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96–944 PDF 2004

FEDERAL ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE: A

BLUEPRINT FOR IMPROVED FEDERAL IT INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT AND CROSS-AGENCY

COLLABORATION AND INFORMATION SHARING

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION

POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND

THE CENSUS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MAY 19, 2004

Serial No. 108–227

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

——— ———

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL

RELATIONS AND THE CENSUS

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida, Chairman

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

DOUG OSE, California

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

——— ———

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

BOB DIX, Staff Director

SHANNAN WEINBERG, Professional Staff Member

JULIANA FRENCH, Clerk

DAVID MCMILLEN, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on May 19, 2004 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Evans, Karen S., Administrator of E-Government and Information Technology, Office of Management and Budget; Randolph C. Hite, Director,

Information Technology Architecture and Systems, U.S. General Accounting Office; Daniel Matthews, Chief Information Officer, Department of Transportation; and Kim Nelson, Chief Information Officer,

Environmental Protection Agency ............................................................... 11

McClure, David, vice president for E-Government, Council for Excellence

in Government; Venkatapathi Puvvada, Unisys Chair, Enterprise Architecture Shared Interest Group, Industry Advisory Council; Norman

E. Lorentz, senior vice president, Digitalnet; and Raymond B. Wells,

chief technology officer, IBM Federal, vice president, Strategic Transformations for IBM Software Group, Application Integration &

Middleware Division [AIM], IBM Corp ....................................................... 86

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Missouri, prepared statement of .................................................................. 9

Evans, Karen S., Administrator of E-Government and Information Technology, Office of Management and Budget, prepared statement of .......... 14

Hite, Randolph C., Director, Information Technology Architecture and

Systems, U.S. General Accounting Office, prepared statement of ............ 22

Lorentz, Norman E., senior vice president, Digitalnet, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 113

Matthews, Daniel, Chief Information Officer, Department of Transportation, prepared statement of ...................................................................... 62

McClure, David, vice president for E-Government, Council for Excellence

in Government, prepared statement of ....................................................... 89

Nelson, Kim, Chief Information Officer, Environmental Protection Agency, prepared statement of ............................................................................. 69

Putnam, Hon. Adam H., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Florida, prepared statement of ................................................................ 5

Puvvada, Venkatapathi, Unisys Chair, Enterprise Architecture Shared

Interest Group, Industry Advisory Council, prepared statement of ......... 97

Wells, Raymond B., chief technology officer, IBM Federal, vice president,

Strategic Transformations for IBM Software Group, Application Integration & Middleware Division [AIM], IBM Corp, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 121

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FEDERAL ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE: A

BLUEPRINT FOR IMPROVED FEDERAL IT

INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT AND CROSSAGENCY COLLABORATION AND INFORMATION SHARING

WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 2004

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND THE CENSUS, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:35 p.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Adam Putnam (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Putnam and Clay.

Staff present: Bob Dix, staff director; John Hambel, senior counsel; Shannon Weinberg, professional staff member and deputy

counsel; Juliana French, clerk; Felipe Colon, fellow; Kaitlyn

Jahrling, intern; David McMillen, minority professional staff member; and Cecelia Morton, minority office manager.

Mr. PUTNAM. A quorum being present, this hearing of the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental

Relations and the Census will come to order. A little bit late, but

we are in order. I apologize for the delay; we have just finished a

long series of votes on the House floor.

Good afternoon and welcome to the subcommittee’s hearing entitled, ‘‘Federal Enterprise Architecture: A Blueprint for Improved

Federal IT Investment & Cross-Agency Collaboration and Information Sharing.’’

The purpose of this hearing is to provide congressional oversight

on the progress being made by the Office of Management and

Budget and the Federal agencies to develop and implement a Federal Enterprise Architecture. The subcommittee will also examine

the progress, success, and continuing hurdles facing various agencies and departments in integrating their individual agency enterprise architecture with the FEA initiative.

This hearing is a continuation of the series of oversight hearings

conducted by the subcommittee during the 108th Congress to keep

Federal Government agencies and decisionmakers aggressively focused on meeting the key goals of the E-Government Act of 2002:

greater accessibility to government by citizens and businesses; improving government efficiency and productivity; enhancing customer service; facilitating cross-agency coordination; and tangible

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cost savings to taxpayers through the use of 21st century technology and proven ‘‘best practices’’ throughout the Federal Government.

During the 1st session of the 108th Congress, this subcommittee

focused a great deal of attention on the oversight of the Federal

Government’s E-Government element of the President’s management agenda. With a commitment to an aggressive effort, the

launch of the President’s management agenda in August 2001 established a strategy for transforming the Federal Government in a

manner that produces measurable results that matter in the lives

of the American people.

One of the five components of the PMA is Electronic Government, intended to utilize the power and creativity of information

technology to produce a more citizen-centric government, as well as

one that is more efficient, productive, and cost-effective on behalf

of the taxpayers. E-Government provides a platform to establish

cross-agency collaboration and a rapid departure from a stovepipe

approach to government operations to an approach that facilitates

coordination, collaboration, communication, and cooperation.

With Federal Government expenditures on IT products and serv- ices projected to close in on $60 billion in fiscal year 2005, the Federal Government will be the largest IT purchaser in the world. For

too long, and even continuing in some places today, individual

agencies have pursued their own IT agendas that focus solely on

mission rather than emanating from a commitment to customer

service or sound business processes. Without a system of checks

and balances built into the investment process to compare IT needs

with mission goals, the potential for waste is great.

As a first step to a meaningful coordination of IT expenditures

governmentwide, Congress passed the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996,

which included the Information Technology Management Reform

Act and the Federal Acquisition Reform Act. This legislation sets

forth requirements for Federal Government IT investment management decisionmaking and corresponding responsibility. It requires

agencies to link IT investments to agency strategic planning, including the linkage to an enterprise architecture.

Under Clinger-Cohen, each individual Federal Government agency must create and implement an enterprise architecture. An EA

is a tool that defines the structure of any activity or mission within

a single organization or across multiple organizations. It allows organizations to then apply IT resources to accomplish those activities identified. An EA also helps an organization identify the relationships between business operations and the underlying infrastructure and applications that support those operations. The purpose of the development of agency EAs is to facilitate cross-agency

analysis of the business or purpose of government and to make possible the identification of duplicative investments, gaps, and prospects for cross-agency collaboration. The goal, as with all e-Gov initiatives, is to make the Federal Government more efficient and customer-focused.

An enterprise architecture, developed and implemented based on

the FEA framework, is an essential tool in guiding IT investments.

A recent GAO study reports that ‘‘that investing in IT without defining these investments in the context of an architecture often reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:07 Dec 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96944.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sults in systems that are duplicative, not well integrated, and unnecessarily costly to maintain and interface.’’

While the utility of EAs in the Federal Government is promising,

the progress of the Federal Government in completing the agency

EA initiative is less than promising. In 2001 and 2003, GAO assessed the progress of agencies’ efforts to develop and implement

EAs. In 2003, overall, GAO found the state of EA governmentwide

is not mature, with approximately 79 percent of agencies at stage

1 of GAO’s five-stage assessment framework and 21 percent were

at stage 2. Only one agency, the Executive Office of the President,

reached stage 5, the final stage of maturity.

The E-Government Act of 2002 makes oversight of the agencies’

EA efforts the responsibility of OMB’s Administrator of E-Government and Information Technology. As a result of a combination of

OMB’s oversight responsibilities under the E-Gov Act of 2002 and

the disappointing results of GAO’s 2001 governmentwide EA maturity assessment, OMB identified a need for a common framework

for agencies to use in facilitating the EA effort. OMB cited the lack

of a Federal EA as an impediment to achievement of the e-Government initiatives. So OMB began work on creating the FEA in 2002.

This effort appears to be initially successful as a tool for recognizing commonalities and inefficiencies. OMB used the FEA during its

review of the agency’s 2004 budget submissions and found numerous common government functions and consequently numerous redundant efforts in spending. Out of those numerous common functions, OMB selected five core government functions and created the

next phase of the e-Government initiative. This new phase, called

the Lines of Business Initiative, specifically targets duplicative effort in spending. Despite this development, I still find cause for

concern. According to a November 2003 GAO report, the self-reported costs by agencies in developing their individual EAs are

close to $600 million. Those same agencies report more than $805

million will be necessary to complete their EAs. What the vast majority of government agencies’ EA maturity assessed at the stage

1 level, we still have a long way to go before we fully realize the

benefits of effective EA management. In the course of this hearing,

my hope is that we will be able to determine the anticipated cost

savings in light of the significant investment already made in the

efforts to develop EAs governmentwide.

Today’s hearing is an opportunity to examine both the progress

and success of OMB’s FEA initiative as well as explore the obstacles faced both by agencies and departments in integrating their

EAs into the FEA. As we have heard in previous hearings, many

of the impediments are cultural and people-based, rather than

being attributable to the technology itself or available resources.

Case in point, in GAO’s 2003 assessment of governmentwide EA efforts, more agencies reported a lack of agency executive understanding of EA and the scarcity of skilled architecture staff as significant challenges than was reported in 2001.

I eagerly look forward to the testimony of our distinguished

panel of leaders in various agencies in an industry who will also

give us the opportunity to demonstrate the progress that has been

made thus far with the FEA initiative, while acknowledging the

magnitude of the challenge that lies ahead.

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Today’s hearing can be viewed live via Webcast by going to reform.house.gov and clicking on the link ‘‘Live Committee Broadcast.’’

[The prepared statement of Hon. Adam H. Putnam follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. I want to welcome the distinguished ranking member from Missouri who has been a partner in these oversight efforts, Mr. Clay. I recognize you for your opening remarks.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for calling this

hearing, and I want to thank the witnesses for appearing before us

today.

The implementation of enterprise architectures throughout the

agency community has altered the methods employed by the Government beyond what used to be little more than the procurement

and maintenance of computers and software. That concept, however, became outdated as the Government sought to integrate both

business functions and agency goals with information technology.

By serving as a blueprint for integration among an agency’s core

components, enterprise architectures soon enabled an agency to improve its services by optimizing its performance.

It did not take long for Congress to determine that such efficiency would prove beneficial in both economic and qualitative

terms. Through legislative efforts such as the Paperwork Reduction

Act, the Clinger-Cohen Act, and the E-Government Act, Congress

established a framework for agencies to facilitate effective management of enterprise architectures governmentwide. Along with the

efforts of the CIO Council and OMB’s Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office, the Government has successfully

laid a foundation for effective coordination among agencies for business operations, information flow, and IT investment management.

I remain concerned, however, that the agency community is not

meeting all of its obligations for effectively managing the development and utilization of enterprise architectures, as only half of all

agencies are meeting such standards according to GAO. Further,

there seems to be no improvement in the number of agencies performing a full complement of management practices for the effective oversight of architectures. If the Federal Government is to continue to appropriate its annual $60 billion investment in IT systems, we must demand better implementation and management

practices for enterprise architectures throughout the agency community.

I look forward to our discussion today and ask that my statement

be submitted for the record.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Without objection.

We will move directly to the testimony. If all the witnesses and

any of your supporting cast who will be providing you answers

would please rise and raise your right hands for the administration

of the oath.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. PUTNAM. Note for the record that all of the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

I would like to recognize our first witness, Ms. Karen Evans. On

September 3, 2003, Karen Evans was appointed by President Bush

to be Administrator of the Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology at the Office of Management and Budget.

Prior to joining OMB, Ms. Evans was Chief Information Officer at

the Department of Energy, and served as vice chairman of the CIO

Council, the principal forum for agency CIOs to develop IT recommendations. Prior to that she served at the Department of Justice as Assistant and Division Director for Information System

Management. She is a frequent guest of this subcommittee.

We are delighted to have you. Welcome, Ms. Evans. You are recognized for your 5-minute statement.

STATEMENTS OF KAREN S. EVANS, ADMINISTRATOR OF EGOVERNMENT AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, OFFICE

OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET; RANDOLPH C. HITE, DIRECTOR, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECTURE AND SYSTEMS, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; DANIEL MATTHEWS, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF

TRANSPORTATION; AND KIM NELSON, CHIEF INFORMATION

OFFICER, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

Ms. EVANS. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member

Clay. Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and discuss the administration’s Federal Enterprise Architecture Program.

