What the CEI does - Government Ideas

A broad description of CEI functions was outlined in the previous article, including the equivalence of FEA (Federal Enterprise Architecture) processes. Here are some different perspectives on the same functions based on my experience.

Core function of the CEI

1. Model the data of the whole organization so that it's in 3rd normal form.

Independent of where the data is stored, or the processes that use it, this new view of the data reveals: (a) redundancy in the organization (b) where incompatibilities should be remedied (c) opportunities for sharing internally and externally (d) unanticipated capabilities

2. Change the organization's data systems to mirror the model.

This aligns the organization's resources to the organization's mission more efficiently than any other method.

Example: Police departments have a database of recent crimes. The parole board has a database of parolees. Before, the two systems did not interact. The CEI sees that a crime category field exists in both systems. The CEI normalizes the data and unlocks a new benefit where the police can now download data on all recently released parolees that have previously committed the relevant crime and have an instant list of suspects.

In case you missed the main point because it went by too fast, here it is again. Would you on your own, likely connect the fact that the police needed the specific information that the parole board had as quickly and easily as seeing that the same field was in both databases? That is the power of data modeling. The most productive possible solutions come from a formula that unlocks process oriented systems, allowing you to match fields. Simple faith in normalizing the data will always produce brilliant results without errors or exceptions. That sounds a little grand, but that is the practical result of every day use of 3rd normal form. Less programming, faster project completion, less maintenance, fewer mistakes, more flexibility for the organization, more opportunities. There is an example on centralizing government systems where I was able to complete the identical project that teams from many state agencies and a private company could not.
http://www.gov-ideas.com/centralizing_government_data_systems.htm The state agency that was responsible for the centralized application had six programmers working on it for 20 years and was not able to fully automate it, while mine was completed and fully automated in 2 years, and I was the only programmer. How did I do that when I only had obsolete mainframe technology to work with? By following the normalization rules more rigorously than the other designers.

Now multiply the single field justice system example above by all the other fields of government to get a sense of the how the CEI increases productivity.

Based on relational algebra, there is no ambiguity or subjectivity: the 3rd normal form concept is the most productive tool that organizational integrators have.

Process oriented managers on the other hand tend to think of systems as cars. When one gets old, they throw it away and get new one. But data is not a stand-alone object, so process oriented systems end up costing more in maintenance than the original system because the data is not integrated into the organization. This is the reason why CEIs are the most qualified planners of government data systems.

Working with outside CEIs
Integration partners built into the classification structure

How would collaboration work with outside CEIs? The CEI community would create a centralized database of potentially sharable databases and business processes, and use a secure intranet to open best practices and cross-jurisdictional integration related group discussions.

Let's say they found a candidate with good ROI in centralizing county government court document handling systems, and the state CIO was in charge of the project. The first advantage that becomes evident is that there are are no delays in determining who all the contacts are throughout the state: the county CEIs. One email would go to the all the right people.

Some jurisdictions have their own custom document handling systems, and some jurisdictions handle documents manually. This demonstrates a second advantage: there are fewer delays in understanding the data organization of each different county and how to best integrate the new system into each county because the CEI is already familiar with them. CEIs can best advise designers on local situations to make specs conform to the counties' mission thereby producing a more robust application. The system would be designed with future integration potential in mind.

Even at this early stage it is clear that institutional change is an orderly process. Without the CEIs, the centralization project would act as a disruption to other managers who did not have the tools and methodologies for this field. Long delays would arise as the project percolated through the old school project management system. With CEIs, managing change is what is normal and it is handled in a scientific way using best practices and effective tools. CEIs accelerate integration and generate higher quality work.

The best suited people are already in place at each site, experienced at working together, as a result of modernizing the classification system.

The combination of innovation, cross-agency consolidation, and the CEIs' integration plans for all government agencies is the IT blueprint for government-wide integration. CEIs keep the plan on track by providing internal and external coordination as the data landscape changes. Aligning databases to government's mission is a continuum process. CEIs are able to do this because they are in the loop at each organization whenever data designs change. CEIs are able to make ongoing suggestions for government consolidations from the best possible vantage point. They can most effectively handle the challenge that government centralization will not be a one time event.

Details of some CEI functions

1. Building trust: the CEI should listen to clients, understand their needs, be transparent so that clients understand the reasons for everything they do, and fulfill promises quickly to establish a good track record. Once trust is established, the CEI can get the cooperation needed to reshape the organization's information systems.

2. The CEI should get in early on the concept development and design phase of every change in the organization. Analyze the project when it's first conceived. During the design phase, the CEI should look at the data design and make sure it's normalized and has maximum potential for enterprise-wide connectivity. Experience has shown me that the CEI should not make the project design wait until he has approved it. That will turn the CEI into a bottleneck. The CEI should leave the designers free to do what they want, but insist that they notify him immediately even when only a new table is designed; so he can study it the same day. A worst case scenario would only require the designer to backtrack a few days work if the CEI found problems. This role would save the government the most money because it would prevent expensive problems from being permanently locked into systems until they were replaced, perhaps 10 or even 20 years later.

