Communicate Across All Lines of Business to Transform Government Services
Under the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Office of E-Government (E-Gov) and Information Technology (IT) has established the first ever Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Program, along with the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Federal Chief Information Officers Council. As of February 2006, this program has established "a comprehensive business-driven blueprint of the entire Federal Government."
At the heart of the FEA program is a Business Reference Model which describes all of the government's Lines of Business (LoB). By identifying all common LoBs across government, the FEA will facilitate the sharing of business processes and information technology. In examining government enterprise architectures across all agencies, the OMB identified five major collaborative initiatives that would lead to a transformation of government services, improve services to citizens and business, and deliver substantial savings. These LoB initiatives are in the areas of Financial Management, Human Resource Management, Grants Management, Case Management, and Federal Health Architecture. In all instances, the FEA was able to identify common solutions, develop solution architectures and break down traditional agency silos.
Often, extraneous processes are created to address proprietary content repositories. Where service and product support documents exist in a proprietary (non-transferable) format, unique transaction software must be written in order to access those documents.
With PTC's Dynamic Publishing System (DPS), all documents are created in XML. Documents can be further broken down to reusable components and stored with highly specified metadata in the DPS. A single set of business rules can then be written for like processes, calling for the assembly and publication of the document appropriate to the transaction. For example, a grant issued under the Dept. of Labor under the Veteran's Workforce Investment Program might adhere to the same business process as an employment grant under the Older American's Act. With minor tweaking, one set of business rules will drive a successful online (operator-controlled) application for either grant. Final documentation will be dynamically configured and composed with PTC's DPS.