The FEA provides a strategic model and a plan to improve the

Federal information technology investment management, create

cross-agency collaboration, and enhance governmentwide information sharing. My remarks will provide an update on key enterprise

architecture developments across the Federal Government specifically focusing on the value of the FEA program and its support of

individual agency EA initiatives in using IT to achieve results for

the American citizens.

The administration is working to ensure the Government as a

whole and the agencies in particular integrate resource decisionmaking with discipline planning activities to yield better program

performance in managing our IT resources and assets, and EA is

the information asset that defines the mission program, the information and technologies needed to perform the mission, and the

transitional processes for implementing new technologies when

needs change.

The goals of the Federal Enterprise Architecture are to enable

the Federal Government to identify opportunities to leverage technology and alleviate redundancy, or to highlight where agency

overlap limits the value of information technology investments; facilitate horizontal, cross-Federal, and vertical Federal, State, local,

and tribal integration of IT resources; establish a direct relationVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:07 Dec 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96944.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ship between IT and mission program performance; and support

citizen-centered customer-focused government to maximize IT investments to better achieve mission outcomes.

Whether at the Federal, agency, or program level, a mature and

continually utilized EA helps in the management of resources by

plainly organizing the enterprise IT assets within an understandable strategic framework. This enables agency leaders to develop a

clear road map for future investments while ensuring a more effective IT portfolio supports the delivery of faster and better program

performance.

In addition to supporting agencies’ EA efforts, the Federal Government is using the FEA to identify numerous cross-agency opportunities to cut costs and increase efficiencies through sharing common business functions and technology applications. Specifically,

we are enhancing the FEA to maximize the performance of the

Federal Government’s $60 billion IT portfolio by: identifying opportunities to develop common solutions within Lines of Business

[LOBs] resulting in increased government effectiveness and taxpayer savings; linking agency performance to strategic IT investment decisions through agency enterprise architectures; and using

EA-related budget requirements to ensure security and privacy

considerations are integrated as agencies make strategic IT investment choices.

The FEA framework has yielded results demonstrating a new

ability for the Federal Government to drive collaboration and accelerate consolidation of redundant activities, saving taxpayer dollars.

One example of this is the concept of Lines of Business [LOBs], a

functional representation of the overall business requirements of

government. In response to our preliminary review of fiscal year

2004 and 2005 FEA budget data, OMB launched a governmentwide

effort in February 2004 to analyze the first set of LOB initiatives.

The LOB Task Forces are now using EA-based principles and proven best practices to identify business-driven common solutions to

transform government by breaking down traditional agency silos

and increasing collaboration. The FEA structure and analysis are

foundational to the LOB initiatives. This activity provides a

glimpse of how we can use the FEA as transformational framework

to accelerate the delivery of services and truly achieve the 21st century e-Government. Implementation of these LOB common solutions will begin in fiscal year 2005, leading to significant improvements in process efficiency, system interoperability, and data sharing.

OMB has developed an EA Assessment Framework to help agencies improve their EA programs and benefit from the results of

using EA as a strategic planning tool. OMB’s EA Assessment

Framework is designed to help each agency assess the capability

of its EA program and is intended to compliment the GAO EA

management maturity framework which assesses the EA program

capacity.

The EA Assessment Framework will be used annually by OMB

and the agencies to identify opportunities and facilitate the discussion of EA performance and use. This ongoing collaboration between OMB and the agencies removes the discussion of EA from

the current budget cycle and allows us to engage when results can

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be used by agencies during the development of their request instead of after the fact when they submit the information to OMB.

OMB continues helping agencies align their efforts with the FEA

program, and toward this goal Federal Enterprise Architecture

Management System [FEAMS], is ready for agencies to use for the

fiscal year 2006 budget process. This will be the first time ever that

agencies will be able to use this Web-based tool to look across the

Government and identify potential collaboration partners and

share technology components as they develop their own IT investments.

As part of our commitment to strengthen our agency security,

OMB and the CIO Council are developing the FEA Security and

Privacy Profile, an overlay to assist Federal managers in discovering early on where risk exposures exist, the potential range for controls needed to address such risks, and the potential cost of those

controls. The FEA program is helping agencies to identify, understand, and integrate security and privacy issues in the earliest

stages of planning and development, promoting the efficient operation, and preventing unintended consequences which may require

costly corrections at the end of the development.

In short, we are looking to evolving the FEA reference models

and further enhancing resources such as FEAMS and the EA Assessment Framework for agencies. OMB seeks to develop the Government-wide practice of enterprise architecture so that agencies

can proactively collaborate to make investment decisions prior to

submitting their budgets to OMB.

In the longer term, the administration will continue to create opportunities for transforming government delivery of service to the

citizens, working to fully integrate performance measurement concepts throughout the FEA reference models to ensure agencies are

considering outcomes in all aspects of IT portfolio planning.

The administration will continue to collaborate with agencies and

with Congress, State, local, and tribal governments to ensure the

promise of the enterprise architecture is fully realized across government. I look forward to working with you on these matters and

will be happy to take questions.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Evans follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, Ms. Evans.

Our next witness is Mr. Randolph Hite. Mr. Hite is the Director

of Information Technology Architecture and Systems Issues at the

U.S. General Accounting Office. During his 25 year career with

GAO, he has directed reviews of major Federal investments in information technology such as IRS’s tax systems modernization and

DOD’s business systems modernization. Mr. Hite is a principal author of several information technology management guides such as

GAO’s Guide on System Testing, the Federal CIO Council Guide on

Enterprise Architectures, and GAO’s Enterprise Architecture Management Maturity Framework. He frequently testifies before Congress on such topics and is an ex-officio member of the Federal CIO

Council. He has received a number of awards throughout his career, including being a 2003 Federal 100 Award winner.

Welcome to the subcommittee. You are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. HITE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First let me commend you

for holding this hearing. You know, it wasn’t too long ago that enterprise architecture in the Federal Government was a lot like

what Mark Twain said about the weather: everybody talks about

it, but nobody does anything about it. Fortunately, this has

changed in a lot of corners of the Government, and I am cautiously

optimistic about what the future holds in this area.

Nevertheless, we are clearly not where we need to be when it

comes to developing and using enterprise architectures across the

entire Federal Government, as your statement recognized. What I

would like to do is make two brief points, one dealing with the Federal Enterprise Architecture [FEA], and one dealing with Federal

agencies’ enterprise architecture maturity.

Point one, OMB is making progress on the FEA, but it is still a

work in process, and what I mean by that is it is still evolving both

in terms of content and in use. In my view, this evolution is not

a negative, but rather a reasonable and expected phenomenon

given the broad-based purpose and scope of such a framework. For

example, the FEA is intended to facilitate the development of agency enterprise architectures, no trivial feat in and of itself; promote

the reuse of common IT components across agencies; and identify

opportunities for interagency collaboration on common IT solutions.

We support these goals and believe that the FEA can be an integral part of a transparent means to accomplish this.

Now, having said this, we nevertheless have questions about the

FEA at this juncture, which, if addressed, we believe will increase

the understanding about the tool and thus facilitate its extension

and use. One question is should the FEA be represented as an enterprise architecture. Our reading of it suggests it is more akin to

a classification scheme or a taxonomy, rather than a true enterprise architecture.

A closely related question is whether the expected relationship

between the agencies’ enterprise architectures and the FEA have

been clearly defined. In this regard, OMB talks about agencies

mapping and aligning their architectures with the FEA, but what

this really entails is not well defined, and such ambiguity leads to

assumptions which in turn increases the risk that expectations

don’t get met, and this is particularly true in the enterprise architecture arena.

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Still another question is how will security be introduced into the

FEA. OMB has stated that it plans to address security in the FEA

through a security profile, but our reading of the FEA shows that

this profile is not yet part of the FEA. And, in my view, whether

we are talking about enterprises or we are talking about systems,

security should permeate every element of the architecture and

shouldn’t be an afterthought, again, whether we are talking about

systems or enterprises.

Point two, like the FEA, enterprise architecture programs in the

individual agencies are still maturing. Using our framework as a

benchmarking tool, as you alluded to, Mr. Chairman, we reported

in September 2003 that Federal agencies’ collective progress toward effective management of architectures was limited: 22 agencies increasing their levels, 24 agencies decreasing their levels, and

46 agencies remaining basically the same. We further reported that

only 20 of the agencies that we looked at had established the foundation needed for effective enterprise architecture when you compare them against our most recent maturity model, which raised

the bar on what constitutes effective architecture management.

This governmentwide state of affairs can be attributed to several

longstanding challenges which were the basis of some recommendations that we made to OMB in 2001, and then we reiterated those

recommendations in 2003.

In summary, development and use of architectures in the Federal

Government are maturing, but they are not mature. Progress is

being made, but the progress is uneven and much remains to be

accomplished. I will say the recent steps by OMB and the CIO

Council to assume stronger leadership roles in this area are encouraging signs; however, hard work lies ahead to clarify and

evolve the FEA and to ensure that well-managed architecture programs are actually established and executed, underscore executed,

across the Government.

As our maturity framework emphasizes, the goal is not merely

to check the box on some form, but rather to make enterprise architecture an integral and useful part of informing government

transformation and achieving breakthrough performance. That is

the end game.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my testimony. I would be happy

to answer any questions you have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hite follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much, sir.

Our next witness is Mr. Daniel Matthews. Mr. Matthews was appointed Chief Information Officer for the U.S. Department of

Transportation in March 2003. As CIO, he serves as the principal

advisor to the secretary on matters involving information resources

and information services management, and provide leadership in

using IT to achieve the Department’s goals and objectives. Prior to

his appointment at DOT’s CIO, Mr. Matthews served as senior vice

president of Savantage Financial Services from July 2002, where

he was responsible for efforts to modernize the financial management systems of a number of Federal agencies. He spent most of

the previous 22 years at Lockheed Martin, most recently as vice

president.

You are recognized for 5 minutes. Welcome to the subcommittee.

Mr. MATTHEWS. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee,

thank you for the opportunity to appear today to discuss the Department of Transportation’s implementation of the Federal Enterprise Architecture Program.

The Department of Transportation Office of the CIO has operational responsibility for departmental network and communications infrastructure, as well as providing shared services for the Office of the Secretary and several operating agencies currently engaged in the Department’s Information Technology services consolidation.

It is my observation and experience at DOT that the Federal Enterprise Architecture initiative is working well to focus on businessbased, results-oriented, information technology best practice investments, their common infrastructure and external information services delivery. This drive is beginning to deliver results that will expedite our ability to improve cyber security, mine data, enhance information sharing, eliminate redundancies, and to document our IT

costs and performance.

Our enterprise architecture provides a clearer understanding of

where IT dollars are being spent, what technologies support our

business processes, who is responsible for and impacted by process

and technology changes, and what technology standards we should

employ today as well as in the future.

The DOT’s enterprise architecture can be described as a federated model composed of smaller segments that are distinct areas

of mission activity carried out from within each of the Department’s operating agencies, yet they are all linked to the overall

DOT enterprise architecture. It de-emphasizes organizational structure and shifts that emphasis to DOT missions, in particular safety

and mobility. It promotes an end-to-end consideration of business

process needs across the operating agencies, a focus that is at the

heart of Clinger-Cohen Act compliance at Department of Transportation. Implementing architectural segments is important because

the large scope of the DOT enterprise makes it difficult to effectively fund and successfully manage a large number of enterprise

architecture activities simultaneously. By taking a phased approach to the development of our enterprise architecture, the Department is able to determine a prioritized sequence of activities

that takes into account urgency, maturity of solution, and stakeholder support for future phases. This sequencing approach also

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improves the likelihood of successful implementations of IT solutions and it optimizes IT spending across the Department.

Examples of the DOT’s emphasis on enterprise architecture

begin with my own CIO organization, where an Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office team is dedicated to full-time

leadership and continuity in the development, implementation, and

maintenance of a single DOT enterprise architecture.

A Departmental Investment Review Board, chaired by the Department’s Deputy Secretary, reviews proposed IT investments

from across DOT and decides their appropriate disposition based on

project assessments performed using standardized investment review criteria, including enterprise architecture alignment.

The Department’s Architectural Review Board is the governance

body charged with evaluating and recommending changes to the

DOT enterprise architecture and ensuring that investments in IT

comply with established departmental policies for enterprise architecture, capital planning, security standards and processes. The

DOT’s Enterprise Architecture Technology Reference Model provides the Architectural Review Board with information on specific

technologies, hardware, and software used throughout the Department of Transportation enterprise. These activities reduce security

vulnerabilities, they wean out duplicative IT spending within our

operating agencies, and they hasten the delivery of successful IT

solutions. When taken together, elements of this governance model

gracefully implement the investment review requirements of the

Clinger-Cohen Act.

