WHAT IS ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE?

Hi

Enterprise Architecture is the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating, and improving the key principles and models that describe the enterprise's future state and enable its evolution towards realizing that future state.

A well-defined Enterprise Architecture can help a government agency to align its ICT resources to its Strategic Plan of enabling citizen services through these ICT resources. It helps in cutting costs and complexity, and enabling business flexibility and process optimization. Enterprise Architecture can improve ICT agility by adopting standardization, consistency, and scalability, while at the same time providing increased security and compliance. The Enterprise Architecture framework is a promising tool for implementing integrated eGovernment initiatives and has been thoroughly tested and deployed in various countries. EA addresses most systems architectural issues giving rise to the following benefits:

• a. Improves business flexibility, and at the same time, improves business processes and system optimization.

• b. Helps reduce process, system, and infrastructure costs and complexity.

• c. Helps ensure enterprise security and compliance.

• d. Drives standardization, consistency, and scalability.

Thus, the primary objective of EA development is to align ICT with the business of the agency, thereby optimizing the service delivery capability of the agency (eGovernment Program, 2009e).