OMB sets strategy for aligning architectures

OMB's Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office will begin soon to determine how to align its blueprint with the assortment of architecture models federal agencies use.

The Office of Management and Budget's Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office will begin soon to determine how to align its blueprint with the assortment of architecture models agencies use.

Bob Haycock, OMB's chief architect, said the models will play an important role in improving how agencies share information.

Haycock said the model his office is formulating must be made to work with other agencies' architectures, particularly the Defense and Treasury departments' systems models.

"There will be changes on both sides," he said at a recent breakfast hosted by the Bethesda, Md., chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.

"Since most agencies' architectures are not organized by business functions, they will have to rethink how they approach the bigger architecture," Haycock said.

Among the first tasks are to establish a standard lexicon and to find out exactly how many architectures agencies are using, he said.