Building on our current efforts at DOT, we recently published an

updated version of our modernization blueprint and developed several documents to aid in inculcating enterprise architecture understanding and use.

The Federal Enterprise Architecture implementation, while

viewed as fairly successful thus far, does have its issues. In several

instances the time allowed between budgetary guidance and/or

changes and expected agency execution has been constricted. Other

expectations, such as a full-time program manager for each initiative, is unrealistic for many small agencies with limited staff.

These shortcomings are being reviewed and the Federal CIO Council is working with OMB to ensure a workable Federal Enterprise

Architecture process is rapidly adopted and implemented.

This concludes my testimony. Again, I thank you for the opportunity to discuss this important topic and, Mr. Chairman, I look

forward to answering any questions you may have. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Matthews follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much.

Our next witness is Kim Nelson. In November 2001, Ms. Nelson

was sworn in as Assistant Administrator for Environmental Information and CIO of the Environmental Protection Agency. Prior to

joining EPA, Ms. Nelson served the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 22 years. During her career, she worked in the Senate of

Pennsylvania, the Public Utility Commission, and the Departments

of Aging and Environmental Protection. For the past 14 years Ms.

Nelson held a number of positions in the Pennsylvania Department

of Environmental Protection. She was the first Director of the Program Integration and Effectiveness Office, the first executive to

hold the position of CIO, and most recently served as Executive

Deputy Secretary. She was primarily responsible for managing department-wide projects with a goal toward improving processes and

integrating programs and functions. She was recognized for outstanding service on three occasions during her career with the Department of Environmental Protection.

Welcome to the subcommittee. You are recognized.

Ms. NELSON. Thank you, Chairman Putnam, for the opportunity

today to testify about the progress being made by OMB and Federal agencies to develop and implement the Federal Enterprise Architecture, and some of the challenges that the agencies are facing

in aligning their own architectures with that of the Federal enterprise.

Today my testimony is going to reflect my dual role, as you mentioned, as CIO at the Environmental Protection Agency, but also as

Co-Chair of the Federal CIO Council’s Architecture and Infrastructure Committee.

We live in a point and click culture that has incredibly high expectations for government. In the past, when governments wanted

to improve service delivery, the typical response was to move some

boxes on an organization chart and the reassignment of people. But

today it is possible to improve our government services through the

alignment of our information systems by looking at our common

business functions from across different organizations.

The FEA provides that ability, the ability to look across the Federal departments, the agencies, to look at their missions, to look at

their strategic goals, their programs, their data, and their information technology, and using it as a planning tool which allows the

Federal Government to take advantage of the IT revolution and ensure the responsible spending of over $60 billion of the Federal IT

budget. It is the one blueprint that will lead to a more efficient delivery of services and is key to the citizen-centric government that

we all seek.

In the last year I would say I have seen what I consider to be

very significant progress in the implementation of the FEA. OMB

has completed work on all major components of the FEA reference

model and they are giving the Federal agencies a common way to

look at their business functions and align our investments appropriately. EPA, like a lot of other Federal agencies, is now mapping

our own architecture and our own blueprint to those in IT investments under the Federal model.

A couple of other examples of some progress are the CIO Council’s development of a reusable component strategy. That strategy

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will enable an IT service built by one agency to be used by others,

and the development of a draft security and privacy profile.

The 24 e-Gov initiatives and the five Lines of Business are proving to be what I consider to be real-life laboratories that highlight

for OMB and the Federal CIOs the critical Federal Architectural

design decisions needed to achieve both information integration

and information sharing throughout all levels of government.

As for some of the challenges, I think your charts up there speak

well to some of those we are facing. The General Accounting Office

recently reported that most of the Federal agencies are still in the

development stages of building their architectures. To quickly increase that capacity, OMB and the CIO Council have created a

Chief Architects Forum, where all the chief architects can leverage

their efforts in addressing the specific strategic management and

operational challenges that were noted in that report.

Frankly, I think our challenge with enterprise architecture is

that it is still a relatively new discipline to a lot of people, and like

all new disciplines, it is going to require an acculturation process.

Each Federal agency has to integrate enterprise architecture into

the fabric of its strategic management culture before that agency

can begin to eliminate redundancies, target citizen services, and integrate the information for improved decisionmaking. It is not an

IT tool, it has to become part of the strategic management process

of the organization; and that is not an easy process to change.

Finally, I would like to address the issue of interoperability as

it relates to the Federal Enterprise Architecture and networks that

are currently being built by governments.

Within EPA, we are using the enterprise architecture to design

and implement services for environmental decisionmakers across

the country. Approximately 95 percent of all of the information in

EPA’s major systems come from State and tribal governments.

With that being the case, and also understanding that all of our

major air, water, and waste laws are heavily delegated to the

States, we have to work with those partners on the exchange of information. This practical business reality drives the approach we

are taking to enterprise architecture. We have to have a collaborative effort with our States and tribes to implement common data

standards; we have to implement something that we have called

our Central Data Exchange for reporting purposes; and we are designing and implementing our environmental exchange network.

This network, which is becoming a reality as we speak, we have

10 States with operational nodes on the network, is due in large

part to the $25 million State and tribal grant program begun by

President Bush and funded by Congress the last 3 years. Our

strong partnership with our State co-regulators will continue to

drive our innovation at EPA and is going to require EPA to work

not just vertically with environmental agencies, but horizontally.

We have to work across the Federal Government, particularly with

health and resource agencies, to better demonstrate results in protecting human health and safeguarding the natural environment.

So I thank you for the opportunity to appear here today, both

representing EPA as well as the Federal CIO Council’s Architecture Committee.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Nelson follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you all for your opening comments.

Ms. Evans, GAO reports in its testimony that OMB was unable

to comment on the status and development of the security profile

the FEA component is intended to address IT security. What is the

status of the security profile and what are the development plans?

Ms. EVANS. Currently, we are working with the AIC off of the

CIO Council to develop those profiles, and we have a plan, and Kim

can probably speak more specifically to the due dates where these

plans in the profiles will come forward to the Council and then

come forward to OMB, so I would yield to her on the specific dates

of those profiles.

But I would like to comment on one thing, and there was a lot

of discussion going forward, and as the vice chair of the CIO Council when these efforts were going on, while we were talking to

OMB, we specifically asked not to have a specific security reference

model. And the reason why we asked not to have that was because

we didn’t want to have security segregated from all the models.

What we wanted to ensure was that we had worked so hard and

came so far in ensuring that cyber security and overall risk is

being looked at as each investment goes forward and how you manage your program overall, that we had concerns as a council that

if we had a separate model, that we may start down the path again

of separating it without always thinking about it going forward. So

that is why we are taking the approach of having it be overlaid

across the framework and it will go through all the models that

way.

Mr. PUTNAM. Ms. Nelson.

Ms. NELSON. The committee that is working on that security and

privacy profile is actually meeting as we speak to review some of

the most recent comments that have been received. We hope that

document will be available before the end of the summer, and once

that is out and is in use, we will start working on another revision.

The one thing I want to point out about that profile, what is so

important about it, it really does provide the opportunity for agencies to start thinking about security on day 1 and privacy on day

1 versus thinking about security and privacy when you are ready

to roll out a system or once you are into the later design stages.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Hite, do you wish to add anything or respond

to the response?

Mr. HITE. I offer a couple thoughts. I agree that security is part

and parcel of each of those reference models, it is not a standalone

item, and it needs to be interwoven explicitly into those models.

I think there are lessons learned out there. I know IRS went

through the same process where they found it useful, after trying

to deal with the security elements of their enterprise architecture,

to explicitly extract security as a separate visible view into the architecture so that they would in fact be able to make informed decisions about how complete and correct they were in defining their

security profile.

So I think there are lessons learned out there in terms of how

to proceed in introducing security into the architecture. But I

would reiterate what I said in my oral statement, that it is not

something that is done after the fact and you try to lay on top of

it. Rather it is something that is done in concert with defining the

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business and the data and the technical, etc. elements of the architecture.

Mr. PUTNAM. The relationship between the development of the

FEA and the agency EA efforts presents something of a chicken

and egg dilemma. The FEA is designed to provide a framework to

facilitate the adoption of standards into common Lines of Business.

Agencies were required to develop their own EAs prior to work on

the FEA began to identify potential opportunities for standardization. How is OMB mediating these competing influences?

Ms. EVANS. Well, actually, I have the opportunity to talk from

both sides of the fence on this particular issue. Coming from an

agency where the work had already started, because having an enterprise architecture is not a new requirement that the agencies

were to have; they were to have modernization blueprints. We were

supposed to have all of these things going forward. But as we continue to evolve, and I think that it has been clear and it has been

said by all the distinguished members of the panel today, that this

continues to evolve, and it is not like you finish the work and you

are done and you move on. These things have to continue to evolve

and the work has to continue to progress, and it is important that

OMB now, in this new role that I am in, continues to provide the

leadership through the framework and through this effort so that

we can then ensure that the agencies’ investments and the decisions that they are making support the outcomes that they intend

for the overall programs of their departments. It isn’t so much the

IT itself, but how is the IT supporting the overall program outcomes?

So we are working, and we continuously work, to improve the

models and realign those, but also to continuously provide feedback

to the agencies so that their ongoing efforts can align with what

we are doing governmentwide as well.

Mr. PUTNAM. The initial development of an EA is a huge investment in time, dollars, talent. Recognizing that the maintenance of

an EA is an ongoing process, when might we expect to see some

dividends returned on this investment?

Ms. EVANS. Well, I would argue that you are seeing them happen

right now live, and the reason that I would argue that is that

through the efforts and with the budget submissions that came in

through 2004 and 2005, OMB had the opportunity to really analyze

across the Government where they could see redundant investments or where it looked like agencies were going in a similar direction. That is now what we are calling the Lines of Business

analysis. And so we have those Lines of Business going forward.

We know how much the agencies intended to invest in that area,

we know the numbers of investments that are in those areas, and

so now what we are doing is going forward and saying this is an

opportunity; ‘‘you guys are all working in this same area here,’’ ‘‘let

us come up with a common solution so that we can reduce the cost,

make use from lessons learned, and be able to go forward with a

common solution.’’ So you are seeing it now.

Do I have quantifiable benefits? The answer would be no because

we haven’t defined the common solution. We are targeted to do

that in this upcoming month. We had sent out a request for information, and I am happy to say we got the submissions in and we

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have well over 100 submissions that came in responding to the

Lines of Business in our questions on that and what is the best

way for the Government to proceed. That analysis is going on now,

and when we come to what the common solution will be, we will

have projected benefits that we believe we will be able to obtain.

Mr. PUTNAM. Do you know how much we have spent on FEA efforts so far?

Ms. EVANS. It is outlined on the Exhibit 53s, but we actually

have it. It is mixed in with the overall planning. I can get you that

number and get back to you and give the number for fiscal year

2004 and 2005, if you would like, sir.

Mr. PUTNAM. Please. And while we are talking about 2004 and

2005, you raised this in your last response about some of the duplication of effort that was identified, how many duplicate investments were identified?

Ms. EVANS. OK, I have that for you. I do have that. OK, in fiscal

year 2004 and 2005, we have the dollar amounts, but the top Lines

of Business based on what we have done so far is there is a category called Information Technology Management, which includes

our cross-agency investments. So the account that we have of investments there are 822 investments. Financial Management,

which is one of the Lines of Business that we are currently looking

at right now, we have 445 investments in that area. The Knowledge, Creation and Management, which is another top Line of

Business that we have identified through investments overall,

there are 251.

So we look at these and we say, OK, there is a lot of potential.

When you start looking specifically at the ones that we have outlined, and looking forward and saying, OK, for Human Resources

how many do we have in there, for investments we have 89 Human

Resources investments that showed up in the 2005 budget. For

Grants Management we have 36. So when we start looking at that

and then we look at the new development dollars that are associated with each of those, for example, in Human Resources, with the

89 investments planned, there is planned new development dollars

of $215 million associated with that, which means that there is a

possibility that we should be doing things in a consolidated way

that could reduce that implementation cost.

