Blocks of SOA: Building services with common symbols
Decades of siloed system design have left most government organizations with antique, rickety systems that don't play well with others. By putting new SOA wrappers on old proprietary applications, modular interfaces can be built, shared, linked, reused and recombined as needed. The utopia is infinite interoperability. More at InterGovWorld.com
It's architecture, not technology
The federal government supports SOA development across the public sector and has posted two documents outlining SOA strategy and a series primer. Gary Doucet, executive director of architecture for the CIO branch of Treasury Board Secretariat, says the concepts of SOA and service orientation overlap. More at InterGovWorld.com
Where to start SOA
Much homework and hard footwork is needed to drive a compelling case for a SOA project. At SIMS (a shared information management services provider), the strategy is to start with a universal service that's required across all departments or agencies. A project like linking IDs, for example, aligns with the province's broader business objectives to improve services. More at InterGovWorld.com
SOA: A better ballgame with BTEP
Taking an enterprise view can help to guide an organization to improved planning, decision-making, communications and business direction. It's also time-consuming and requires ongoing investment to support. It's not a one-time quick fix, either. The promise of service-oriented architecture (SOA) is the ability to better automate business processes and implement changes quickly. More at InterGovWorld.com
Understanding the architecture
Service-oriented architecture or SOA is an architecture style, not a product or a project. It's an improvement over past architectures in that it captures and uses the best practices of the architectures that came before it. As such, SOA is an evolution in architecture, not a revolution. More at InterGovWorld.com
Moving beyond consultation
It is an interesting indicator of the changing state of our political culture that even the most secretive and centralizing of governments now feel obliged to insist they consult closely with the public on key issues. At the same time, stakeholders regularly complain about the lack of consultation. They say decision-making is too closed, top-down and unresponsive. More at InterGovWorld.com
Why business models matter
Many organizations assume that success is determined primarily by their product and service offerings, how well they meet customer needs, and on the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. But in today's rapidly changing and complex environment, the business model is becoming equally important and arguably inseparable from the product and operational strategies in achieving success. More at InterGovWorld.com
Infoway peers into the future
The progress in e-health delivery during the past few years puts Canada in a promising position, says a vision paper prepared by Canada Health Infoway Inc. The paper suggests several goals beyond the rollout of a national EHR system, including better disease management and cancer care systems, enhanced pandemic and public health services, more extensive remote care and shorter wait-times. More at InterGovWorld.com
Three nuggets for talent gold
It is unacceptable for the public sector to resign itself to losing the most senior or valuable IT employees to the private sector. These employees have the critical skills and institutional knowledge and memory. Further, a continual process of employee turnover involves non-trivial hiring and training costs. The new HR paradigm for retention and acquisition is to develop, deploy and connect. More at InterGovWorld.com
Math for the masses: managing infrastructure assets
Mathematical optimization has long been used in forestry to determine appropriate harvesting and planting, relative to the life spans of trees. The New Brunswick Department of Transportation is using similar methods to plan the long-term treatment of roads and bridges. More at InterGovWorld.com
Q and A with Michael Tschichholz, e-Government Competence Center, Germany
Based in Berlin, Michael Tschichholz is director of Germany's Competence Center for Electronic Government and Applications. During his visit to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., for the 2007 Lac Carling Congress, he sat down with senior writer Lisa Williams to discuss Germany's ambitious e-Government 2.0 program and the headway they're making on their national ID strategy. More at InterGovWorld.com
Estonia's unsolved zombie insurgence
The month-long assault in April against Estonia's government Web sites, banks, media outlets and ISPs was neither unusual nor unexpected, and the origin of the attacks may never be known. The attacks also punched big holes in the idea that the Internet is so universal and has so much inherent redundancy that it can heal itself, patching around damaged nodes and getting the data safely to its destination, despite any and all obstacles. More at InterGovWorld.com