Changes in system applications and programs are commonplace ingovernment, according to Ron Huxter, chief technology officer forthe Ministry of Government Services.
At IBM’s KnowledgeNow Executive Breakfast in Toronto Tuesday,Huxter, discussed how service oriented architecture (SOA) bringsadvantages to public sector service delivery.
The government is always making changes to the programs andapplications it uses within IT departments for service delivery,but SOA from IBM Ltd. may help ease the transition periods, andwith less disruption, he said.
“We need help having services modularized…every four yearssomething changes in the government, the programs, the clients,”said Huxter. “IT transformation is a bigger challenge because ofenterprise architecture (EA) application development.
“The system oriented architecture we’re looking at right now isbased on, or focused on, application development,” said Huxter.”The Ministry of Government Services is looking to change itslegacy systems to a service-oriented architecture.”
Huxter outlined challenges to SOA in government, with one ofthose challenges to the area of technology being tools, with theresponse or solution to that challenge being “interface tointerface.”
The transition to SOA will also see a Common Components andApplications Services group (CCAS), responsible for developingfinance, human resources and document management, he said.
To ensure the group fulfils requirements of the over 200 Ontariobusiness units utilizing these services, there is an architecturalreview board that Huxter is chairing.
