EA Principals recently ran a week long Government Enterprise Architecture (GEA) Certification course that included participants from 5 different government agencies. The class was welcomed as highly comprehensive to help government architects both “Think like an Architect” and to produce work products tied to Design Thinking and using a variety of hands-on tools. One of our CIO advisors for refining the material made the following observations that factored into the mix of method and modeling the participants benefited from. 

1. I think there were unrealistic expectations set for Enterprise Architecture in the U.S. Federal Government –the FEAF, i.e. that the FEA submissions would enable the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to push agencies toward shared services by categorizing IT investments per the Business Reference Model (BRM). A better approach would have been to encourage the use of EA to better enable each agency to succeed within its own scope by providing overarching guidance on tools and techniques.   

2. The U.S. Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DODAF) fails as an EA framework since the focus is on producing artifacts rather than a path to valued outcomes; so they become shelfware rather than critical aids to better-informed and more efficient decision making.

A major point of emphasis is that government architects should be aware of a mix of EA frameworks and modeling approaches in addressing government use cases for EA. Therefore, we covered the evolution of the FEAF, as well as highlights of TOGAF and DODAF (blended with Design Thinking), and a mix of FEAF, DODAF, TOGAF, and ArchiMate Viewpoints and how to address them as well as customized views for particular scenarios. We supported the course with a Confluence site that included the use of a high-value discussion board.

Future offerings of this course will include more use cases and exercises on analyses of alternatives throughout the design life cycle and for optimized oversight of implementation.
We will be offering our unique Government Enterprise Architecture (GEA) Certification course again in 2021/Q1 and it will be targeted toward anyone from any government globally at any level. This course is a homerun, a great value, and something all EAs in government will benefit dramatically from.