Recent DHS OIG Reports

Recent Inspector General Reports and Resources for U.S. Department of Homeland Security:

OIG-09-93 - Review of U.S. Coast Guard Enterprise Architecture Implementation Process
(PDF, 25 pages - 481 KB) NEW 8/17/2009

OIG-09-74 - Advisory Report: Department of Homeland Security's Capabilities to Implement the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
(PDF, 17 pages - 2.69 MB)

OMB, CIO Council issue architecture principles

The Office of Management and Budget and the CIO Council released today a new framework that underpins many of the Bush administration’s core management tenets.

The Architecture Principles for the U.S. Government defines what is important to the administration, said Karen Evans, OMB’s administrator for e-government and information technology.

“These principles balance department and agency mandates on the one hand and governmentwide interests on the other,” wrote Evans, also the council’s director, and Dave Wennergren, Defense Department deputy chief information officer and vice chairman of the council, in an e-mail message to CIOs. “Clear, well-understood and sanctioned principles, combined with an executive commitment to enforce them, help drive change across disparate departments and programs, and also within agencies.”

Richard Burk, OMB’s chief architect, who helped develop these principles during the past year, said that although the values may seem simplistic on the surface, the implications are deeper.

The principles include:

• The federal government focuses on people
• The federal government is a single unified enterprise
• Federal agencies collaborate with other governments and people
• The federal architecture is mission-driven
• Security, privacy and protecting information are core government needs
• Information is a national asset
• The federal architecture simplifies government operations

Using these high-level principles as guidance, agency program and technical officials are expected to adopt these principles and identify agency-specific ones that express the same shared focus, Evans and Wennergren wrote.

Burk added that the principles show they are about not only technology but also how agencies deliver services to people.

-Jason Miller, FCW.com

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Today's GAO Report and Correspondence

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today released the following report, correspondence and testimonies:

Report

Homeland Security: DHS Enterprise Architecture Continues to Evolve but Improvements Needed.
GAO-07-564, May 9. http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-564
Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07564high.pdf

Correspondence

General Services Administration Could Better Manage Unexpended Construction Balances and Make Its Budget More Transparent.
GAO-07-409R, May 9.
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-409R

OMB analyzing architecture of agency business lines

The Office of Management and Budget is reviewing agency enterprise architectures with a keen eye toward how the blueprints will change mission-critical business lines.

Dick Burk, OMB’s chief architect, said today that his office has been meeting weekly with agency chief architects to have them focus on specific business segments, and to get the owner of that business line to sign off on the architecture.

Burk said 25 of 26 agencies submitted their enterprise architectures for review, and OMB will have them analyzed by early April. With 93 percent of all development, modernization and enhancement funding going toward mission-critical systems, OMB thought segment architecture would be a valuable tool to improve the use of enterprise architecture, he said.

For the most part, agencies dove into their mission-critical business architecture segments. Burk said a few agency enterprise architectures were not mature enough to analyze, so those chief architects at those agencies focused on business services such as financial management or procurement, while others were focused on getting their IT infrastructure in place before moving into mission-critical areas.

OMB asked agencies to drill down only into one segment, but at least six did two, Burk said.

“Now they have experience in doing this and can do more in the future,” he said. “The whole idea is to get into their core business areas.”

-Jason Miller, FCW.com

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OMB issues updated EA documents

As agencies develop their fiscal 2008 budget requests over the next few months, the Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office recently delivered a number of updated documents to make that process easier — or at least run more smoothly.

OMB published the latest version of the Federal Transition Framework with 15 new cross-agency initiatives for a total of 18. The FTF gives agencies a standard way to describe cross-agency initiatives, and makes sharing that information easier. While agencies will not have to use the FTF until the 2009 budget cycle, it does provide a single source of information describing these areas, said Dick Burk, OMB’s chief architect in a letter to agency CIOs and chief architects.

Burk’s office also released the new EA assessment guide, which will be used as a part of the 2008 budget process, and a FEA Practice Guide. The Practice Guide suggests techniques for CIOs and architects to describe how their architecture can provide business and mission value to non-IT people.

The EA Assessment Version 2.1 is more of an update than a full revision, Burk said in another letter to agency CIOs and chief architects.

Agencies have until Feb. 28 to submit their EAs so OMB can assess them under the new framework. OMB will score agencies’ EA and include the results in the second-quarter President’s Management Agenda scorecard, Burk said.

Additionally, OMB issued a revised consolidated FEA reference model that includes information on all five models — Business, Technical, Performance, Data and Service Component.

FTF Version 1.0 follows a pilot version OMB released in September. The initial version focused only on three cross-agency initiatives — the move to IP version 6, E-Authentication and the IT infrastructure Line of Business Consolidation initiative. The newest version adds 15 new projects, including all eight LOBs, such as human resources and financial management, and the Integrated Acquisition Environment, Information Sharing Environment and Grants.gov portal.

For each initiative, the FTF provides a standard way of describing each project based on the each FEA reference model.

-Jason Miller, GCN.com

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