From a general appearance, from the 50,000 foot view, when you

come into OMB, from our perspective it looks like it is all duplicative, because when you start really looking at what is the business

that an agency does, the core accounting types of functions, all

agencies do core accounting; they have general ledgers, they

produce financial statements. So from our perspective, from an

OMB perspective, it all looks duplicative. However, when you have

to start getting down into how does an agency manage from day

to day, what are they doing, you have to then step back and really

use this as the tool that it was intended: it is to start that discussion, it is to start delving down and doing the analysis. Is this one

investment that was counted six times in a business case going

across or is it truly six different investments within an agency?

And that is one of the things that we have learned through the

business cases and getting the information in from the business

cases, is that we need to continuously give better guidance to the

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agencies so that we can then say, OK, this really is truly duplicative or, no, this is the one investment that was counted six times

coming across and it is really a corporate, departmental knowledge

management system that each agency is counting as they do their

business case.

So that is why we go out and we meet with the agencies. We

have done the analysis, this high-level analysis, and we hand it

back to the agency, and that is the assessment framework that we

are doing. And we say from our viewpoint this is what it looks like.

We are asking you now, through your budget cycle, through your

spraying and your planning cycles and your capital investment

plans, to look at these investments. Is it just a data issue or do you

truly have that many duplicative systems? And if you do, this is

your opportunity to do something about it.

Mr. PUTNAM. How about gaps? Do you have a number on the

gaps that were identified? In the 2004 and 2005 budget submissions, when you reviewed those, were there things that stood out

as being common gaps that needed to be filled?

Ms. EVANS. We looked more, when we were doing the analysis,

to what it appeared that agencies were investing in, not so much

was there a big gap overall. I mean, we do know, for example, that

EVMS project management types systems, we don’t have those, so

that was one and that was written into the scorecard so that could

then ensure the investments going forward. But what we really are

trying to do is get a handle on is this really a duplicative investment. And the other piece is if you have this service component,

if you have this type of service that you are doing in your agency,

can you leverage that now across with other partners, versus someone who says, oh, I am starting up a new system, and we have another one that looks very mature over here.

So we have tried to ensure that collaboration is occurring among

the agencies, so we haven’t really looked at what gaps analysis,

other than in our skills gaps, which GAO has brought up about

chief architects and our overall human capital skill gaps of project

management that we need.

Mr. PUTNAM. Let’s talk about the skill gap a little bit. A number

of agencies, as Mr. Hite pointed out, reported there was a scarcity

of skilled architecture staff. Have there been problems recruiting

and retaining the skilled personnel to develop and implement EAs?

We will start with Mr. Matthews.

Mr. MATTHEWS. At the Department of Transportation we have

been blessed that we have two core architects; one is a gentleman

serving on my staff, another comes to us from the FAA. And they

have been spearheading inside the department the enterprise architecture requirements. They have been working with all of the

operating agencies to bring them up to speed on the enterprise architecture process and also giving them some preliminary or primer

type information on enterprise architecture and what it means to

them on a day-to-day basis. But, by and large, in the market place

there are few resources available to draw on for enterprise architecture. Additionally, as we bring resources into the Federal Government, their ongoing work over time has to be considered and

how to keep their skills updated and upgraded with the current goings on in the marketplace.

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Thank you.

Mr. PUTNAM. Ms. Nelson.

Ms. NELSON. I concur.

Mr. PUTNAM. What do you see as being the utility of an FEA as

you set about developing your own agency’s EA?

Ms. NELSON. In EPA, we were one of the agencies that were

working on our architecture before the FEA was in place, so what

I see as the benefit of the FEA at this point in time is using it,

as well as the new Federal Enterprise Architecture Management

System that will be put in place, it provides an opportunity for the

agency to get an early view of what work is being done in other

Federal agencies. So where we might have opportunities for collaboration, both in terms of some of the products that we have developed that we might be able to roll out to other agencies to use,

reusable components, like our Central Data Exchange, as well as

looking at work that other agencies have done that might allow us

to avoid our own significant investments.

So using that new management system which will be available

to agencies for the first time, you will be able to look across the

Federal Government in an easy-to-use tool and see what kind of investments and projects are underway, and hopefully avoid earlier

in the process, redundancies or duplication. OMB has been able to

do that after submissions have been made. Like everything else,

you want to get ahead of the curve and you want to be able to

make those decisions earlier in the process rather than later.

Mr. PUTNAM. Earlier in your testimony, Ms. Nelson, you referred

to the Chief Architects Forum. They met for the first time in April

of this year to identify the individuals responsible for their own

agencies’ EA efforts and discuss common concerns. The forum was

convened by the CIO Council. What role is the Chief Architects

Forum playing in the development of the FEA and what is the relationship between the forum and the CIO Council?

Ms. NELSON. Some chief architects from throughout the Federal

Government have been actively engaged in all aspects of the Federal Enterprise Architecture, and they have done that through the

CIO Council’s Architecture and Infrastructure Committee, of which

I am the co-chair, only since December. When the most recent, I

guess the third, GAO report came out, my colleague and my cochair, John Gilligan, who is the CIO for Air Force, decided we

needed to take a step back. As the co-chairs of the Architecture Infrastructure Committee, we realized that the work plans we had

for that committee for the next year may have been too aggressive

if in fact most agencies, as GAO indicated, were still at stage 1.

And one of the things we did was to say we really need a large

forum, an opportunity for the chief architects to talk to one another.

Before that forum was held in April, the chief architects from the

agencies had never once been brought together. So with the forum

and quarterly meetings now, they have an opportunity to discuss

common issues, challenges, hurdles, solutions, best practices, and

hopefully we can use that as an opportunity to work with GAO and

say what are the most common—and Mr. Hite was at that introductory meeting—what are the most common challenges and how

can we quickly move forward on some easy solutions with the goal

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Mr. Gilligan and I have is using that forum to quickly get as many

agencies as possible to stage 2 and stage 3, because while that column is very big under stage 1, we think there are some simple solutions where we can quickly slide that column over to stage 2, and

we want to use the forum to do that.

Mr. PUTNAM. Do you want to elaborate on what some of those

easy things would be to get everybody into stage 2?

Ms. NELSON. Sure. Well, I’ll speak for my own agency. My own

agency went from a three in the first GAO evaluation to a two to

a one. That is not good progress.

Mr. PUTNAM. Going the wrong way.

Ms. NELSON. It is a slide, a slide the wrong way, you are right.

We feel that right now, with some simple changes we have made,

we are probably at a three, and using the OMB self-assessment,

probably have rated ourselves as a three. Simple thing. We have

never had a formal written policy.

Mr. PUTNAM. Wait a second. You gave yourself a three, but they

gave you a one?

Ms. NELSON. Well, they did, but the one thing you have to understand about the GAO policy or the GAO approach, and I think it

is a good approach, but the one thing you have to understand about

it is you could get 31 out of 32 right, and in most classrooms across

the country that is an A, that is close to a 95 percent——

Mr. PUTNAM. Even under No Child Left Behind.

Ms. NELSON. But under the GAO framework, if you got 31 out

of 32 correct and the one you didn’t get correct is a stage 1, then

you are way back at the beginning.

Mr. PUTNAM. Do you hear that Mr. Hite? She doesn’t like your

grading scale.

Ms. NELSON. So you do have to delve down a little. And I am not

arguing. I think the questions they are asking are the right questions, but you have to understand that.

So, for instance, all through stage 1, 2, and 3 there are two

things we can take care of. One of them is do we have enough resources. We answered no because at that period of time we were

in a freeze. We do have enough resources now. That is easy. Checkmark. That automatically takes us to stage 2. Stage 3, we did not

have a formal written policy that the Administrator had signed.

Even though we are using the architecture, it is part of our investment process, we are applying it, we have aligned it with the FEA.

Because there wasn’t a piece of paper with Administrator Mike

Levitt’s signature on it, it kicked us all the way back. We will have

that policy signed in the next few weeks; we are working it through

the process now.

There are things like that many agencies have cited, and we are

helping them find the best policies throughout the Federal Government and get them in place. But what is important is you have to

use them. Just having that piece of paper signed is meaningless if

you are not really using it.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Hite.

Mr. HITE. I would offer a couple additional thoughts to amplify

on what Ms. Nelson is saying.

What you see on that chart is a point in time representation.

Most of those responses were as of about 10 months ago. So the

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way things are today I would hope are much better than they were

then. And as Ms. Nelson is saying, they are in her situation much

better.

The other thing to keep in mind when you look at that is that

is a representation at an aggregated level of a lot of detailed information. When you aggregate information, you can lose specifics, so

you have to have rules governing how you aggregate it. The rule

that we used in applying our framework was in order to be at a

stage, you need to satisfy all core elements at that stage. If you

don’t satisfy all, you don’t qualify for that stage. So embedded in

that is the reality that an organization could be not satisfying one

stage 2, and thus be at stage 1, and they may be satisfying a half

a dozen stage 3, 4, and 5 elements. That level of detail is not in

an aggregated view, it is in the details of what we reported.

And, of course, the other thing to keep in mind, the reason we

adopted that philosophy is these things, these core elements that

needed to be present were not trivial things; they all have a very

real purpose, a purpose that is grounded in best practices, a purpose that is extracted from the Federal CIO Council practical guide

on managing enterprise architecture. So they are not things that

we came up with, saying this would be nice to have; these are fundamentals.

Mr. PUTNAM. What about this signature thing? If they have this

great policy and they are doing it, and they just have a slow bureaucracy that the Administrator can’t get around to rubber-stamping this policy that is already in place, that is really enough to

backslide two grades?

Mr. HITE. Well, the core element that needed to be met relative

to stage 2 was that you had a policy governing enterprise architecture development, and whether in EPA’s case it was because a policy existed but it just was not signed, to be honest with you, I can’t

speak to the specifics of every situation. But the purpose of a policy

is very profound. A policy demonstrates an organization’s commitment to perform a certain way. In the absence of policy which says

this is how we are going to operate in this organization, then people are left to their own devices. And people left to their own devices go off in different directions, all with good intentions, and architecture is designed to get people all marching in the same direction.

Mr. PUTNAM. Is there some deadline when that policy was supposed to be in place by, Ms. Evans?

Ms. EVANS. No, we did not establish a specific deadline that said

all agencies have to have a policy. As a matter of fact, I believe

that was one of the suggestions that GAO had offered, that we

should send a letter out enhancing that and advising going forward

on that. That was one of the suggestions going forward, because

there wasn’t specific guidelines out there saying every agency

needs to have a policy in place.

But I would like to followup a little bit on that and say that I

don’t disagree with the way that the GAO model is set up in ensuring that the basic tenets of a good program are in place. I would

like to say, though, that you have to take both of those into consideration to really see if an agency is truly using enterprise architecture to go forward to manage its portfolio. And so we are not here

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to debate whether the GAO maturity model and framework is a

good one or a bad one, because it is based on the tenets of the CIO

Council as well, a framework that came out of the CIO Council, but

what we are saying from an OMB perspective is that—and this is

another recommendation that came from the GAO report as well—

is that we had to exercise even more oversight and more guidance

out to the agencies. And that is the reason why we came up with

the assessment framework from our perspective, too, because then

it compliments what GAO is doing, so that you can then look at

it as if, well, OK, if the policy is in draft, then it is going through,

but yet they have all the other tenets there and they have the capability and they are using it, then you can use the two frameworks to really get a handle on how an agency is moving forward

and how mature that process really is, and is it really embedded

into the strategic planning going forward.

Mr. PUTNAM. I don’t want to harp on this and punish Ms. Nelson

for being candid, but it just seems like the policy ought to be first

base. How do you do all the other stuff if you don’t have the leadership from the top? That is what we harp on in every one of these

hearings, is getting leadership from the top. And if you all are already doing these things, it sure seems like having a policy signed

and in place by the agency head or the department head ought to

be one of the first things that is done just to get them committed,

the name on the dotted line, and get them invested.

Ms. EVANS. I would just like to comment one further point on

this. The policy itself isn’t so much about do you have an enterprise

architecture in place and are you doing certain things. The policies

and the guidelines that come out from OMB are based on the tenets that are in the Clinger-Cohen Act and in the E-Gov Act, talking about overall management of the portfolio and how you are

moving forward with your capital planning.

Now, if you have a good mature capital investment planning program, then that means you have a modernization blueprint which

is your enterprise architecture. So that is the point that I am making, that this is not a new thing that the agencies had to do. So

when we talk about the details there, the agencies do have policies

and plans in place of how they manage capital investments, and so

those are in place, those have been signed by the agency heads

going forward.

