Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles

Enterprise Architecture Justification Paper
Case Study

Written by:
June 14, 2000
IFSM 311
Professor

To consider what enterprise architecture means, it is important to understand its origin. All architecture within information technology can track its ancestry back to the lessons learned from building architecture. Enterprise Architecture is the description and visualization of the structure, a blueprint if you will, of a given area of contemplation, its elements and their collaborations and interrelations links vision, strategy and feasibility, focusing on usability durability and effectiveness. Architecture enables construction, defining principles, rules, standards and guidelines,
The CSI redesign solution will help the DMV overcome many problems within the organization including access to systems by using a user single sign on and limiting users access to data needed for their job function just to name a few. By incorporating enterprise architecture to the development process the DMV can meet or exceed their goals and improve efficiency and effectiveness. One example is the Food and Drug Administration turned to Enterprise Architecture (EA) to serve as the methodology to achieve its desired state of efficiency and effectiveness. The FDA worked with each center and office to create a baseline architecture, approved and published agency-wide. This baseline was used to support the development of a consolidation blueprint for the IT infrastructure of FDA. Another example is the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP/CUSTOMS) used EA to improve systems support at lower cost to more than 20 agencies with missions tied to international trade and transportation. The U.S. Customs Modernization Program Management Organization was established to develop an EA-driven system concept document for the new Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) project. The goals of developing the EA were to implement the programs and governance processes to advance the CBP modernization program; better align CBP investments to CBP strategic goals;