Study case (Information Resources Management) - Essay Example

Architecture: Governance, Investment Process and Tie Investments As d in the case, the governance alignment with thearchitecture is “more mandate than authority”. This signifies that the governance model certainly lacks teeth, which is based on the point of view of Alberta’s chief enterprise architect, John Chandler. However, other than this, Alberta’s program is noted to have high success stories and affinity for change. In fact, the key aspects of Alberta’s Enterprise Architecture include comprehensive, top-down approach, performance metrics designed up front, and priorities for common services.

There is also a noted team to analyze the entire business process, ensuring high control, monitoring and evaluation through the use of capability maturity model and balanced scorecard for tracking progress. This means that the Enterprise Architecture has the chance to reuse assets and streamline services. Generally, the Chief Information Officer will not possibly encounter problem as far as the entire technical operation of the IT investments is concerned, because of the dynamic acceptance to change of the Alberta’s Enterprise Architecture.

The only problem will be the governance, which has to have more enhanced authority. This at some point may substantially interfere the effective review process of investment, for centrality may be a great consideration in the future. After all, the centralized investment review boards can simplify the review and control process (Hite 31; Encarnation 22). Investment and Implementation of EA There is a need to establish a governance group and process from the beginning. After all, there is sufficient presence of mandate compared to established authority for governance.

This at some point may lead to an idea that the Enterprise Architecture sounds like a stand-alone construct. Based on the idea of project management, there is no such thing as stand-alone construct on a wide scale. There must be a need for centralization, at some point, to establish a uniform standard output. But then again, this will boil down to providing higher authority for governance in order to centralize the mandate at some certain level. EA and Government’s Capital Planning and Investment Control Process The Enterprise Architecture can be used as part of Government’s Capital planning and Investment control process by tying investment review to the architecture.

This makes sense, because the review itself is a control process, prior to the decision-making process. In addition, investment managers should have to develop business case and let be the Enterprise Architecture as just an integral component of the approval process. As noticed in this suggestion, the Enterprise Architecture is considered as the dynamic element or entity of the entire investment process. There is no significant problem of integrating this approach, because the established system and culture has already been sensitive to the issue of control.

After all, the Architecture has already been renowned about its success and the willingness to go for change. What is only necessary then is simply give more authority to the governance of the enterprise or architecture, making it substantially part of the generalized capital planning and investment control process, for instance. Works Cited Encarnation, Dennis J. Rivals Beyond Trade: America Versus Japan in Global Competition. Cornell University Press, 1992. Hite, Randolph C. Homeland Security: U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology Program Planning and Execution Improvements Needed.

Diane Publishing, 2009.