Additionally, what we have done to bring this to the agency in

holding an agency accountable is this is specifically included in the

President’s management agenda and in the scorecard under the EGov element. So for an agency to be able to go green, this is a

green criteria; that you have to have your enterprise architecture

in place, you have to have that modernization blueprint in there,

and you have to be using it. And so that is how we are holding the

agencies accountable in that manner through the scorecard.

Mr. PUTNAM. So there is a direct connection, then, between your

at-risk status and the FEA initiative. So you use this scoring mechanism to decide whether they are making progress or made

progress on the FEA?

Ms. EVANS. We actually use a combination. And so we have our

own assessment model, and actually what we do, and you would

recognize it, we put up a quadrant when we meet the agencies and

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we map our assessment score against the GAO assessment score,

and the agency falls into a quadrant. I would be glad to give you

a draft, in essence a report that we provide each agency as we go

forward so that they can see how we are looking at their architecture efforts in concert with how they showed up in the GAO report,

and then we go into a detailed assessment based on criteria that

we have developed; and then we show them, based on all of that,

how many of your investments aligned to the BRM, we give them

very specific information about where we couldn’t see clear alignment of investments and we give them the number, and then we

also give them very specifically a list of investments that look like

they are duplicative to us, getting back to your original comment.

So we give them a whole huge package so that they can look at it.

And we can give you a draft of this report, a representative sample

of how we are doing that.

Mr. PUTNAM. I don’t think I want to see. I don’t even understand

the Cliff Notes version you just gave me.

Ms. EVANS. Well, what happens is that we take this and we take

our assessment and we map it on a grid, and there is a maturity

model associated with it. And then, with all the other tools that we

have in place, we look at, OK, if this isn’t in place, there is a series

of documents that we look through based on the submission, what

they were required to do. So what will happen is if they don’t

have—I mean, the best way to do this is if they don’t have enough

information for us to even assess it, we show them what we are

doing with the other agencies and it is marked DRAFT all the way

across, which then that means they don’t have the checkmark on

the scorecard that says that they have a modernization blueprint,

which then that pretty much drives down, it is a cascading effect

to all the other things that are going on that they are being measured for of how they do their overall portfolio.

So if you have an agency who is just trying to get checkmarks,

which means that they may have a group of people who are working on filling out paperwork for business cases and another group

that is trying to fill out the paperwork so they can get their checkmarks for enterprise architecture, when you pull it all together,

you can see that is why they have at-risk investments, that is why

they don’t have a good cyber security program, because they are

just trying to get the checkmarks going forward.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Matthews, do you understand the system? You

have to live with it.

Mr. MATTHEWS. Yes, sir.

Mr. PUTNAM. Ms. Nelson, do you understand it?

Ms. NELSON. I believe so. Karen and I are meeting on Friday to

go over this, so I am sure I will have a fuller understanding on Friday.

Mr. PUTNAM. Well, bring your quadrant paper. If you all understand it, I am happy. I mean, I think that is great. I just get a little

bit nervous about all the different ways that we grade things. A legitimate complaint about things is that we are always changing the

rules of the game. So as long as the folks having to do this understand the rules of the game and what they are being held accountable for, I think that is wonderful. But if she thinks she is a three

and GAO thinks she is a one, I don’t know which quadrant that

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puts her in, maybe she is a two, but it does get a little confusing,

at least for the slow learner in the crowd who is sitting in this

chair.

Ms. NELSON. Can I clarify?

Mr. PUTNAM. Please.

Ms. NELSON. I do want to say, and I think hopefully it came

across before, I support the measures that GAO has in place. And,

in fact, in conversations with our own architecture committee and

our chief architects, I said we need to accept these. This isn’t about

disagreeing with these, because these are accurate, these are right.

All I was trying to do is point out, though, that the numbers on

the surface can be deceiving, because you can get up to 20 here.

There are about 32 things you get ranked on, and if you miss one

of those, you could be stage 4 or stage 1, depending on what you

miss. So that is why I am just suggesting delve down one layer to

see which one an agency is missing and how significant is that.

It is also important that the GAO model really measures maturity. And that is a little bit different than what OMB is measuring.

So while they are different, that is OK, as long as the people who

are using them understand the difference. And those of us who are

using them, I think we do understand the difference. As I said, we

just did our own self-assessment using the OMB model, and I think

we are close to a level 3. You don’t want to confuse those because

they are measuring different things.

Ms. EVANS. Let me try one more time. But when you map the

two of those together, because it is the question that you are asking. OK, you get an assessment from GAO and it is saying, for example, let us take EPA, and it says it is a one. Then we have a

tool that says, oh, they are a three. So the natural question is, well,

what the heck is that and why are you measuring two separate

things. Well, we are trying to then give you a view into, OK, they

may have the basic tenets, you know, they may be practicing

things very well, but they don’t have the core of what they need

to have a sustaining practice beyond the current people that are

there. So that is why we tried to put it in a framework that an

agency could look at it.

So if you took a one and a three, based on these two, they would

show in the quadrant that is growth, which means that they have

the potential to continue to grow in EA competencies, which would

definitely show that there is a difference there and that communication needs to go forward; that it is definitely not a best of breed

there.

Mr. PUTNAM. Room for growth. Seems like my junior high report

card. Room for growth.

I apologize if I have dragged this into the weeds.

Mr. Hite, do you have any comments that you would like to leave

us with before we move to panel two? You started all this.

Mr. HITE. Yes, sir, if I could offer a couple of comments on what

we have been talking about so we can get further into the weeds,

one of which is that I would be willing to accept on behalf, for you,

what Karen asked to share with you, because I would be very much

interested in seeing those results.

But let me also say that when we did this framework, we didn’t

believe that it is going to be the end-all and be-all, the one measure

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that is going to tell you everything you want to know about

progress in enterprise architecture. One of our motives was that it

is not being measured now at all, so let us get a measurement tool

out there. But we also recognize that it measures a particular

thing: it measures the maturity of the management process. It is

a process framework. It does not measure maturity of content of

the architecture, for example. That is a whole different set of criteria. So we believe that there needs to be multiple measures.

Now, I haven’t looked at the specific one that Ms. Evans is talking about, so I can’t comment on it particularly, but I can say that

I support the idea of multiple measures so that you get a clearer

picture of where an agency is in this very important area.

Mr. PUTNAM. How many people work in GAO’s IT division?

Mr. HITE. Rough number is 160 to 165.

Mr. PUTNAM. Isn’t it fun having 165 people checking out everything you do, Ms. Evans?

Ms. EVANS. Yes, it is.

Mr. HITE. Well, I would like to also add that I have about six

looking at enterprise architecture across the entire Federal Government.

Mr. PUTNAM. Well, we haven’t really cracked any heads or anything over what is on this chart, and I think now that we are

digging in, there are good reasons for doing that. But I think that

you can generally say, looking at the trend, for whatever falls are

in your scoring mechanism or in the grading content, the trend

isn’t real high.

Mr. HITE. Absolutely.

Mr. PUTNAM. I mean, you have 76 in stage 1, nobody in stage 4,

and 1 in stage 5.

Mr. HITE. Well, this one over here shows you the actual trend.

This shows you if things have gotten better since they were in

2001. And that is comparing against the same version of the framework.

Mr. PUTNAM. I think that is the overarching lesson here, without

digging down into exactly what the content was. The bottom line

is we have a long way to go.

Mr. Matthews.

Mr. MATTHEWS. Mr. Chairman, one thing that I wanted to mention on the OMB version, there are certain criteria in each one of

those stages, and while an agency may be working at satisfying criteria in stage 2 and 3, and they don’t have, as Ms. Nelson pointed

out, a signed document from the Administrator of the Secretary’s

office, it would reflect them as being in stage 1 until such time as

they had that document, even though they had satisfied everything

in two, three, four, and five. Perhaps when we report, an acknowledgment that certain criteria are being met in other categories

would be a better indication of an agency’s growth along that

framework path. Certainly agencies need to have senior management support, but the true measure of the work that is going on

is how many of those criteria are being met from year to year.

Thank you, sir.

Mr. PUTNAM. Ms. Nelson is going to go camp out in front of the

administrator’s door and hold him down until he signs her paper.

Ms. Nelson.

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Ms. NELSON. I have the pleasure of having an administrator,

Mike Leavitt, who gets it, who understands enterprise architecture.

In our very first meeting he raised and used those words, so we

will get it done. But I concur with Mr. Matthews, because an interesting chart for you to look at maybe is to see if you take the 32

items or characteristics we are being measured on for maturity,

how many agencies answered yes to those characteristics in stage

4, stage 5, stage 3, stage 2? Because you are going to see a lot way

out there in four and five, and the question becomes some people

believe you can’t get to four unless you do every single thing in

three. I disagree with that. I think in order to really truly sustain

it for a long period of time that may be necessary, but I think you

can gradually move into higher levels of stages, because it is not

a perfect world. And it might be interesting, as Mr. Matthews said,

to look out and see how many people do have yeses in threes and

fours and five. It just gives you a slightly different picture. We still

need to do everything GAO said. I agree wholeheartedly we have

to do it. But it is a slightly different picture or perspective on the

same situation.

Mr. HITE. I would agree that is a relevant thing to look at and,

in fact, we looked at that. So we looked at the performance of core

elements between 2001 and 2003, regardless of what stage they

were in, and basically we found that—I can’t remember the exact

numbers, but this is the rough figures. I think it was something

like 57 percent of them were being performed or 47 percent were

being performed in 2001 and 53 percent of them were being performed in 2003. So if you even look at core elements, regardless of

stage, there wasn’t much change between 2001 and 2003.

Mr. PUTNAM. Fifty-three percent is an F in most places.

Ms. Evans, do you have any final thoughts?

Ms. EVANS. Well, first and foremost, I would like to thank you

for having the hearing today on the Federal Enterprise Architecture, as well as giving the agencies the opportunity to talk about

their enterprise architectures. As you can see, this is going to be

a continuous challenge just based on the dialog that we were having today, and how we are using it to continue and manage overall.

But I think the big key is to really realize that this isn’t really just

an IT tool, and that the CIOs, yes, are chartered to do it and we

have mapped it to do things with the IT investments, but this really is a management tool, and it is a strategic management tool.

And I have been able to answer questions very quickly and very

rapidly for my management by saying, yes, I know what agencies

are in this area providing this type of service and, oh, by the way,

I do know how many dollars are being invested in IT this way. We

may not necessarily talk about the models, and you can see when

you start getting down to a certain level here we have to start talking the same language, and technical people go off in one direction

and management people go in another, but the key here is that this

tool and a hearing like this raises it to a level where we then can

talk about it and start going down that path. So I would like to

commend you and thank you for having this hearing today for us.

Mr. PUTNAM. Well, thank you, and you all keep working on it.

We have a long way to go, but it is very important, and we appreciate the work that you are doing on it.

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The committee will stand in recess for a couple of moments while

we arrange for the second panel.

[Recess.]

Mr. PUTNAM. The subcommittee will reconvene.

I would like to welcome our second panel of witnesses and ask

that you please rise and raise your right hand, along with any others who may be accompanying you for the purposes of providing information to the subcommittee.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. PUTNAM. Note for the record that all the witnesses responded in the affirmative, and we will move immediately to their

testimony.

Our first witness for the second panel is Dr. Dave McClure. Dr.

McClure is the vice president for E-Government with the Council

for Excellence in Government. In that position, Dr. McClure serves

as the strategic leader of the Council’s E-Government Information

Technology programs, developing strategies with public and private

sector leaders to use information and communication technology to

improve the performance of government and engage citizens. Dr.

McClure is also involved in many of the Council’s intergovernmental partnerships and helps runs the E-Government Fellows

Program.

Prior to joining the Council in 2002, Dr. McClure was the Director of Information Technology Management Issues at GAO. As a

member of the SES at GAO, he conducted governmentwide evaluations of IT investment and performance measurement issues, monitoring agency implementation of IT management improvement efforts, evaluating the progress being made with E-Government initiatives, and reviewing agencies’ IT work force planning strategies.

In 1998 and 2001 and in 2004 he was named one of Federal

Computer Week’s top 100 IT executives in the Federal Government.

