Introduction
Enterprise architecture may mean differently for various areas. Likewise, architecture in a broad sense may describe a process or a business structure of a particular firm or a state perhaps with significant illustrations. Business methods also arise from the term that leads to the comprehension of and documentation of the total structure. But generally, it is significant to define enterprise architecture as the logical organization for business processes and Information Technology infrastructure that signifies the relation and standardization requirements of the operating structure of the firm and hence in this case, the operating model or structure of the State of Georgia.
It is normally determined that the architecture of an enterprise occurs though the considerations of it are overtly described or not takes into account. This is visible if the recognition for architecture as an existing system is the illustration of it or not. Of course, the application of enterprise architecture has developed to make the system structures clear in vague architecture illustrations. In addition, practitioners are called enterprise architects.
Beforehand, analyzing the enterprise architecture of the state of Georgia widely requires the deep identification of how enterprise architects utilize different kinds of techniques and tools in order to comprehend and prepare write-ups for the enterprise. Producing the documents and models, it is apparently referred to the term called artifacts. These are then illustrated as the logical organization of the strategies of the businesses, metrics, the capabilities of the business, information resources, business systems networking infrastructure, and the business processes in the enterprise. A collection of the artifacts that is vital to the description of the enterprise in various ways can be taken into account as the architectural illustration of the level of the enterprise. The structure of enterprise architecture is comprised of the tools, guidance, and process models that the enterprise architects utilized to supervise the production of the particular architectural illustrations of the organization.
Information technology is more likely to improve and define the efficiency of the government and its responsiveness, but however, the success needs to be backed up by a sound decision with regard to the quality, cost, reliability, and security of infrastructure and systems that an enterprise may have. Decision-makers for the enterprise architectures must fully understand and comprehend the essential business functions of state government and the significant infrastructures and applications that are important to back them up and thus they can set up their priorities for giving out and investing based on what will be the maximum advantage. Advancing technologies in Georgia gives them ideas about how the enterprises define the best applications in IT management and infrastructure that also caters to the makers of the decisions vital for the information about the direction that Georgia is into with regard to the trends in IT enterprise architectures.
A lot of enterprise architectural structures specifies the practice of mounting artifacts into the four important areas such as business, applications, information, and technology. Understanding each point of the given areas greatly depicts the assurance of giving the business stakeholders accurate information with regard to efficient decision-making. Accordingly, the four main areas each have significant considerations such as in business; strategy maps, operating models, corporate policies, goals, business processes, organization cycles, suppliers of hardware, software, and services. Applications comprise of application software inventories and diagrams, interfaces between applications which as the events, messages and data flow, internet, intra, and extra, I-marketing, and others. And for the information and technology; it greatly comprises metadata which illustrates the elements of the data, conceptual, logical, and physical data models, hardware, platforms and hosting where servers are kept, local and wide area networks, internet connectivity diagrams, operating system, infrastructure software, programming languages and many more specifications (Luchen, 2004).
Giving an overview of the enterprise architecture of the State of Georgia generally covers the information technology structure and how it works for the state. There are various areas that should be taken into account in defining the grounds for the given topic such as understanding the Georgia Technology Authority and its role in the state’s foundation of its enterprise architecture (Moore, 2008). The state’s technology transformation is taken into account into the considerations that since many services support the most vital operations in businesses of the state, the managers on each agency should be able to comprehend the effect of how outsourcing activities work. Efforts are thus made to make sure that the state agencies are open for hard work in order to work accordingly with the new technology service providers of the state. IT governance is largely an issue on what the overview of the state enterprise comprises (Luchen, 2004).
Discussion
The main purpose of illustrating the architecture of the State of Georgia enterprise is to advance with the efficiency of its operations and its related affairs. This involves the innovations in the structure of the organization, the federation of business process, the quality and timeliness of business information, or guarantee that the money invested and given out for the information technology can be further evaluated and defined (Weill and Ross, 2004). There are a lot of ways to utilize the information given in improving the performance of the business. One is viewed to be through the development of an architectural vision wherein the illustration of the business represents the future state goal (Luchen, 2004). When the vision has been set properly, the following steps are formed through the description of the process of altering the current situation to the target or future state goal. Likewise, the same techniques had been overtly defined on other enterprise architecture structures.
