Defence IT Strategist Enterprise Architecture in Complex Changing Organisations

Greetings from the CSIRO Discovery Centre in Canberra, where Christopher Rodrigues Macias, Defence IT Strategist, is speaking on "Enterprise Architecture in Complex Changing Organisations". The is of great interest as I am teaching the ACS Virtual College course in Business Analysis.

In a refreshing change from IT presentations, Christopher had no slides, quipping that "Power corrupts and Powerpoint corrupts absolutely". He contrasted TOGAF with Zachman Framework and derived approaches (which come out of the COBOL era). He criticised the Zachman has breaking the architecture down into too small constituent parts (reminds me of  J.R.R. Tolkien's 'He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.'). Christopher asserted that the people doing the analysis for systems are usually two organisation levels below that at which the real problem is discussed. The problem then is to be able to have a discussion about high level business problems, without delving down into the technical details of solutions.

Christopher used the analogy of defence procurement, where you need to know why you are buying a system (the intent), rather than just what. This brought back memoires of nine years working in IT at the Defence Department, working out what was needed (including for joint amphibious operations)

As Christopher pointed out standard modules can be used for standard functions in the business, such as finance. But the core business of the organisation needs to be custom designed. Continuing the defence analogy, the ADF is still working out how to use the new LHD ships. One indication of this is the numerous books on amphibious operations at ANU and ANU libraries. ;-)

One of the audience asked where to get good enterprise architects. My suggestion was to train them: the Australian Computer Society offers a postgraduate course in Enterprise Architecture.

ICT Specialists for Certification Advisory Groups

Australian Computer Society issued a call for "Expressions of Interest for ACS Specialism Advisory Groups", 27 January 2012. Initially experts in Enterprise Architecture and Internet Security are sought. The Terms of Reference for the Specialism Advisory Group are available.

The groups will advise on competency and skill requirements for certification, body of knowledge, educational and ongoing professional development, as part of the ACS Certification Scheme. Call for ICT Specialists for Certification Advisory Groups

It happens that I have just prepared a proposal for there to be an industrial reference group on "ICT Sustainability" for the Green Technology Strategies course I run as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program. Hopefully we can have just one advisory group covering both ACS certification and the education program.

Understanding Enterprise Architecture

This week my Green ICT students at ANU have been discussing Enterprise Architecture. Last year I used the Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA) of the US Department of Defense (DoD) as an example. But this is very complex. So this year I changed to the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO), Australian Government Architecture. This was not a lot better. One student pointed out TOGAF Version 9 Enterprise Edition . This seems simpler to understand.

World Computer Congress 2010 Proceedings

Nine volumes of proceedings of the World Computer Congress 2010 can be ordered now. The congress itself itself doesn't start until 20 September in Brisbane. The volumes are for nine of the conferences being held by IFIP at the congress (more to follow):

1. History of Computing: Learning from the Past: IFIP WG 9.7 International Conference, HC 2010 by Arthur Tatnall
2. Security Privacy - Silver Linings in the Cloud: 25th IFIP TC 11 International Information Security Conference, SEC 2010 by Kai Rannenberg, Vijay Varadharajan, and Christian Weber
3. Cultural Computing: Second IFIP TC 14 Entertainment Computing Symposium, ECS 2010 by Ryohei Nakatsu, Naoko Tosa, Fazel Naghdy, and Kok Wai Wong
4. Theoretical Computer Science: 6th IFIP WG 2.2 International Conference, TCS 2010 by Christian S. Calude and Vladimiro Sassone
5. E-Government, E-Services and Global Processes: Joint IFIP TC 8 and TC 6 International Conferences, EGES 2010 and GISP 2010 by Marijn Janssen, Winfried Lamersdorf, Jan Pries-Heje, and Michael Rosemann
6. Key Competencies in the Knowledge Society: IFIP TC 3 International Conference, KCKS 2010 by Nicolas Reynolds and Márta Turcsányi-Szabó
7. E-Health: First IMIA/IFIP Joint Symposium, E-Health 2010, Held as Part of WCC 2010, Brisbane, Australia, September 20-23, 2010, Proceedings by Hiroshi Taked
8. Human-Computer Interaction: Second IFIP TC 13 Symposium, HCIS 2010 by Fabio Paternó and Annelise Mark Pejtersen
9. Enterprise Architecture, Integration and Interoperability: IFIP TC 5 International Conference, EAI2N 2010 by Peter Bernus, Guy Doumeingts, and Mark Fox