Australian Local Government Association

October 2003

Introduction

Effective use of enterprise architecture is a recognized hallmark of successful public and private organisations . An enterprise architecture (EA) provides a clear and comprehensive picture of the structure of an organisation or functional area. It is an essential tool for effectively and efficiently engineering business processes and for implementing and evolving supporting systems. This draft paper is the first step towards providing the local government sector with the tools and reference models to facilitate government wide improvement through cross-agency analysis and the identification of duplicative investments, gaps, opportunities for collaboration, interoperability, and integration within and across government agencies.

This architecture provides a context and structure for initiatives such as the LGIF (Local Government Interoperability Framework - designed to assist local government business managers and information technology professionals to adopt a consistent set of business and technical standards that enable interoperability and e-government.

A number of local government, state and Commonwealth government agencies are already working on initiatives to share, and amalgamate information to provide value added information and services. This document has been created as a discussion draft to identify these initiatives and to recommend a set of standards and guidelines that provide direction for the benefit of the local government sector. The standards and guidelines identified in this framework seek to build on the work that has already been undertaken by state local government associations (LGAs), councils and by ALGA.

One of the highest costs for local government that this framework can address is the cost of reporting information to state and Commonwealth agencies. A consistent and coherent information management framework across multiple levels of government will have a significant effect on reporting overheads by reducing redundancy and duplication of effort.

From a client's viewpoint, access to seamless whole of government information and services will help to know where to go and who to talk to. Integration of services will also provide a more consistent government experience thereby reducing the level of knowledge of government (of the "bureaucratic maze" and "red tape") a client, particularly those in business, must have in order to deal with government.

From a local government point of view the creation and implementation of an interoperability framework will enable agencies to add value to their existing information and services by "bundling" related information. There will be opportunities to reduce duplication of effort and to reuse intellectual property to deliver better returns on investment and better services to clients.

¹GAO Information Technology: A Framework for Assessing and Improving Enterprise Architecture Management (V1.1) April 2003, GAO-03-584G

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