Dept of Defense

Department of Defense

TriTech Enterprise Systems supported IBM on the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Business Enterprise Architecture Project. The project consisted of a high-level blueprint to guide the DoD’s transformation. The Business Enterprise Architecture described the structural composition of DoD business operations in ways that transcend organizational boundaries – it demonstrated and facilitated the derivative nature of the design and development of business capabilities by linking business needs to business capabilities and by tracing business strategies to systems solutions.

The Business Enterprise Architecture comprised of an integrated family of work products that described multiple and different perspectives of current and future transformed DoD business operations. Integration of information contained in all work products across those perspectives is critical to the success of DoD’s future Business Enterprise Architecture. The work products were categorized as follows:

• DoD Architecture Framework Products
• Supplemental Architecture Framework Products
• Empower the user community to understand and accept the products developed by the Map Modernization initiative.
• External Requirements and Verification Reports

The work products consisted of models, diagrams, tables, and narratives, which, together, translate the complexities of a given entity into simplified yet meaningful representations of present and planned, future business operations. Such operations were described in logical terms (e.g., business processes, rules, information needs and flows, users, locations) and technical terms (e.g., hardware, software, data, communications, security standards, protocols). Different views into the entity’s operations were created for the present and future environments. Future operations, in particular, are described in terms of “enterprise capabilities” that operate across the Defense enterprise.

The DoD Architecture Framework products provided the information infrastructure for the Business Enterprise Architecture and from which supplemental framework products that allow for further analysis and integration of developed architecture framework products may occur.

Similarly, a well structured approach for identifying and managing requirements assisted in determining if the Business Enterprise Architecture was compliant with requirements promulgated by authoritative sources internal and external to the DoD.

In addition, the Business Mission Area (BMA) of the Department of Defense was undergoing an unprecedented transformation that would modernize the business of supporting the warfighter. Information assurance and transition planning expertise provided by TriTech enabled the success of this transformation, which both presented significant opportunities for business improvement and introduced new security threats and vulnerabilities, due in large part to the nature of the federated global environment in which future business missions were to be accomplished.

The modernization aspect that was most immediately apparent at the executive level was that of the members of the federation of business interests within the BMA, who were collaborating to improve the timeliness and accuracy of their shared missions, while also promoting interoperability of the many systems that support them. Framed by the BMA Business Enterprise Architecture (BMA BEA), information assurance considerations abound on this front, which were essentially related to assuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of business information.

Equally critical to successful business transformation, though perhaps less apparent at the executive level, were the changes occurring to the environment within which the BMA operated – the net-centric Global Information Grid (GIG). These changes necessitated implementation of a new paradigm for interoperability across the DoD, defined in the Net-Centric Operations and Warfare Reference Model (NCOW RM). TriTech provided guidance to the BMA to ensure that the future DoD business systems portfolio will comply with mandated and emerging activities and standards identified in the NCOW RM.

TriTech, worked collaboratively with Team IBM and the DoD, to develop an approach addressing both of these modernization challenges, the key elements of which were the development of IA in the BEA and related products, such as the BEA Transition Plan, through the application of a layered approach to IA known as defense-in-depth. This approach assigns IA capabilities and responsibilities to each of the DoD components – referred to as federation members in the new DoD business governance structure – at levels appropriate to the mission of each, enabling assured information sharing and interoperability while preserving mission essential autonomy.