
In turn, CDT has an Office of Enterprise Architecture which works hand-in-hand with these departmental EA programs, offering consultation and insight from across the state.
Our job is to connect the dots – to tell agencies when we’ve seen a similar challenge or project before, and what lessons were learned from the previous implementation. We also work to standardize language and organization across state agencies, so that we all can work together and understand each other more easily.
EA Service Catalog
The service catalog shows how an agency provides its services.
It usually includes:
- What is the service? Who does it help?
- What staff provide this service, and what are their roles?
- What needs to be in place for this service to function? (This might include software, information, deliverables from other teams, and so on.)
A centralized catalog helps agencies stay organized, especially as they grow.
Some questions a catalog might answer include: Who should I tell that this website is down? Does anyone still use this server? Have we ever worked with this vendor before? Who needs to be involved in planning this project?
At CDT, the Office of Enterprise Architecture has created a service catalog which spans all state agencies. This “big picture” catalog helps to track best practices, lessons learned, and potential risks, across the entire state.
Architectures
Different people are most interested in different parts of the service catalog. The CIO, front-line tech support, and a project manager all look at the same data through very different lenses.
Architectures are reports and views tailored for specific user groups, so you can find the information you care about.
Three important architectures are the current, future, and target architectures. While the future architecture represents a well-planned roadmap, such as the goal state when a project completes, the target architecture is a broader, longer-term goal state for the organization. It’s important to keep both in mind as the organization evolves.