Brian Burke

In an open letter blog to President Obama, Burton Group Senior Analyst  Joe Bugajski opines that President Obama is spewing “delusional visions of a nation-covering, interoperable, secure, private, reliable, accurate, and instantaneous electronic healthcare data network is at best terrifying and at worst pernicious.” OK – I had to look up ‘pernicious’.  It’s not good.

Mr. Bugajski goes on to relate a horrifying personal experience in which he ended up in a clinic and then a hospital that both used electronic health records. He relates the story of his stay in which electronic health records hindered rather than helped and concludes that most health care professionals “longed for handwritten charts hanging at the foot of every patient’s bed.”  While I don’t doubt his experience, and I disagree that building a national health information network is an unsound idea.  In fact, the National Health Services (NHS) in the UK is several years into its ‘Connecting for Health‘ program and has already built a nation-covering, interoperable, secure, private, reliable, accurate, and instantaneous electronic healthcare data network.  The UK is reaping the benefits of improved treatment and cost savings. You can read additional background in my research note, Toolkit: Enterprise Architecture for the U.K.’s National Health Service (Case Study)

Mr. Bugajski is correct that the initiative will be large and costly and I also agree that the US government should approach the program with caution. But the benefits are enormous – it’s about saving lives! While I sympathize with Mr. Bugajski’s unfortunate experience, I believe moving forward on this initiative is truly one of the bright spots in President Obama’s stimulus plan.

This may be most entertaining CV I’ve ever read.  To be completely honest, it’s the first CV that I’ve read top to bottom in decades.  Noah bills himself as a “Front-end Developer and Other Crap”.  When you stop laughing and dig a little deeper, Noah is not only telling the reader that he’s pretty good at his job (all CVs say that), he’s also putting prospective employers on notice.  He’s telling you that he’s not going to fit in to your company, but if your company fits him then he may work there.

Noah is a great example of a ‘Digital Native’.  He is clearly not a younger version of us.  We need to rethink how we are going to attract and retain the best and brightest of Noah’s generation.  As Noah puts it, “The motherfuton SUN will be jealous of the heat I add to your site.”

Good luck in your job search Noah!

Yesterday we finished up the EA Foundation Seminar in Barcelona and it was an interesting event. Some of my observations:

1. Lots of companies are getting EA new programs off the ground – but perhaps not as many as in the past few years.  This is likely a direct response to the economic crisis. 
2. Open Source EA tools are more likely to gain acceptance.  During a discussion about the recently announced Essential Architecture Manager seminar attendees expressed a lot of support for open source EA tools.  Sarah Smith from Enterprise Architecture Solutions reports in her blog that 200 people have downloaded the tool already.
3. Do Chief Architects ‘own’ EA decisions?  We had an interesting debate on this topic.  For example, when making a decision on a software standard what is the role of the Chief Architect?   On one side, the argument is that Chief Architects should take a position and defend it.  On the other side, the argument that the Chief Architect merely facilitates the decision making process for the stakeholders – they have no personal stake in the results.
4. A surprisingly small number of companies represented at the seminar had appointed process owners, and very few had ‘one company’ initiatives to integrate or harmonize business processes across lines of business.  This is not consistent with my day-to-day experience – maybe it was just the mix of companies represented or perhaps a trend.
5. Business architecture is becoming solidly embedded within the scope of most enterprise architecture programs however the reporting relationship remains unclear – should business architecture report into IT or the business.  The trend appears to be more business architecture teams have business side reporting relationships.

If you missed this EA Foundation Seminar, be sure to sign up for the next European EA Foundation Seminar in Amsterdam on June 16 &17.

Chris Wilson recently alerted me to an opinion piece on the British Computer Society (BCS) website written by Peter Kemp and Dr John McManus that is critical of enterprise architecture in general and the National Program for IT (NPfIT) of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) in particular.  Some members of the BCS have been quite critical of the NPfIT in the past and the program has also been often criticized in the press as well.  While NHS bashing a favoured pastime in the UK there are some very good aspects to the NPfIT that I pointed out in a case study research note last year.

