Envisioning Information Systems Support for Business Ecosystem Architecture Management in Public Sector

Based on our research concerning Finnish national enterprise architecture (EA) adoption in long run, we discuss here how EA concept and tool are to be developed to support business ecosystem and organization design. Our research context indicates, beyond a federal government or a state one, that even a single municipality, like a city concern, can be perceived as an ecosystem of its sectoral domains, subsidiaries etc. We outline a vision of an overall ontologybased, shared EA repository for the-whole-of-government current state descriptions. We specify the central design principles and functional requirements for such a system and illustrate some potential use cases of it. The study suggest…

Business architecture development at public administration - Insights from government EA method engineering project in Finland

Governments worldwide are concerned for efficient production of services to customers. To improve quality of services and to make service production more efficient, information and communication technology (ICT) is largely exploited in public administration (PA). Succeeding in this exploitation calls for large-scale planning which embraces issues from strategic to technological level. In this planning the notion of enterprise architecture (EA) is commonly applied. One of the sub-architectures of EA is business architecture (BA). BA planning is challenging in PA due to a large number of stakeholders, a wide set of customers, and solid and hierarchical structures of organizations. To support …

EA as a tool in change and coherency management - A case of a local government

In order to lead a local government towards its politically set strategic objectives, the vision of the overall status quo, as well as of the desired target state of the complex multi-agent system have to be clear. To encounter the challenges of the change management in merging six former local governments into one, in forming a new NPM related operation model, in planning and leading strategic political objectives, and in order to leverage on the information usability produced in everyday governance practices, a Government Enterprise Architecture (GEA) method has been adopted in the city of Kouvola in Finland. The study is a case study by action research adopting the Finnish GEA method in …

Government Enterprise Architecture Grid Adaptation in Finland

In government, support for strategic political steering, administrative and cross-sectoral development, and integration of processes and systems can be sought out of enterprise architecture (EA) planning. To facilitate this, a proper EA method covering essential government levels is needed. A constructive case study has been carried out to create an adaptation model of Finnish government EA (GEA) grid. The study builds on general principles of method adaptation and observations about GEA method engineering and its pilot adaptations in Finnish State Administration. The model presents systematic guidelines for situational GEA grid adaptation and reuse in Finnish State administration. The mode…

Enterprise Architecture Descriptions for Enhancing Local Government Transformation and Coherency Management

Local governments cover multiple service sectors and are typically organized into diversified, deeply hierarchical organizations. Public services offered are tangible, mostly non-IT-critical, and heavily dependent on human resources. Information management is mainly manual in strategy and management processes. In this case study of a large Finnish local government organization, enterprise architecture (EA) is proposed as a tool for improving the coherency of the local government and its alignment to IT and other resources. We ask, what kind of EA descriptions local government agencies need for coherency management, and how to organize them. We apply action design research principles at the …

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