Challenges of Government Enterprise Architecture Work – Stakeholders’ Views

At present, a vast transformation within government systems is executed towards electronic government. In some countries, this change is initiated as enterprise architecture work. This paper introduces results from an empirical study on different stakeholders' views on enterprise architecture development within Finnish state government. The data is gathered from 21 interviews accomplished during spring 2007 among participants of the Interoperability Programme of Finnish state administration. The interviewees represent different sectors and levels of Finnish government and IT companies. On the basis of qualitative data analysis we discuss challenges of enterprise architecture work in the con…

Tietojärjestelmien tutkimuksen tarkastelukulmien muuttuminen

Key Issues in EA-Implementation: Case Study of Two Finnish Government Agencies

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is getting more common also in public sector as a means to ensure ‘business’ and IT alignment. This study reports a follow-up and theme interviews of the key actors/informants in two EA projects in public administration offices during and half year after the projects were completed. The early experience shows that the process of establishing a government EA is a tedious and complicated process and this study considers the root causes. Three set of factors are found hindering EA’s potential to operate as a strategic alignment tool: lack of establishing proper EA governance, insufficient support for the development, and inadequate resources to do the former two.