Is the term “enterprise architecture” echoing through the halls of U.S. state and local governments? Not quite, but that doesn’t mean that the practice is not having a quiet and compelling influence — and maybe a growing one, as well. Fiscal pressures are leading some state CIOs to think that their clout may increase if they can help see their governments through these tumultuous times and create more of a “state enterprise” across agency silos.

That’s my takeaway from a recent conversation I had with Doug Robinson, Executive Director at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), and Eric Sweden, the nonprofit’s program director for Enterprise Architecture and Governance. While enterprise architecture (EA) maturity varies state by state, the discipline itself has become integral to meeting state CIOs’ top priorities. As a result, EA is being integrated into plans to accomplish these public sector goals. According to recent data from NASCIO, those priorities include consolidation and optimization, budget and cost control, governance, the cloud, shared services, and security. (As you can see from this 2008 interview with John Gillispie, former CIO for the State of Iowa, consolidation has never been far from state CIOs’ minds.) The way I read that, pretty much all are closely linked with fiscal dynamics.

Optimize and Harmonize

Let’s start with one example of how EA can pack a punch: “States that are trying to get a handle on their budgets to be more efficient will use EA approaches to optimize and harmonize,” explains Sweden. “They may not even call it EA, but they are going through the process of EA.” After all, while doing straight-line, across-the-board percentage cuts to IT services may have the virtue of simplicity, isn’t it wiser to understand what programs and activities are and aren’t delivering what’s needed — and then work a strategy out from there?

“Where you cut and what is the rationale” is particularly relevant to the current budget crisis, he says. “Maybe you should be investing in some areas and completely eliminating others; and the disciplined thinking of EA is helping with that,” Sweden says. EA’s strength is that it relates to the big ideas of managing complexity and understanding the impact of change. “Enterprise architecture drives people to think through processes, the organization and information, and [we hope, to] apply some wisdom to decision making. We don’t care about EA and project management for its own sake, but for its outcome, which is better services to citizens, more effectiveness and efficiencies, and removing redundancies to optimize the enterprise.”

Another example of EA’s impact on state CIO priorities: Before moving services to the cloud, you’ve got to understand which services are good candidates for the transition. EA provides the foundations for assessing how close a match a cloud provider’s database and data architecture are to your own, for example, or how you would go about switching relationships in the future. How about one more impact for good measure? If state and local governments are to transform by way of shared services, it’s likely that services-oriented architectures (SOA), and their reusable components approach, will play a role in that metamorphosis.

“Enterprise architecture is embedded in the decision making on all these priorities,” says Robinson.” It’s going to be the foundation.”

Overcoming Obstacles

This is not to imply that there aren’t challenges to implementing enterprise architecture practices and principles. Among the challenges: The discipline may not always be represented in overall advisory councils or governance structures; the generally higher CIO turnover at the state level means that leadership perspectives and visions may change more than they do in the private sphere; and funding decisions at the federal level may limit what CIOs and enterprise architects can do.

But, perhaps there is a greenfield opportunity in some challenges, too, such as the growth of social media usage by state officials and what that means in terms of creating architectural policy frameworks for acceptable use, accountability, retention and transparency — all very critical requirements in the public sector. There are security issues, too, and NASCIO has just issued a core services taxonomy for state IT security programs that could help states create more powerful security architectures. “From the birth certificate on, there is a tremendous amount of personal information” available, says Robinson. It’s important, therefore, to protect it from both the infrastructure side and the policy, audit and compliance side, he says.

Here’s a question for enterprise architects (whether you go by that title or not) on Smart Enterprise Exchange and Smart Architect who work in state or local governments around the globe: How do you see your discipline being leveraged to support priorities, and what more would you like to see?