Government Frameworks

by Paul Harmon

This spring when I joined the Object Management Group (OMG) to give some executive briefings on its new MDA initiative, we traveled to several cities. In most cities we got a modest crowd, but in Washington, DC, USA, we were speaking to a standing-room-only crowd. Of course, we were all interested in what was different about DC. It turns out it was the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 -- which mandates an enterprise architecture for government agencies -- coupled with a recent evaluation by the GSA that suggested that most government agencies weren't in compliance. Anyone credible who is in DC to talk about how to develop enterprise architectures is, it seems, guaranteed a crowd.