Mr. Kemp and Dr. McManus state “But, we have to say, that were not sure we’ve yet seen an EA strategy that is anything other than impractical, unachievable and, even if it could be achieved, unsustainable.”  At the core of the argument is that EA is too high level and future focused for practical application.  The problems they cite with EA are common but not universal.  I would argue that the majority of EA programs deliver valuable principles, standards and high level models of the future state providing valuable direction to projects.  Mr. Kemp and Dr. McManus clearly have a project level world view and from that viewpoint EA may seem onerous.  It’s easy to fall back on the belief that projects should be left to their own devices – and the optimization point should be the project.  I believe the objective of EA is to shift the optimization point from the project to the enterprise.  EA is about the big picture.  It’s about the future and it does not (nor does it attempt to) solve all project level problems.  Are there problems with some EA programs?  Of course, but that doesn’t mean that EA should be abandoned and we should retreat to the failed practices of the past.

The NPfIT is a particular target of Mr. Kemp and Dr. McManus.  While the program is costly and has had its share of problems it is also moving forward to solve real health care information sharing issues.  In fact many other countries are starting similar programs.  On February 24, 2009 President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress and stated, “Our recovery plan will invest in electronic health records and new technology that will reduce errors, bring down costs, ensure privacy, and save lives”.  The NHS program is actually the envy of many governments – too bad it doesn’t enjoy the same support at home.

I do agree with their conclusion that enterprise architects should be able to justify their activities in terms of overall business benefits.  When I first spoke to Paul Jones (NHS Chief Technology Officer) he told me that this was the first position where he’s had the opportunity to save lives.  I’m jealous.  I’ve never worked on a project that had that kind of a business benefit.

Ten years ago I coined the term ‘federated architecture’ to describe an approach to enterprise architecture that allows interoperability and information sharing between semi-autonomous business units.  Since then hundreds of companies and governments have adopted this approach.  I remain a big supporter of the idea, but I am also aware of the difficulties to implement this approach, and the challenge facing the New US Federal CIO Vivek Kundra is daunting to say the least.

According to the White House, the Federal CIO “establishes and oversees enterprise architecture to ensure system interoperability and information sharing and ensure information security and privacy across the federal government.”  This will require departments and agencies to agree on standards for interoperability (at least) and/or to harmonize and integrate business process and technologies (even more difficult). The problem is that the departments and agencies of the US Government are fiefdoms that are reluctant to give up control over investments.  Harmonizing enterprise architectures creates winners and losers and departments will likely fight to avoid sub-optimization of the department to achieve of the optimization of government.  I have seen many government-wide EA programs that have failed primarily because they underestimated the political, cultural and financial challenges.

Over the years, I’ve met quite a few national government CIOs and they all have the same problem. They are given the responsibility to optimize whole of government architectures without the authority to get it done.  In most cases they have influence over government departments but no real control.  In many cases they play the role of advisor and cajoler but lack the backing to make real change.  Clearly there have been some successes, but in most cases those successes occur after several failed attempts.

But I’m cheering for Kundra.  I have never met Vivek Kundra but several of my colleagues have and the feedback is that he is very bright, innovative and driven.  Andrea DiMaio knows him and has written several blogs on Kundra’s appointment. My hope is that Kundra gets the support that he needs to achieve the goals that the White House has set out for him.

For additional background on Federated Architectures review this research note:  Management Update: Managing a Federated Architecture

After much trepidation, I’ve started this blog and with it I’ve created Yet Another Communication Channel (YACC) in addition to the three telephones, two e-mails, personal website, Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In and various other communication channels that I maintain. Given the number of electronic channels we may never meet face to face, but if we do you’ll recognize me from this picture.

I am an analyst in Gartner’s enterprise architecture group, and I’ve been doing this for a little over 10 years originally with META Group before moving to Gartner with the acquisition a few years ago.  Before working as an analyst, I was a chief architect at an insurance company in Toronto have had a varied career in IT over the past 23 years.

I live in Andorra but I spend summers in Sitges in Spain.  I’ve been working from a home office for the past 15 years, and living in Andorra pushes the envelope in terms of remote working.  For those of you who are not familiar with Andorra, it is a tiny principality in the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France.  While I certainly will be blogging about enterprise architecture, I will also touch upon the challenges of remote working along with the economy, politics, travel and other topics.