Welcome to the subcommittee. You are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENTS OF DAVID MCCLURE, VICE PRESIDENT FOR EGOVERNMENT, COUNCIL FOR EXCELLENCE IN GOVERNMENT; VENKATAPATHI PUVVADA, UNISYS CHAIR, ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE SHARED INTEREST GROUP, INDUSTRY ADVISORY COUNCIL; NORMAN E. LORENTZ, SENIOR

VICE PRESIDENT, DIGITALNET; AND RAYMOND B. WELLS,

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, IBM FEDERAL, VICE PRESIDENT, STRATEGIC TRANSFORMATIONS FOR IBM SOFTWARE

GROUP, APPLICATION INTEGRATION & MIDDLEWARE DIVISION [AIM], IBM CORP.

Mr. MCCLURE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be

here. As you noted, my organization, the Council for Excellence in

Government, has been dedicated for more than 20 years to helping

achieve high-performance government and increasing public participation and confidence in government.

I think it is very important that we not lose the citizen perspective in the discussions that we have today. Our national polls and

some of the homeland security town halls that we have had around

the country recently show that the public wants a government that

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is accountable, simple, convenient to interact with, and accessible

through the means of their choice.

The FEA provides some important tools for defining and providing this streamlined, simplified citizen-centric government to the

American public. OMB has provided a crisp analysis of the Federal

Government as it is and has offered a strong vision of where it can

be. The common program, business and service delivery patterns of

government are presented with clarity and help reveal the complex

overlapping and often duplicative nature of its interactions with

citizens and businesses.

The FEA approach follows leading-edge commercial practice.

Many Fortune 500 companies are using similar approaches to better align their technology with business process needs. They have

recognized that IT is more than just building and running systems.

Enterprise architecture approaches ‘‘tune-up’’ organizations, focusing on management of information as a core asset, and emphasizing component reuse rather than the constant ‘‘scrap and build’’

that we have had in the past.

The FEA is not defining a single architecture for the entire Federal Government. Rather, it assembles the assets and the tools that

can provide cross-agency analyses, identification of performance

gaps, and opportunities for better alignment of resources. It is not

static; it will change and it will evolve as technologies change.

We must stay this course with the FEA. The payoff for the Government simply can be huge. Not only can this help achieve cost

savings and performance improvements, but it also can grow the

public’s confidence, trust, and satisfaction with Government itself.

Let me touch on three important challenges that lie ahead. First,

we have to proceed with disciplined maturity and alignment. We

have to make some sense of the many moving pieces of Government programs, policies, and services, and the enterprise architecture approach is a valid tool for doing that. But we have to get

agencies up to par. GAO’s audit work, using its widely endorsed EA

Assessment Framework, reveals this very mixed progress in the

pace, speed, and direction of the EA work taking place in the Federal Government.

The good news is that there are a lot of bright spots. GAO’s aggregate or top line numbers, as you have seen on these charts,

while maybe disappointing, tell only a partial picture. Many agencies are actually doing things at higher maturity levels but cannot

be tagged that way because they are not performing completely at

lower levels. Several of these agencies, by the way, Mr. Chairman,

are on the verge of getting fives on GAO’s scale.

But putting agency-centric architectures in place really stops

short of the larger governmentwide transformation that EA can

help create. We need both vertical alignment of goals, processes,

and technology within agencies, and, where possible, horizontal

alignment across common governmentwide functions and processes.

There is a lot of work to be done in both of those areas.

My second point is about the ‘‘so-what.’’ It makes sense that

those that determine budgets should see measurable impact from

the time, cost, and energies that we are putting into enterprise architecture approaches. They are many that come to mind: streamlined and simplified processes, greater systems interoperability

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that facilitate the exchange of information, faster application delivery, and enterprise licensing opportunities, just to mention a few.

These are important. They have real dollars attached to them.

When combined with measuring and scoring the EA capability maturity, the measures provide a fact-based assessment of capacity,

capability, and results. These measures are necessary, but by

themselves I don’t think are sufficient. The real high value return

from enterprise architecture are those that capture the impact on

direct mission-related performance, whether that be saving lives,

protecting the environment, inspecting the food supply, or identifying and deterring terrorist threats. Better EA should translate into

time, cost, and quality improvements in government, and we cannot lose this line of sight.

A final key challenge is leadership. Enterprise architectures require commitment and participation from top leadership, beginning

with the heads of agencies and program executives all the way

through the CIO, CFO, and procurement officer communities. It

cannot be the sole purview of CIOs and CTOs.

In this vein, I think it is imperative that OMB’s vacancy in its

chief architect position be filled carefully and very expeditiously.

This person is the most visible spokesperson for architecture in the

Federal Government, and directs the FEA work, and also supports

program assessments and business case reviews in the OMB budget cycle. We need a credible, experienced individual with strong

outreach, collaboration and communication skills. That person has

to translate a lot of the jargon of EA into something that is understandable to non-technology managers and executives, and it is a

very, very important job.

So we need continued focused leadership from OMB. We also,

Mr. Chairman, need to extend this dialog on the Hill beyond this

committee and into the Budget, Appropriations, and Authorizing

Committees of the Congress. Enterprise architectures offer great

hope both as engines of change and instruments of sorely needed

management controls over orderly government transformation.

Transparency, accountability, and results that translate into better

Government for the American public should be front and center in

all of these efforts.

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. McClure follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, Dr. McClure.

Our next witness is Mr. Venkatapathi Puvvada. Mr. Puvvada

serves as Chair of the Industry Advisory Council, Enterprise Architecture Shared Interest Group, and works closely with the CIO

Council, Office of Management and Budget, and other Government

agencies in that capacity. Mr. Puvvada co-founded the EA SIG in

2002 to address the need for industry and government partnerships

to help bring industry best practices and expertise together in a

common forum. The IAC EA SIG is comprised of over 200 practicing architects and executives from over 100 companies.

That is harder to say than your name.

Mr. Puvvada was recognized with the prestigious Federal 100

Award in 2003 for his contributions and impact on the direction of

IT in government. For more than 18 years, Mr. Puvvada has

worked in information systems, 16 years of that with Unisys. In

addition to serving as the chair of the EA SIG, Mr. Puvvada is the

chief technology officer of Unisys Global Public Sector, as well as

the vice president and partner for Unisys Worldwide Enterprise

Architecture Solutions Services Practice. The Unisys EA Solutions

Practice consists of world-class enterprise solution architects that

develop and implement architectures for clients such as the TSA,

the GSA, the DOD, the VA, the FDA, and several State governments.

Welcome to the subcommittee.

Mr. PUVVADA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We will try to simplify

these acronyms next time around.

Thank you for inviting me to speak today. I am really honored

to be here representing Industry Advisory Council [IAC], and I

would like to acknowledge some of my colleagues that are here for

their hard work and their passion to improve architectures in the

government in the truly excellent way that they represent 400

member companies of IAC.

In terms of our work, before I get into the details of the testimony, our recommendations and best practices have been successfully published in the form of five white papers, and they have

been widely recognized for their innovative insight, and the details

are included in my written testimony.

In our view, enterprise architecture is the only practical way on

a consistent basis for comparison of investment decision by agency

executive leadership. Private sector experience suggests that the

proper development and usage of EA can lead to a major transformation of an organization, its processes, and its performance.

As for commenting on the progress of the FEA initiative, the development of the interlinked reference model allows the Government to have an enterprise view of its business for the first time.

As a result of the progress on FEA, we acknowledge significant improvements in the way the agencies conduct the quality and the assessment of their budgets and the preparation of the budget process. Various departments and agencies are also making good

progress in allowing their enterprise architectures in the context of

the Federal Government and FEA. EA products are effectively used

by several CIOs as decisionmaking framework in the capital planning portfolio management and general IT governance. Therefore

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we rate very high marks for the blueprint for improved IT investment management aspect of the hearing, Mr. Chairman.

However, major hurdles exist for cross-agency collaboration and

information sharing aspects. Some of these challenges are as follows. First one is lack of sufficient positive incentives for agencies

to collaborate and have common business process integration and

secure information sharing. The second one is lack of sufficient

funding and key resources, especially chief architect of the OMB,

as Mr. McClure referred to, and the skills in the context of business architecture skills to lead and implement this transformation

at the department level, as well as the Federal level. Also, the Government needs to move the FEA and EA as a high priority transformation mechanism for the owners business and mission program

so that it doesn’t turn out to be a technical exercise for architects

and the CIOs.

Going forward with the FEA and the agency EA, we believe timely completion and implementation of the data and information reference model is very important. The ability of the Federal Government agencies to understand and map to each other’s data through

the use of a common model is a major factor in achieving the crossagency collaboration, information sharing and data interoperability,

along with some quick success pilots. Development and implementation of the big 10 enterprise security and privacy architecture, as

referred to earlier by Mr. Hite, that is integrated into all layers of

EA is very critical as well.

Mr. Chairman, industry really appreciates your commitment,

your committee’s commitment in getting involved as a major stakeholder in this initiative. We believe that the articulation of legislative priorities and activities in the context of FEA are really pertinent in advancing the maturity of business-driven IT solutions that

citizens are expecting.

To summarize our view, IAC is very supportive of enterprise architecture initiatives as a major government priority and agrees

with its general direction and recommends staying the course.

There are a lot of challenges facing these initiatives, but they can

be overcome with strong executive leadership, clear governance,

and positive incentives for agencies to collaborate. We applaud the

Government for reaching out to IAC and industry and leverage our

expertise, and we are committed to continuing this support in future.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today, and

I would be very happy to answer your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Puvvada follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much.

Our next witness is Norman Lorentz. Mr. Lorentz joined

DigitalNet as senior vice president in September 2003. Prior to

that, Mr. Lorentz served as the first Chief Technology Officer for

the Federal Government at the Office of Management and Budget,

where he was also the Acting Administrator for E-Government and

Information Technology. While at OMB, Mr. Lorentz spearheaded

the White House mission to overhaul the Federal Government information technology infrastructure and its processes. In driving

this initiative, he directed the development of the Federal Enterprise Architecture. In addition, during his tenure with OMB, Mr.

Lorentz was a member of the Chief Information Officer Council’s

Executive Committee and the recipient of numerous government

and industry awards for his leadership and innovation.

You are a frequent guest of this subcommittee. We are delighted

to have you back, and you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. LORENTZ. It is nice to be invited back, and also members of

the subcommittee. I am here today to talk about the progress that

has been made on the implementation and operationalization of the

FEA in OMB and the Federal agencies.

In my role as CTO of the Federal Government and OMB, I directed the development of the FEA. I believed then that the FEA

provided a tremendous amount of promise in becoming the structure for governance for the effective development and management

of information technology and other asset classes in the Federal

Government, and I continue to advocate that today.

I would like to talk a bit about the current situation, what the

value of the FEA is to the agency and citizens, the impact on the

business plan process, the continuing challenges, and then, finally,

success factors.

The FEA models are just about finished. The data reference

model and the security profile that has already been discussed are

about to be completed, and this framework will provide significant

progress. The FEA really consists of two components: the framework outline in the FEA models, as well as the EAs that are in the

agencies themselves. Without the connection between the FEA and

the EAs, there is not a solid construct within which to make investment decisions.

In the past couple of years, and we have already discussed in

quite detail, the GAO and OMB have provided assessment models.

What I would say about assessment models is that they are necessary, but they are not sufficient. What is sufficient is the measurement of citizen and mission-centered results. These assessment

models are used to describe a weigh station, not the end result.

And, finally, OMB is using the FEA to identify high priority Lines

of Business and consolidation in the context of those Lines of Business.

The value to the citizen is that the FEA provides visibility into

the agencies’ business and solidifies future business plans. It helps

reduce the cost of current business processes by eliminating

redundancies and improving the efficiency of IT investment. The

outcome for the citizen is high-quality cost-efficient government

services.

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From an investment standpoint, the FEA supports the establishment of a portfolio approach to prioritize IT investments. Without

the FEA, the Federal Government would not be able to prioritize

in a collaborative manner in these investments addressing the

highest priority for the citizen. From a governance standpoint, the

FEA provides a holistic point of view; it gives both a business perspective in terms of the performance and business reference model,

which is the ‘‘what’’ for the improvement, and then it also provides

the more technically oriented reference models, which describe the

‘‘how.’’ And from a technology standpoint, FEA provides a coordinated approach to reporting between OMB and the Chief Information Officer’s Council is making significant progress in maturing

the reference models.

