Olivier Douliery
William R. Wright

Since taking the helm as director of the Defense Information Systems Agency last July, Lt. Gen. Charlie Croom has been focused on a collaborative approach to designing and delivering DISA capabilities to support the Defense Department. This is an idea whose time has come, bolstered by maturing technology standards and legislative emphasis on mission fulfillment.

Croom's concept of collaboration is not unique to the military; it is also entering the mainstream in civilian agencies and industry. That's because it addresses a common challenge, namely, the need to move away from stovepipe organizations and towards highly networked, collaborative structures.

The Army's and other commands' moves to net-centric warfare has accompanied the emergence of plug-and-play warfighting units. That is, units that can perform a variety of jobs, are highly mobile and relatively light. Such units are also IT-intensive.

However, the more the DOD IT world evolves, the more it is in danger of becoming less consistent and more complex. Why? I believe it is because the DOD has not taken the next step forward towards deep implementation of enterprise architecture.

Too often, a given component has been narrowly focused, considering the job done once they have produced a set of DOD Architecture Framework views. I believe the DOD IT world must now follow the lead of the field soldiers: architectures must be plug-and-play, based on standard metadata definitions. DOD must:

Design plug-and-play architectures . Such an architectural approach goes beyond implementing DODAF products for a particular system or set of services. And it is more than just DODAF views. An EA must integrate with other architectures in the broader context that a particular system must play. This is done through the EA data, not the views, which are only representations of EA data subsets.

Construct EAs from a standard set of EA metadata definitions, metamodel and repository. Integrating with other architectures requires a single, unified set of metadata definitions, an important element of which is a standard enterprise architecture metamodel, complete with a repository that implements the metamodel and metadata definitions. This architectural approach lets you reach a critical goal for any modern EA—that it be "evergreen."

If an architecture is to support collaboration and plug-and-play integration, it has to be designed for easy ongoing maintenance. To support Lt. Gen. Croom's collaborative vision, an architecture must be always up-to-date, consistent with new process and systems requirements.

Exploit the value of the EA. What is the value proposition of an evergreen architecture? It should provide timely, high-quality decision support information for the delivery of IT systems and services; for adapting technologies to meet changing mission requirements; and for driving the integration of capabilities across different missions from warfighting to bean counting.

Intelligent, time-sensitive decision-making depends upon the ability to quickly locate and share the EA information using resources from across the DOD. This seamless flow of EA information is essential to the global net-centric environment that it is DISA's mission to engineer and sustain. A collaborative EA that drives standardization is central to fulfilling that mission.

Dr. William (Bill) R. Wright is the chief technology officer of Troux Technologies. A graduate of West Point and both the Air Force Command and Staff, and Defense Systems Management Colleges, Col. Wright took early retirement in 1981 from a 20-year career in the Air Force, at which time he was director of the Air Force's Software and Database Systems. He was also the chief architect of the Boeing Commercial Airplane Company.

purchase reprint

link to this page