Applying Multi-Agency Executable Architectures to Analyze a Coastal Security Operation

摘要

U.S. Federal agencies face the challenge of conducting a dynamic analysis of their architectures to determine the performance and effectiveness of the business processes and the supporting Information Technology (IT) systems. Most architectures are static representations and lack the capability to support the dynamic analysis required to generate the performance and effectiveness metrics. There is an added challenge for organizations that must interoperate with other Federal agencies. Failing to integrate with other agency architectures may create critical interoperability problems resulting in mission failure. The challenge is not only to ensure satisfactory interoperability, but also to determine that the mission will in fact be accomplished and that critical gaps do not exist among the architectures. This paper discusses a case study that addressed these challenges by examining an operation where architectures from multiple agencies, using different frameworks, were integrated to accomplish a coastal security mission. The paper describes the technical approach involving two phases. The Static Phase developed a Multi-agency Operations-Centric Architecture Activity Model consisting of the mission, supporting operations, and mission-essential tasks. The Dynamic Phase took this activity model and imported it into a set of simulation tools. The paper also identifies insights about applying multi- agency architectures.