FOR THE CITIZEN
The true driver behind the FEA effort is the need to improve the government's delivery of services to the public. The stovepiped, agency-centric processes that have previously characterized government must be replaced with citizen-centric processes. The FEA, through its support of the 24 Presidential Priority e-Gov Initiatives and other cross-agency, citizen-focused e-Gov efforts, is a key component of the citizen-focused transformation in government.
FOR THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET (OBM)
With the FEA, OMB is provided with a greatly enhanced cross-agency analytical capability. OMB is no longer solely dependent on the agency-by-agency analyses that have characterized the budget allocation process in the past. Through the line-of-business perspective the FEA provides, OMB will be able to see redundancies, gaps, and opportunities for collaboration across the federal agencies. Examples of benefits to OMB include:
- Elimination of investments in redundant IT capabilities, business processes, or other capital assets
- Identification of common business functions across agencies
- Integration of performance measurement with the budget process
FOR FEDERAL AGENCIES
The FEA is not just for OMB, nor is it for any single federal agency. The FEA is exactly what it's name suggests - an architecture for the Federal government as whole. As such, agencies have played and will continue to play a key role in the definition of the architecture. Federal architecture information is available on-line for agencies to explore, analyze, and modify. This “vision” into the federal architecture gives each agency a collection of new capabilities for defining and implementing their own target environments. Agencies will now be able to:
- Save time and money by leveraging reusable business processes, data, and IT-components in other agencies
- Leverage FEA work products as a catalyst for agency-specific EA efforts
- Ensure proposed investments are not duplicative with other agencies' prior to developing business cases and submitting them to OMB
- Suggest modifications to the Business Reference Model to ensure future versions accurately portray the business of the US government, including the role specific agencies play
FOR CONGRESS
Application of the Federal Enterprise Architecture will yield a wealth of information on Federal business lines, programs and capital investments; and the performance of those business lines, programs and capital investments. This information will be made available to Congress as it considers the authorization of and appropriation of funding for Federal programs, and as it fulfills its oversight responsibilities to ensure that Federal funds are appropriately spent.