Information Technology Governance
The write-ups regarding the architecture of enterprise are into the usual application of the U.S Federal Government through the process of Capital Planning and Investment Control. Enterprise architecture has been a major factor in the governance of information technology in the State. They have implemented formal enterprise architecture as part of the strategy in managing Information Technology and this may mean that the enterprise architecture is relatively connected to IT. Hence, it should be looked at in a general way of optimizing a business wherein it considers the business architecture, performance management, and the architectural process such as in the field of a more technical subject. However, the enterprise works primarily based on the system of how the structure is patterned and it may include portfolios like engineering, IT portfolio management, and metadata management (Luchen, 2004).
In fact, it is unusual for a profitable organization to make known rich detail from their Enterprise Architecture descriptions such as the wide overview of Georgia’s enterprise architecture. It can give competitors information on the weaknesses and flaws of the institution that could get in the way of the market position of the state or the businesses involved in the whole enterprise. However, there are a lot of government agencies in the world that have started to share the architectural descriptions that they have developed. The state of Georgia has shared some of the broad information with regard to their enterprise architecture though. The emergence of the people’s interest in IT governance is partly because of the compliance initiatives as well as the recognition that IT projects can simply get out of control and intensely have an effect on the performance of an organization (Weill and Ross, 2004).
There is an attribute subject matter of IT governance considerations that the competence of IT can no longer be a black box. The customary participation of board-level executives in prevailing issues in IT is to put off all the major decisions to the IT professionals of the company. IT governance broadly entails a system wherein all the stakeholders, comprising of the board, internal customers, and in specific departments like the finance have vital roles in the process of decision making. This puts a stop to IT from separately creating and apparently being held absolutely accountable for the poor decisions. It also stops the serious users from consequent arguments that the system does not function as is expected.
Georgia’s Information Technology Governance and Information Security
The state of Georgia has recently transformed its IT enterprise from the operations that have pulled more of the people’s attention. However, there have been noted changes that took place in the system. As part of the governance of the IT enterprise, it widely covers how the state works with the system of enterprise architecture and it serves as the key factor in the total system. In recent years, IT prevailed to be vital for the businesses of the state and this was apparently altered. A lot of the alterations in the governance of IT have been restrained and they existed without a big elaboration though their significance and effects on the state are vital such as doing the most critical things in the main operations. Indeed, the collaborations and cooperation of the significant people should be put a highlight because associations are seen to be one of the main keys to succeed the defined visions and hence reach the desired goals. For an instance, the overview of the policies of the enterprise by the Board of Directors of the Georgia Technology Authority took the difficult policies such as the management of IT Operations policy made the IT Infrastructure Library as the enterprise’s formal basis for the IT infrastructure management, delivering the services and back up.
It had been a state policy that the government agencies should then heed to the processes of the standards of the industry, terminology, and evaluation of performances that will apparently contribute to the improvement of the state’s IT enterprise in its maturity level. In addition to, the outside service providers that are chosen for the IT infrastructure of the state and the managed network services should also heed to the use of the IT infrastructure library. Through that, the state will influence a normal, accountable and framework or structure which will be accepted by the industry for administering the environment of IT. The issuance of a new technology project management standard by the Georgia Technology Authority is according to the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) (Moore, 2008). This basically depicts supervision to the executives in the agencies who are planning and developing the concepts for the projects for IT. This guide will help agencies to seek the right questions with regard to the project management and consequently help agencies and GTA; comprehend with each other as the ideas will be matched up. Indeed, it is true that projects are possible to reach their goals and succeed in the best applications are constantly put into practice and hence if the executives have possession and supervision of projects. Through the new standard for IT governance, it will eventually help the executives to comprehend the terms of the enterprise management and a possible structure or framework for the projects that the authority thought of attaining an improvement for the completion of the projects.
