Successful collaboratives don’t happen by accident. They are an outcome of deliberate governance, deliberate architecture, design and implementation. Cross-jurisdictional collaboratives bring a new level of complexity. How is that complexity understood and managed? Through enterprise architecture. NASCIO has defined enterprise architecture as follows:
Enterprise Architecture is a management engineering discipline that presents a holistic, comprehensive view of the enterprise including strategic planning, organization, relationships, business process, information, and operations.
A collaborative creates a whole new kind of enterprise, new strategic intent, new organization, new operations, and new supply chains. In the future, collaboratives will employ operating discipline to pick the right targets of opportunity. Those targets will need to be examined and evaluated for complexity, economics, risk, design, implementation and sustainment.
We’ll need to learn how to properly structure collaboratives. Following enterprise architecture discipline will ensure all the pieces fit together.
Note: Be sure to check view the recent webinar NASCIO presented on enterprise architecture with guest presenter Dr. Brian Cameron, Penn State. That presentation includes a segment on the importance of enterprise architecture in planning and implementing collaboratives. “Effective Transformation and Integration that can Enable Cross-jurisdiction Collaboration” September 20, 2012 - http://www.nascio.org/events/webinars.cfm
David Behen, CIO, State of Michigan, Co-Chair of the NASCIO State & Local Collaboration Working Group