The impact of the FEA on the business case process in OMB. Although the agencies have been making progress in the business

cases, last year, the first year, the OMB issued guidance in A–11

that included specifics on the FEA. Doing so was a significant step.

The agencies should provide similar guidance for consolidation opportunities in the context of the EAs.

The continuing challenges. Some agencies are struggling to implement the FEA. As OMB provides additional support in the reference model areas, this should be accelerated; in building and maturing EAs and gaining participation and ownership of the business areas. This is not a technology problem, this has been reinforced many times. This is a business problem, so it requires business leadership in the agencies; deputy secretaries, chief financial

officers, as well as the chief information officer. There is limited

up-front visibility in the detail of other agencies’ EAs, and so the

FEA provides the construct up front to be able to do those consolidation analyses. The target EAs for the agencies are limited in

their forecast and scope. In other words, they cannot see very far

into the horizon. And some agencies have separated EA and capital

planning, and that is not sufficient.

Critical success factors. As an integrated governance model, a

marriage between the business owner, the chief financial officer,

and the chief information officer in making the business decisions.

To reinforce what my partners here have already said in terms

of the chief architect position, it is necessary that we provide someone to that position who has both business and technology expertise. And, also, that OMB architect position is necessary, but not

sufficient. There is further analysis resources that are required at

OMB level in order to be able to do the cross-organizational analysis for transformation.

In conclusion, I have recognized significant progress, and we

have heard that said here. There has been much that has been accomplished, but there is still work to be done. And, finally, in a futuristic scenario, right now the Federal Enterprise Architecture is

being viewed to look at the IT asset class. But this business-oriented Federal Enterprise Architecture can also be used for the

other asset classes: human capital and fixed assets.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today, and I would look

forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lorentz follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much.

Our final witness on this panel is Dr. Raymond Wells. Dr. Wells

is the chief technology officer for IBM Federal and vice president,

Strategic Transformations for the IBM Software Group’s Application Integration & Middleware Division. In addition, he is on assignment to one of the U.S. Government’s classified agencies. Prior

to accepting the CTO Federal position in October 2002, he was Director of Strategy for 4 years. He has 35 years experience in information technology and has been employed with IBM since 1993.

Dr. Wells has served in various administrations of the State of Alabama and as the Chief Financial Officer for the State of Alabama.

He began the process of transforming the State’s financial management systems. Later, as Chief Technology Officer, he completed the

transformation, known as the Financial Resources Management

System, the most integrated financial management system in the

public sector at the time.

Welcome to the subcommittee, and you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. WELLS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. IBM appreciates the committee’s invitation to speak today about the Federal Enterprise Architecture. Our message to the committee today is quite simple: the

focus provided by the Federal Enterprise Architecture initiative of

the Office of Management and Budget is sound policy. FEA is

about leveraging technology to focus on strategic priorities. Enormous benefits will be returned to the Government and its citizens.

Enterprise architecture is a framework or a set of interlocking

frameworks which has as its core the organization’s mission and

strategy. It is about the strategic management of technology resources which provides the substantiation and manifestation of efficient and effective business processes. This is paramount. Understanding the key business processes is a prerequisite for

prioritizing and guiding information technology investments.

Perhaps no organization understands this better than IBM. Our

own transformation has an obvious relevance to the business modernization efforts now in progress within the Federal Government.

IBM underwent a major financial, competitive, and cultural transformation beginning in 1995. IBM refocused itself on the customer

in the marketplace as the measure of success and recreated the

company as an entity that could translate technology into business

value.

The Federal Government finds itself in much the same situation

as IBM 10 years ago, a vast, siloed organization with disparate information technology systems, a multitude of data bases and applications that didn’t work with each other, and with complex and

often competing business processes that hindered organizational efficiency.

IBM’s own transformation required a fundamental reexamination

of everything that we were doing. We consolidated and focused our

business processes, improved our time-to-market by 75 percent, reduced business applications we used to run the business from

16,000 to 5,200, consolidated 155 data centers into 12, reduced 31

private networks into 1, went from 128 different CIO positions to

1; we have installed multiples of the IT capacity that we had in

1993 at roughly one third the cost. In short, we learned to manage

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technology strategically and discovered it was less expensive and

vastly improved productivity.

So enterprise architecture is about common processes and supporting systems based upon open standards which foster interoperability. Enterprise architecture also has the additional advantage

of helping to create a unified culture within the agency. IBM’s experience dictates one key facet for success: the key to enterprise architecture is sustained executive commitment and the strategic allocation of resources to key operational initiatives.

At the leadership and framework level, the Federal Government

is approaching FEA correctly; there is a program office in place to

manage the process, a management system is available which provides agencies the tools to assess enterprise architecture requirements and develop and implement their own enterprise architectures. Empirical knowledge and effective solutions are being captured so that the agencies can reuse and extend lessons learned,

avoiding duplication and leveraging available resources.

As in any major transformation effort, there are areas for improvement. The examination of OMB’s scorecard, as has been repeated here, shows some agencies moving more rapidly than others. In some instances this can be explained by the sheer complexity of the operational requirements and technologies that need to

be mapped. What is needed is more agency leadership on enterprise architecture implementation and more discipline with respect

to strategic IT investments. We still see far too much in the way

of tactical investment in technology.

Consider the Department of Defense, with over $1 trillion in assets and an annual budget of roughly $400 billion and 3 million

military and civilian employees, global missions, facilities and suppliers. DOD is obviously the world’s largest and most complex enterprise. DOD’s enterprise architecture is the largest, most complex, and most pervasive enterprise architecture developed to date,

either in the public or private sector. Historically, the Department’s

services and agencies have used individual procedures with multiple systems to support those procedures. This limits DOD’s ability

to provide timely, accurate, and reliable business and financial

management information, and creates a higher than necessary cost

for performing the business of defense.

IBM, along with others, has delivered to the DOD the first stages

of an enterprise architecture that will help transform and modernize key business operations. Developing this framework has been

and remains a massive undertaking, involving over 2,000 information systems and many thousands of business processes. Hundreds

of existing policies will change, dozens of systems will be modified,

more than 1,000 existing systems will be sunsetted, and more than

100 new systems will be implemented.

A key component of any agency transformation involves cultural

change. You can’t do business the same way. Moving to a common

agency enterprise architecture and the infrastructure it fosters will

contribute to building agency culture. However, sustained commitment of top management officials is required for success.

Enterprise architecture is an enabler of the transformation of

government. Enterprise architecture provides the basis for evoVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:07 Dec 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00123 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96944.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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lution from tactical to the strategic management of technology assets and significant transformation and operational processes.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to discuss our

views and experience with you. I look forward to answering any

questions you may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wells follows:]

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Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much, Dr. Wells.

We will begin with some questions for the entire panel, beginning with Dr. McClure. What is the Federal Government’s shining

achievement in this area? What is the key area where we can hang

our hat and say we have actually made some real progress here?

Mr. MCCLURE. Mr. Chairman, I think just looking back 5 years

or more and seeing where we are today, despite the fact that those

bars on those charts look dismal, we are, believe me, much further

ahead than where we were previously. There is agreement on

frameworks, there are a lot of available tools, we have a common

assessment process that GAO uses that the industry and the agencies accept to a large degree, and we are seeing progress. It is, I

think, a tough area, as Dr. Wells just said. The complexity of what

we are doing in the public sector environment, particularly at the

large department level, can be a little overwhelming at times. I

think there is good news here as well in that progress is being

made and that we do have some agencies that have done some absolutely fabulous jobs putting architectures together.

The other shining light is the FEA. I think it represents a worldclass view of trying to look at how government functions. And for

the first time we have a clear picture of the real possibilities of operating government in a different way, and I think that is a very

significant achievement.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Puvvada.

Mr. PUVVADA. I concur, Mr. Chairman. I think one of the biggest

improvements that we have seen is that agencies are now beginning to think about enterprise architecture at the start of a system

development process or the start of an investment management

process. So from that perspective, that is a significant change in

terms of behaviors, in terms of incentives there. There are aligning

IT strategic plans, investment review boards, and business case

and budget submissions. We have seen good leadership from OMB.

We are obviously concerned about lack of resources, as we talked

about earlier, but this has been a priority and this is going to take

time to get to see most agencies show up in stage 5 category, but

we are really positive about the progress that has been made, and

a lot of agencies are actually looking at the first thing that they

do this transformation through architecture.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Lorentz, do you wish to add anything?

Mr. LORENTZ. I think the one thing that sticks with me, I didn’t

keep track of how many times in the course of the testimony to this

point that we have referred to this problem as a business problem,

not a technology problem. I have to tell you 3 to 5 years ago we

probably would not have had that conversation. That is being

shown in significant behaviors by business leaders, deputy secretaries. Just look at the five initiative, the President’s initiatives,

all business oriented, and E-Government enables the other four. So

it is really the understanding that we are trying to solve a business

problem here.

I sometimes think back to the CTO experience. It should have

been chief transformation officer instead of chief technology officer,

because I would say 99 percent of the time that I spent in that position was spent on non-technology issues. It was about business

mission roles and outcomes. So I think the real major progress, cerVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:07 Dec 17, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00135 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96944.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tainly the FEA I happen to believe is a great ‘‘how,’’ but the real

issue is mission citizen-centered real business problems.

Mr. PUTNAM. War Eagle.

Mr. WELLS. War Eagle.

I agree completely with Norm’s assessment. The change in focus

is the correct change, that is, that we are focusing not on IT as a

cost center; how much are you spending on X. It should be how

much are you spending on X to improve a certain process. So this

change in focus I think is the primary success of FEA and the enterprise architecture initiative in the agencies. This is a management problem, it is not an IT problem. It is a management problem, and focusing the assets strategically to be addressed to the

mission and processes of the agency itself.

Mr. PUTNAM. Well, you have used a number of examples from

your IBM experience and you talked a little bit in your opening testimony about the scale of a department like Defense. What lessons

can we draw from the private sector that do apply to something as

mammoth as the Federal Government?

Mr. WELLS. The Federal Government has, as most businesses,

historically managed information technology either tactically or

sub-tactically. By changing to a focus of managing It as a strategic

asset to enable the business transformation, we have discovered

that it costs a heck of a lot less. I know agencies in town that actually have too much money. And when you have too much money,

you can waste it.

IBM ran out of money in 1993, and we had to fundamentally reassess our business. And so when we started managing technology,

we took the toys away from everybody and started managing those

toys as strategic assets. And for a technology company to take toys

away from its employees represented a massive cultural change

that had to be managed from the top. But when we did it, we found

out we could consume a lot more resource, a lot more, multiples of

what we used to consume, with fundamentally much less investment.

Today, the IBM Corp. has no paper processes. I could not even

remember the last time I touched a piece of IBM business paper.

We manage our business electronically. We have substantially reduced the cost of our support staff, we have substantially increased

our own productivity, and we are spending a heck of a lot less. It

is a fundamental change in looking at technology as a strategic

asset to be managed by senior management, not by the IT staff.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Lorentz, you are back in the private sector.

Would you like to comment on the lessons we can pick up from the

private sector that apply to something as large as the Federal Government?

Mr. LORENTZ. Well, it is interesting. Recently I have had the opportunity to talk to some private sector CEOs, and a lot of them

are taking significant interest in the technology investment, and so

that the CEOs are actually saying I need to understand the technology injection because technology now is improving their product

line and business processes. Any conversation in the boardroom

with the CEO includes whatever the chief technology is, CIO, CTO,

as well as the chief financial officer. So the fact that we are putting

this construct in place in the Federal Government will, I think as

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a leading indicator, the leadership piece of this is a leading indicator to the progress that we can make.

And I certainly support what Dr. Wells was saying. What has to

show up now is consequences. Transformation does not occur without consequences. There needs to be more significant analysis done

of the cross-agency, cross-organizational opportunities for consolidation, and then the agencies and the Federal Government need to

go on a collaboration diet. And that means that they get the money

to do the collaborative initiatives and they do not get the money

to do the one-offs. And it is not a bottoms-up experience, it is a topdown experience.

Mr. PUTNAM. When you say consequences, are funding issues the

best consequence?

Mr. LORENTZ. Absolutely.

Mr. PUTNAM. The only consequence?

Mr. LORENTZ. Yes, certainly. If you take away the resources for—

you know, when I was in OMB, I think at the time we did the

grants analysis, we had 17 grants engines. OK? You can argue

whether we need one. You can certainly believe we don’t need 17.