3. Create a plan to integrate the whole organization. Prioritize the enterprise-wide integration budget, including workflow changes throughout the organization.

4. Build a database of the organization's databases and document fields that could potentially be shared enterprise wide, and also shared with other government entities, preferably added to a Data Reference Model system. The CEI should learn what all of the organization's systems do and start to model the whole organization. The big picture begins to form. There should be a comment area for each field where fixes or other issues can be documented.

5. Centralize documentation on what design changes need to be made to convert poorly functioning existing systems. The reality is that there often isn't enough money to replace a poorly functioning system. But the CEI should have the specs ready so that the replacement system is already fully planned out. Clients should send ideas for the new system to the CEI on an ongoing basis instead of at the last minute when the new system is about to replace the old one. Create a database of each business unit's capabilities wish list, updated yearly and whenever there are changes, so that there is the most complete picture of the agency's goals and needs. Make sure big integration projects obtain financial oversight agency approval. Keep a record of every client request to IT, indicating whether it was turned down or not, to understand the agency better and further document any possible need for integration. Keep track of maintenance that would have been unnecessary if integration had been implemented.

6. Participate in a worldwide forum of integration issues.

7. Data harmonization and project management- check fields so that the same field does not have different names for the same record throughout the enterprise. Promote standard vocabulary enterprise wide, for example, "Distributed Cost" is called "Cost Allocation" elsewhere. Promote project management discipline where possible using project management terms to help spread the project management discipline throughout the enterprise. Train and collaborate with project managers so that project management methods include enterprise architecture.

8. Collectively, CEIs should research opportunities to change or design policies and legislation to promote integration. They should defend enterprise integration against policies that cause fragmentation because some governmental policies may actually promote enterprise disintegration. An example is the way that financial oversight agencies exercise fiscal control over IT projects. An oversight agency may author statewide policy which tends to cancel expensive IT integration projects and instead approve smaller-budgeted add-ons to obsolete systems that were to be replaced. When this pattern is repeated over and over again, the net result is institutionalization of statewide fragmentation because only stovetop applications are approved. The short-term benefit of these types of oversight agency clampdowns is that they reduce sensationalized failures of large IT projects. However if this shortsighted policy is left to continue, the long-term waste of money and loss of functionality will vastly outweigh any short-term gains. An instance of this occurred when a financial oversight agency canceled an integration project in California that was to replace a fragmented mainframe system. After the cancellation, a fortune was spent every year on an army of contractors to maintain the old system. Soon, a whole new server had to be purchased just to provide ad hoc reporting capability that could have instead been provided much more cheaply by the proposed integrated system. This was just the tip of the iceberg of lost functionality regarding the system. Lost functionality is an immense, hidden expense that oversight agencies are not geared to recognize. They are not database designers who understand that with modern, integrated relational systems, only a couple of simple relational joins are all that's needed to provide new powerful capabilities to clients, and in a manner that remains capable of adapting to clients' changing needs forever. The oversight agency overlooked the cost of future requirements. With the mainframe system still in place, each new capability became an expensive and long undertaking leaving clients with time-consuming manual operations and a long wish list of features having completion dates beyond the horizon. Meanwhile, legislative mandates did not stop putting demands on the system for new features with aggressive due dates, so now even more programmers had to be hired to write programs to work around the old system's limitations. In the same year, even more servers and programmers had to be brought in to automate one component of the system incurring unnecessary costs. Did the oversight agency add up the costs and see that it would have been a lot cheaper to approve the original integration system in the first place? No, the agency is still unaware of the consequences of its own actions; it did no follow-up. No one is keeping track of these things. Each state CIO must educate financial oversight agencies regarding the integration mission, and have the authority to change financial agency policy so that statewide integration is encouraged instead of discouraged. Oversight agencies must learn to better measure benefits of integration. Currently, financial oversight agencies are very weak in understanding the consequences of terminating integration projects. As demonstrated, they too often force the implementation of the stovepipe systems. However, if an agency has no budget to integrate an entire obsolete system, then at least the smaller, immediate-solution project must be designed for future integration in mind.

One more area for legislation and policy change is that of creating new budget structures that encourage separate government agencies to share the costs of centralized applications.

Government-wide system integration goals should encompass the full spectrum of government activity. CEIs' responsibilities should include legislative recommendations. CEIs should be empowered to stop different government agencies from working against each other, and every facet of government, including budget processes must be designed to encourage integration.

8. The CEI should teach a course in data modeling to all newly hired systems analysts, developers and programmers. This will give them an opportunity to understand the CEI's integration planning philosophy and learn the agency's overall data architecture.

Finally, a good CEI should have a curiosity about, and interest in how the organization works. They should encourage all employees to take an interest in integration matters in areas outside of their official work area, and send suggestions that will improve integration. An intranet website should educate employees about enterprise-wide integration. The CEI should create a culture of collaboration, and an environment where planning for information sharing is an integral part of the organization's personality. The CEI should promote regular business intelligence meetings with agency representatives, attend executive business goals and strategy meetings, and be an energizing force to align IT with the agency's mission.

Here is a discussion on centralizing IT applications which includes further analysis of the CEI's functions.