First journal after meeting the agency

Last week, we had a very short meeting with Susi about our project. Susi Masi is the chief project officer of the department of the premier and cabinet. She mainly in charge of this program and keep connection with us.

Before meeting her, we have an internal meeting. We clarified several questions about our program, such as “What is eGovernment?” “How the departments use the eGoverment?” “Why they need such a website?” etc.

eGovernment is a website of the government of SA to provide service to people. Each department takes up one part of the website. WSo, when people need service, they need to go to the website and find the right department to solve for them.

After the discussion, we still have some parts that don’t understand. So, we prepared the following questions to her:

• existing funding model  * 2
•  gov & Squiz
• gov & departments 
• if yes, what is the overall objection that needs to be addressed?
• if not, then what are the parties included in the working between working between the each entity & eGov.
• the underlying tech handling the contents
• historical change made on the system
• How are you using now?
• What are the existing problems now?
• What you expect us to improve the model in the future.
• The structure of the departments.

After the meeting, we are a little bit more clarified about our jobs.

The only thing she wants us to do is to make a SLA between the government and the agencies. SLA should help the government to determine the details using the website between the agencies and the egovernment. We need to further analyze the structure of the government and the website. Also, we need to analyze the existing SLA.

Considering it’s our first meeting, Susi didn’t prepare much about that. So, she arranged us a second meeting. We prepared some more questions for the next arrangement.

Although the project is not that comprehensive, we still can use our knowledge from the class in practice. I hope next meeting we will make more progress by starting making the SLA for the government.

Why we need a Framework?

Just as what I set as the topic, today, I will talk about why we need a framework.

I will first post a video, which is a lecture given by Dr. Ackoff from UPenn. [2]

The lecture by Dr. Ackoff

As what you read from the lecture, Dr. Ackoff mainly introduced the way of quality improvement. How we can improve the quality? I think this is what EA used for. Because as Ackoff said, the definition of quality has something to do with meeting the expectation of customers or consumers. That is what EA needs to do -- to improve the quality of the existing systems to meet the expectation of customers or consumers.

The professor firstly analyzed about the reason of the failures. That is they have not been embedded in system thinking. According to the professor there are 3 key points of the system. 1st is that the system should be a whole consists the parts, each of which can effect the behavior or properties. 2nd is that all parts of the system should be interdependent. 3rd is each system has a central part, which is extremely to the system.

So, come by to our question, why we need a framework? First, let me refer the definition of the EA Framework from the Wikipedia.

An enterprise architecture framework (EA framework) is an architecture framework which defines how to organize the structure and views associated with an enterprise architecture. [1]

 So, EA framework is used to define the whole structure of a system. So, is it similar to what the Dr. Ackoff demonstrated. Yes, we need the EA Framework to help us to get a comprehensive way to improve the whole system. Not a single part.

I just analyze it in detail by using the Zachman Framework as an example.

The Zachman Framework

The whole framework gives a detailed structure analysis on the whole project. It analyzed from different perspective and different parts. So, people can get the gap from the analysis of the consistency of the whole system. What I want to emphasis is that when analyzing a system, we should analysis the whole system instead of some certain part under the guide of the framework. That is the meaning of a certain framework.

EA Frameworks are very popular for the companies who want to ask for EA. And here is a very detailed analysis and comparison among the different frameworks on the http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb466232.aspx#eacompar_topic5.

I think the EA framework is just effective if it used properly.

Why I say this? Because if there is only one part improved in the system, the whole system will never be proved. Think about it, if only your hand improved, will your movement system improved? Because there is no improvement in your neural system, no improvement in your legs. Your movement can hardly be improved harmoniously.

And the last thing. The improvement of the system should be what you want. And the EA Framework is that thing will help you to find out that.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Architecture_framework
[2]: http://www.enterprise-advocate.com/2012/07/enterprise-architecture-systems-thinking/