And so on the face of it, it doesn’t hold water. And, by the way,

that means we are spending an extraordinary amount of money

doing the analysis down in the vertical and not as much money

doing the EA FEA cross-organizational analysis. With that improved analysis and data and the engagement of the leadership,

which would be the PMC, the deputy secretaries in those issues,

and driving those budget conclusions, then the transformation will

occur.

Karen was describing earlier the areas, financial management,

human resources and so forth, where they are doing that kind of

analysis right now. That is where I think we have the near-term

opportunity to exhibit that leadership.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Puvvada would you like to comment on that

line of questioning, the lessons learned and the consequences?

Mr. PUVVADA. Digging a little bit deeper into lessons learned,

where we find agencies succeed is where they really focus on target

architectures. We have a hard time, a lot of times, our folks, when

they are working with agencies, convincing agencies not to get too

much into documenting technically, as is architecture. So in terms

of where the Government needs to be is focused on the target architecture in the context of how do you improve the business and

citizen services, as you articulated at the beginning of this hearing.

And then taking that target architecture, because it tends to be

conceptual because you are, again, not there in terms of implementation, take that transition plan and talk about how that would be

integrated into standard business processes. It is not a separate

plan, it needs to be institutionalized. I think that is when we are

going to really see some results.

One of the things that is not quite evident is that the reason why

we are not seeing results is that it is a process where we all understand now that we need to build architectures, we need to think

architectures. Now, we are just beginning to see the results. I think

as we see more and more of these successes, then we understand

a little bit more about how to optimize the cycle of going forward

in making some investment decisions as well as implementations.

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So it is a lot of work to be done, like we talked about before, but

I think positive incentives and focusing on the right area, not necessarily documentation for technical purposes, I think will get us

there.

Mr. PUTNAM. Dr. McClure.

Mr. MCCLURE. I can echo a lot of just what has been said. I

think it all begins at the top. If you don’t have the executive commitment, or even interest in this, it is not going to be successful.

That is certainly learned from a lesson learned.

I think, too, disciplined processes have to be in place. Successful

organizations, public and private, are ones that find the ways to do

things that bring value to what they are in business for, and they

repeat them and they institutionalize them; and that is very important as we move forward. The business and performance focus of

architecture is what this is all about, and I agree totally with Norm

that is the value that we are getting out of this right now.

And two other lessons learned are governance and tools. Don’t

try to do this unless you have a governance process, because we

have spent decades of writing architectures on paper but never putting them in place or enforcing them. And the other is tools. We

have some good tools that are available to do enterprise architecture work, but we have to have people that know how to use them.

So getting the right skills in place, whether it is inside Government

or through the assistance of contractors, is really key for success.

Mr. PUTNAM. The contractors point is an interesting one. What

challenges or successes or lessons learned from our contractors’ experience can we apply to this enterprise architecture improvement

process? They certainly have a big role to play in this. What do we

learn from their experience? Anyone.

Mr. PUVVADA. One of the things that we have to do a better job

of is simplifying this whole enterprise architecture and its concepts.

Typically, we don’t do a good job of explaining what it is, to the

point where business lines look at this stuff and say that is technical. So we need to do a better job of articulating in very simple

terms, very clear terms, here is how you can develop a road map

for your business goals and business performance.

Generally, from a contractor point of view, the biggest challenge

out there is to find skilled enterprise architects; not just within the

Government, even for us. It is an evolving discipline, and it requires not only technical skills, business skills, but the articulation

of that, because you are facilitating a business transformation on

a regular basis. So we are working hard. Member companies that

I represent are working very hard in getting better at these skills

so that we can support the Government.

Mr. PUTNAM. This whole notion of cultural change keeps coming

up. Everybody has mentioned it in some form or fashion. How do

we tackle that challenge? How do we really fundamentally change

the culture? And we will begin with Dr. Wells.

Mr. WELLS. Senior management has to provide sustained commitment. I have witnessed several attempts at transformation in

the last few years in this community, and it is easy to get a senior

manager to articulate the requirement for cultural change. The

words flow easy. But then it requires changing behavior and enforcing the behavioral change. And this requires somebody that is

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going to be around for a while, going to enforce. Norm said there

has to be consequences. There has to be consequences for not

changing behavior. Those consequences can come from within the

agency or they can be encouraged by the Congress. But there certainly has to be sustained executive commitment to enforcing behavioral change; otherwise, it will never happen. It cannot bubble

up from the bottom.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Lorentz.

Mr. LORENTZ. Just to reinforce that, transformation does not

come from an internal source. In the private sector it generally

comes from a marketplace intervention: you either change your organization or you become extinct, or you have a leader that becomes unreasonable and says this is the way I am going to run the

enterprise. So we have to figure out what that looks like in the

Federal Government.

Certainly the President’s management agenda, good fundamental

blocking and tackling management practices, is an excellent start.

We have some good codification in law, so regardless of which of

us comes and goes, there is actually those permanent positions in

place. We need to put people in career positions that can, for instance, the architect position and also in the agencies that can continue to maintain the processes while the necessary leadership

changes are occurring.

But it really does come down to what Ray was saying. You have

to have leadership ownership, business ownership, and there has

to be consequences to actions. The nearest term thing to that in the

Federal Government is certainly the budget, but also in the private

sector there are other methods that can be used.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Puvvada.

Mr. PUVVADA. If you go back to the enormity of why we need the

culture change, Government and lots of private organizations, as a

matter of fact, have been so much used to thinking in the context

of an organizational structure. So now what we are talking about

is going beyond the organizational structure, so the order of magnitude of culture change that is required is enormous. It is going

to take different steps, different stages similar to the maturity that

has been talked about here. Norm certainly addressed the ‘‘who’’

part of it; you have to have some change agents, whether they are

from within the Government, from outside.

I think what will go a long way in impacting the culture change

is really some real success stories and the eventualization of those

success stories, and real results to go with it. So we really need to

see results come out of this initiative and to be able to articulate

that value in terms of business and government performance and

relate to citizens’ expectations. So it is not an easy thing to do. Like

Norm said, in the private sector your existence is at stake if you

don’t change. In the Government, our security is at stake if we

don’t change. So we have the similar challenges that the private

sector continuously goes through, but it is going to take a long time

for the culture change to occur.

Mr. PUTNAM. Dr. McClure.

Mr. MCCLURE. I would agree. I think you need a combination of

strong levers. Maybe you need a baseball bat. Some people just will

not fall in line until there is some real pressure brought to bear.

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But I think you have to counterbalance that. You can’t do that in

the Government just with a forcing function. You have to

incentivize change. And I think PV is right on target. We need to

have some demonstrated results and we need to go evangelize

those results and show executives who are skeptical that change

can happen and this can make a big difference. So I think best

practices, examples, case studies go a long way.

And then last I think it is just dialog. It is conversation. It is

education. It is awareness building. We have to continue to have

this dialog with more than just the technical people in the room.

Mr. PUTNAM. Is there any example that you can think of where

an agency has done particularly well and the right people have

evangelized it and brought about a positive change in behavior?

Mr. MCCLURE. I think there are examples. That is part of the

issue, is we have examples in the Federal Government where EA

has been used, where investment controls have been used, and

there is just not a recognition of the value of actually talking about

it. Sometimes there is a fear of talking about it because you don’t

know what will come back to bite you. So it is just changing the

culture and realizing success needs to be advertized.

I think there are examples of cost savings and reduction in duplicative systems and actually progress in making reuse of software

in many of our component agencies and departments. There are

bits and pieces; they are not fully in place everywhere. So you

might have a unit, an office, or an organization within a department that has done some of this, and that just doesn’t see the light

of day. It is not big enough, the dollars are not big enough when

you are talking about billion dollar budgets.

Mr. PUTNAM. Unfortunately, we are going to have to wrap this

panel up, but I want to give everyone the opportunity to have some

closing remarks, so we will begin with Dr. Wells and move down

the panel and share anything that you had hoped to have come out

of this hearing that may not have or any thoughts or question that

you wish you had been asked, whatever the case may be. Dr. Wells.

Mr. WELLS. I often hear in the agencies a statement that if we

had the investment money, we would be glad to modernize our infrastructure. IBM had to self-fund its transformation. It is about

using what you have more efficiently.

The second thing that I would conclude with is the whole notion

of chief architect. These skills are really rare, as has been mentioned, but the job is really the chief business architect. It is about

architecting the business processes. Until you have rearchitected

those business processes, you cannot effectively apply technology in

a transformational manner.

Mr. LORENTZ. First of all, I thank you for having these hearings

and staying the course and showing the interest and that kind of

support for Karen Evans, who is there now and I was there before.

This is really hard work. There is no aspect of the Government

value chain that doesn’t need to be changed. In the Government

today, pretty much everything operates vertically. That is the natural state. And so the transformation as to horizontal and why

should we do that is because of September 11, it is because the

needs of the citizen are now horizontal.

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The one thing that I would respectfully encourage you to do is

to help with the appropriations process, because even when we did

manage to get funding for cross-organizational analysis into bills

and so forth, we lost that funding in the appropriations process.

Part of that is because perhaps we weren’t as adept as we could

have been at telling our story. But we would really solicit the help

in making sure that the appropriations occur horizontally as well

as vertically, because again, to reinforce, we are spending a lot of

money on EA in the silos. If you look at the amount that we are

spending on FEA and cross-silo analysis, it is not quite a rounding

error.

Thank you.

Mr. PUVVADA. I echo Norm’s sentiments and thank you very

much for highlighting this to be a priority issue. And I think the

whole methodology as well as the report, has significant impact on

this, and we hope that effort certainly continues.

If I net it down to what needs to be done going forward, if you

really look at a couple of technical things underlying that actually

is going to enable interagency information sharing and collaboration, the whole data architecting issue needs to be a very high priority. And one of the impediments to people wanting to share

across is security; do I have security, is my citizens’ privacy really

taken care of in terms of meeting the expectations there. So if you

couple data architecting with the baked in enterprise security architecture as a priority, we will begin to see some progress in that

area, and I strongly recommend looking at that deeply and show

your commitment as well there.

Thank you.

Mr. PUTNAM. Dr. McClure.

Mr. MCCLURE. I want to commend you, too, Mr. Chairman, and

thank you for having the hearing and focusing attention on this

topic, as complex and technical as it can get at times.

My bottom line is, I think, as I said at the beginning of my oral

statement, at the end of the day we have to keep our sight focused

on what this is doing to improve the quality of government. We

have to keep the citizen in mind and ensure that we are creating

a more simplified and very cost-effective and efficient Government.

That is what this all about, and we don’t want to lose sight of that.

Second, I think we have to focus on results. We have to move beyond the assessments to focusing on the ‘‘so what has happened,

what is different’’ and get examples. The caveat I put on that is

that architecture is a long-term process. It requires an up-front investment spike. That is why you see these large dollar figures in

terms of what agencies are spending. The returns are slower in

coming than if you were building a simple application or a single

purpose system. You are rearchitecting and changing and moving

lots of pieces of organizations. But, nevertheless, I think we have

to begin asking when those results are going to occur. We need tangible, measurable results in the areas that we have talked about

today, and we need to hold people accountable when they are saying that those will be the actual results that the Congress and the

American people will see.

Mr. PUTNAM. Well, I want to thank all of you for your very informative and insightful testimony. I appreciate your taking the

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time out of your schedule to be with us today. And I want to thank

Mr. Clay for his participation in the hearing as well.

Clearly, the proper design, development, and implementation of

EAs across the Government has the potential to save millions in

taxpayer dollars by eliminating redundant spending. Further,

agencies’ EA efforts are already facilitating the transition to a more

responsive and citizen-centric Government by improving efficiency

and facilitating cross-agency collaboration. However, as we have

seen, we have much work to complete before we fully realize that

goal. OMB’s efforts in creating a common framework, the FEA, for

achieving governmentwide development and implementation has

already proven itself to be a valuable IT investment planning tool,

as evidenced by the identification and creation of the Lines of Business initiative. While we are experiencing growing pains in integrating the agencies’ individual EAs into the FEA, I believe the effort will lead to significant cost savings when the work is further

advanced.

In the event that there may be additional questions that we did

not have time for today, the record will remain open for 2 weeks

for submitted questions and answered.

With that, we again appreciate your hard work, and the meeting

stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 4:55 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned, to

reconvene at the call of the Chair.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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