DOD Business Systems Modernization: Improvements to Enterprise Architecture Development and Implementation Efforts Needed

摘要

DOD has undertaken a challenging and ambitious task to, within 1 year, develop a departmentwide blueprint for modernizing its over 1,700 timeworn, inefficient, and nonintegrated business processes and supporting information technology (IT) assets. Such a blueprint, commonly called an enterprise architecture, is an essential modernization management tool. We support the Secretary of Defense's decision to develop an architecture and the department's goal of acquiring systems that provide timely, reliable, and relevant information. Successfully doing so requires the application of effective enterprise architecture and IT investment management processes and controls. While DOD is following some of these enterprise architecture practices, it is not following others, in part because it is focused on meeting its ambitious schedule. More specifically, with respect to developing the architecture, DOD has yet to (1) establish the requisite architecture development governance structure and process controls needed to ensure that ownership of and accountability for the architecture are vested with senior leaders across the department, (2) clearly communicate to intended architecture stakeholders the purpose, scope, and approach to developing the initial and subsequent versions of the architecture, and their roles and responsibilities, and (3) define and implement an independent quality assurance process. Until it follows these practices, DOD increases the risk of developing an architecture that will be limited in scope, be resisted by those responsible for implementing it, and will not support effective systems modernization.