Furthermore, the governance of the state’s IT enterprise has been a wide issue for the enterprise architecture as it caters to the projects of the state in relation to the use of Information Technology. Certainly, security for the information is also one of the highlights and major considerations of the state. There had been orders that had been requiring the agencies to pass the annual reports for the programs of information security and this was accounted for all the state agencies to be used. Efforts are said to be based according to the best applications of the agencies. The policies and standards indeed pattern the structure of the National Institute of Standards and Technologies to back up for the Federal Information Security Management Act. The information security reports every year with the new policies and standards will eventually help to make sure that the information security of the state restrictions is constant from corner to corner of the enterprise.
The board of Directors of GTA is actually not the sole body that governs and shoulders the responsibilities for the IT enterprise governance. There are also other authorities that supervise the roles and responsibilities of the GTA such as the state’s significant officers. Panels are largely taken for the decision-making process and set high-end projects for the successful implementation of certain projects. The PeopleSoft Program Governance Council specifically was formed in order to form and implement policies for the resource planning of the state’s enterprise. It is utilized by many state agencies and an organization that is charged with putting up a business process and deciding on what kind of system is altered and innovated. Likewise, it also includes representatives from the agencies of the state and major members of the staff of the Governor. Governance will be significant to the success of the consolidation of the technology of the state and its process of outsourcing. The state agencies for the enterprise will are asked to have active participation in the group looking for outside external service providers. Thus, forming the IT governance of the state had defined the grounds for consideration in viewing the comprehensive IT enterprise of Georgia. From the establishment of policies, setting up rules and down through the management and supervision of the IT projects profoundly ensures the positive outcome of the success of the enterprise architecture. Best applications will be applied to each and every aspect of the technology systems of the state of Georgia and speculating for an apparent result of success (Moore, 2008).
Conclusion
The authority of information technology governance is obtained from corporate governance and basically covers the relation of the areas between business focus and IT management of the state. It takes note of the importance of IT-related issues in an up to date and recent organizations and defines that the strategic IT decisions should be claimed by the corporate board which is the GTA, rather than by the chief information officer or any other IT managers. The main objectives for the information technology governance are assuring that the investments in IT will result in a business value and take the edge off the risks that are often linked with IT. This can be accomplished through the implementation of an organizational structure or framework with a well-defined role for the responsibility of information, security, business processes, applications, infrastructure, and many more.
The rights for making decisions are a major concern for the IT governance and considering that this largely makes up the enterprise architecture of the state of Georgia. However, according to Weill and Ross (2004), a well-defined control and management are the major factors of the success of the projects that depends on the size, business scope, and IT maturity of an organization which is either centralized; decentralized, or federated models of responsibility with regard to the perceptions of the strategic IT matters that are recommended. After the mistakes of other enterprise architectures, the responsibilities are then viewed on the technological aspects of the business and the proper management of the concerned authorities that greatly influence the build-up of a successful project. As a result, many organizations are now into the creation of well-defined enterprise architecture with the high-end establishment of technological policies with the supervision of a corporate board. Concerns with the IT rights have been put on a highlight into the scene of businesses and even signifies the productivity of the whole state. Arguments with regard to the decision rights also affect the framework that the state provided and even manifested new conduct for the agencies as a whole. In addition to, generally, professionals should be taken into account for systems that are established by IT enterprises and specify as those who only possess a 5-year or more of experience in service and management of the role given to them (Weill and Ross, 2004).
Thus, the emphasis that should be put on the enterprise architecture of the state of Georgia falls under the recognition for the development and emergence of the strategies for the Information Technology systems. Wireless communication, state portal, and other kinds of innovations should be taken into consideration for looking at the structure of the IT enterprise of the state that somehow determines the success of the right decisions by the significant organizations and decision-makers. This may not necessarily be composed of the state Governor though but a corporate body who settles the priorities of developing a strong link with the success of achieving the major objectives and roles of the enterprise.
References
Lutchen, M. (2004). Managing IT as a business : a survival guide for CEOs. Hoboken, N.J., J. Wiley.
Moore, P. (2008). “IT Governance: Georgia’s Quiet Transformation”, GTA, Web.
Weill, P. & Ross, J. W., (2004), IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results, Harvard Business School Press, Boston.