Toward the end of 2014 an American legend walked off-stage. Stephen Colbert wrapped his final episode of the pseudo-politically-charged Colbert Report before preparing to take over David Letterman’s Late Show post. I’m personally sad to see him go, as he brought political awareness to the masses, albeit it through a comedic lens. Throughout all the laughs, sarcasm and pageantry, one thing was certain: Colbert’s favorite pastime was ribbing the federal government for bureaucratic inefficiency.
It’s true that the government gets a bad rap for being inefficient, redundant and slow-moving. However, in 2014 we witnessed a spike in federal agencies innovating IT to fly in the face of that perception. We saw agency CIOs, CTOs and enterprise architects employing enterprise intelligence to make government IT operations more manageable, cost-effective and even secure.
For example, FedScoops’s Greg Otto interviewed Department of Energy Chief Architect Rick Lauderdale on how he used enterprise intelligence from Troux, hardware and software lifecycle data from BDNA and a team of just three data experts to deliver on-demand reports highlighting potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities related to end-of-life technology assets. Government Computer News (GCN) reporter John Moore also picked up on the story, noting that the DoE’s approach could be a revolutionary model for other branches:
“Dismissed as little more than ‘shelfware’ over the years, enterprise architecture is now getting a fresh look as an approach for addressing specific IT problems, including enhancing agency cybersecurity defenses,’ Lauderdale said.”
Another case of government organizations using EA to move in a more modernized, streamlined direction belongs to the Census Bureau, which implemented an EA initiative led by CTO Avi Bender and Chief Enterprise Architect Necarsia McKinnon. McKinnon also spoke with FedScoop about Census’ progress along its 10-step EA framework, which is allowing it to remedy “more than 1,500 IT products and 1,000 business applications that were either overly redundant or one-off solutions that could have easily been shared services.” This customized program is helping the Census Bureau’s internal development shops integrate and collaborate on making the census a purely digital data collection campaign by 2020.
If you read all the way to the end of the FedScoop article on Census, you’ll see that McKinnon is incredibly proud of the progress the agency has made thus far, but isn’t resting on her laurels. She already has plans to drive further innovation and results. That shared ambition by the DoE and Census for continuing to stretch the imaginative use-cases of EA is especially important as the role of IT evolves across the federal government – a prime example being the predicted trend of responsibility for federal cybersecurity falling to IT departments just as often as it does to CSOs.
Frankly, if Colbert was into IT, I’m pretty sure he (even in all his hilarity and wit) would have a tough time poking holes in the positive impact enterprise intelligence has had on the government of late.
For further detail on the EA program that Rick Lauderdale has seen such success with at the Department of Energy, check out this third-party case study written by an IDC analyst or listen back to the webinar we hosted with Mr. Lauderdale.
To find out more about how the U.S. Census Bureau is using the Troux Platform, please read our case study.
Download our whitepaper, The Power of Enterprise Intelligence, to learn more about how our solutions help decision-makers take a step back to see the big picture to understand exactly where they should be investing in their business.
