Welcome to the Bureau of Temporary Relocation's (BTR) Enterprise Architecture (EA) Program. As a newly formed organization under the Department of Homeland Security, BTR has just begun development of its enterprise architecture. Our mission is new and our lines of businesses are rapidly forming to meet the needs of citizens in times of disaster. Our EA is a valuable tool in our ability to better manage our mission today and in the future. It is the sincere hope of the EA team that you find this web site useful, informative, and easy to use.

BTR believes that by integrating strategic, business, and technology activities it can best manage its information technology investments. Establishing and maintaining an enterprise architecture is critical element in achieving this integration. Hence the purpose of our EA is to provide our personnel at all levels with a tool that enables them to see and understand the organization in full context in order to:

• improve technology investment decisions

• better align resources with the organization's direction

• aid in process improvement initiatives

• improve project planning

• minimize unnecessary resource redundancies.

As a federal agency within the Department of Homeland Security, another purpose of our EA is to fully comply with the Clinger-Cohen Act (CCA). In short, BTR is developing its EA is to serve its workforce in communicating, understanding, and optimizing its application of technology in support of our present and future operations.

Through our continued use of an EA at all levels within our organization, we expect to derive value by:

• helping identify and sponsoring those projects that are of greatest value to the organization's current mission and future direction

• improving our ability to adapt to change and realign our assets consistent with the plans and future direction of BTR

• improving our ability to plan and execute projects/initiatives through the use of better and current information regarding BTR's plans, processes, and technology

• minimizing and avoiding costs associated with unwanted duplicative process and technology resource investments

• minimizing and avoiding costs associated with scrap and rework caused by a poor understanding of the organization's current and future plans, processes and technology

As this EA program matures, BTR intends to qualitatively and quantitatively measure the value of the EA within the organization. Some of the proposed measures for the EA program are:

• Number of occurrences where the EA provides useful information in support of IT capital investment decisions (Will be looking for an upward trend in the frequency of use)

• Number of occurrences where the EA provides useful information in support of project plans or systems integration activities (Will be looking for an upward trend in the frequency of use)

• Cost and time devoted on projects in understanding the current mission, business, or technology infrastructure (Will be looking for a downward trend in project planning and execution.)

Measuring and reporting the value of the EA is one of the best methods to ensure its continued health and focus in helping our organization.

At the onset of this program, our enterprise architecture team carefully considered several approaches for what should be documented and how the information should be organized. The team also considered the desired scope of the program in light of available resources and BTR's newly forming internal organizations. This consideration led to the following two decisions.

#1 BTR will adopt the EA³ Cube Framework, founded by Dr. Scott Bernard, as its implementation methodology and documentation framework for its EA program. Among the leading frameworks (Zachman, FEAF, TEAF, and DoDAF) the EA team found the EA³ Cube Framework to provide the best approach for integrating our company's strategy, business and technology for capital planning decision making and effective management of the IT enterprise.

The image below provides a visual representation of the EA³ Cube showing the contents and structure of the information that BTR's EA will eventually contain for all of its lines of business.

Source: Bernard, Scott A. An Introduction to Enterprise Architecture EA³. Author House. 2005.

#2 Since time and available resources did not permit the EA team to model/document all of BTR in a single increment, it was decided to apply a segmented approach in the creation of BTR's EA. A segmented approach enables the team to gather and document architectural components to their full depth, one line of business at a time. In this way, the EA program can more quickly deliver value by providing an operationally useful increment to a relevant portion of BTR. This approach also enables the team to apply lessons learned in the subsequent development of additional segments of BTR's EA.

Presently the team is developing the EA for the “Transportation and Logistics” line of business. This work is expected to be completed in December of 2005. The lessons and experience from this work will then be applied towards development of the EAs for other BTR lines of business, which are “Community”, “Basic Needs”, “Administration”, and “Information and Communications,” and “Housing.”

Recognizing the value and utility of an enterprise architecture, BTR began its EA program shortly after the organization's establishment in September 2005. Presently BTR's EA team is working to complete the first version of the organization's enterprise architecture. The project team is currently on schedule to deliver Release 1.0 on December 9, 2005.

Below is the team's development schedule for Version 1.0 of the BTR Enterprise Architecture.

• EA Program Kickoff (Transportation): September 23, 2005

• Draft EA artifacts: October 26, 2005

• Final EA artifacts: November 18, 2005

• EA for Transportation Completed (Release 1.0): December 9, 2005

• Develop EA for Sustenance (Release 2.0): January 2006 – April 2006

• Develop EA for Community (Release 3.0): May 2006 – August 2006 (Release 3.0)

• Develop EA for Administration (Release 4.0): September 2006 – December 2006

• Develop EA for Information and Communications (Release 5.0): January 2007 – April 2007

Our enterprise architecture is intended for use by all BTR personnel in activities to include planning, decision making, informational reference, training, and process improvement. The web site serves as BTR's EA Repository for all enterprise architecture information. The web site closely follows Dr. Bernard's Living Enterprise design for an EA information repository.

Consistent with the EA³ Cube diagram shown above, the 2D matrix titled BTR's EA Repository, provides access to the full breadth and depth of a hierarchical, multi-tiered set of information. The columns represent the five hierarchical layers of the EA³ Cube, i.e. strategy, business, data, applications, technology. The “Security Solutions” column represents elements that are integral to all levels and segments within BTR's EA. The rows within the 2D matrix represent various levels of detail. Each cell within the matrix contains all of the artifacts that document a “component” of the enterprise architecture. Components are wholly functional, changeable elements of the EA, e.g. a strategic plan, a business process, a data flow, an application/system, a network. Simply click on the individual elements within the matrix to access the information and artifacts.

For more detailed information on using the EA, please visit BTR's EA Tutorial.

BTR's Enterprise Architecture Program is supported by a team of 10 personnel from the company's executive management, business, and technical staff. The team is organized to provide dedicated development and support for various elements of BTR's EA Repository.

Please contact us for questions or suggestions regarding the EA Program.