Department of Defense

TriTech Enterprise Systems is supporting IBM on the Department of Defense's (DoD) Business Enterprise Architecture Project. This project is a high-level blueprint to guide the DoD's transformation. The Business Enterprise Architecture describes the structural composition of DoD business operations in ways that transcend organizational boundaries - it demonstrates and facilitates the derivative nature of the design and development of business capabilities by linking business needs to business capabilities and by tracing business strategies to systems solutions.

The Business Enterprise Architecture comprises an integrated family of work products that describe multiple and different perspectives of current and future transformed DoD business operations. Integration of information contained in all work products across those perspectives is critical to the success of DoD's future Business Enterprise Architecture. The work products are categorized as follows:

• DOD Architecture Framework Products
• Supplemental Architecture Framework Products
• External Requirements and Verification Reports

The work products consist of models, diagrams, tables, and narratives, which, together, translate the complexities of a given entity into simplified yet meaningful representations of present and planned, future business operations. Such operations are described in logical terms (e.g., business processes, rules, information needs and flows, users, locations) and technical terms (e.g., hardware, software, data, communications, security standards, protocols). Different views into the entity's operations are created for the present and future environments. Future operations, in particular, are described in terms of "enterprise capabilities" that operate across the Defense enterprise.

The DOD Architecture Framework products provide the information infrastructure for the Business Enterprise Architecture and from which supplemental framework products that allow for further analysis and integration of developed architecture framework products may occur.

Similarly, a well structured approach for identifying and managing requirements assists in determining if the Business Enterprise Architecture is compliant with requirements promulgated by authoritative sources internal and external to the DoD.

In addition, the Business Mission Area (BMA) of the Department of Defense is undergoing an unprecedented transformation that will modernize the business of supporting the warfighter. Information assurance and transition planning expertise provided by TriTech enables the success of this transformation, which both presents significant opportunities for business improvement and introduces new security threats and vulnerabilities, due in large part to the nature of the federated global environment in which future business missions are to be accomplished.

The modernization aspect that is most immediately apparent at the executive level is that of the members of the federation of business interests within the BMA, who are collaborating to improve the timeliness and accuracy of their shared missions, while also promoting interoperability of the many systems that support them. Framed by the BMA Business Enterprise Architecture (BMA BEA), information assurance considerations abound on this front, which are essentially related to assuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of business information.

Equally critical to successful business transformation, though perhaps less apparent at the executive level, are the changes occurring to the environment within which the BMA operates - the net-centric Global Information Grid (GIG). These changes necessitate implementation of a new paradigm for interoperability across the DoD, defined in the Net-Centric Operations and Warfare Reference Model (NCOW RM). TriTech has been providing guidance to the BMA to ensure that the future DoD business systems portfolio will comply with mandated and emerging activities and standards identified in the NCOW RM.

TriTech, working collaboratively with Team IBM and the DoD, has developed an approach to addressing both of these modernization challenges, the key elements of which are the development of IA in the BEA and related products, such as the BEA Transition Plan, through the application of a layered approach to IA known as defense-in-depth. This approach assigns IA capabilities and responsibilities to each of the DoD components - referred to as federation members in the new DoD business governance structure - at levels appropriate to the mission of each, enabling assured information sharing and interoperability while preserving mission essential autonomy.