Wednesday, April 26, 2006

10:00 am - 11:00 am

Level: Advanced

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is the conceptual design for the system which collects the common meta-data from across National Institute of Health (NIH) and establishes the rules and requirements for its reuse. This has been particularly challenging in the area of bio-informatics. Studying the meta-data in this area has revealed that much of the data is qualitative in nature, and that similar concepts are described in different parameter spaces. This leads to extremely difficult integration problems that can only be solved with complex transformation schemes enable by the Common Warehouse Meta-model.

• Enterprise Architecture must direct the managed growth toward corporate data reuse
• Corporate-wide inventory of applications emphasizes the need for the enterprise focus
• Early achievements such as common login and consolidated email establish visibility and interest
• Determine the primary corporate objects
• Define the meta-data for corporate objects, data sharing from existing applications and primary processes
• Establish a capability to capture and manage requirements outside as well as inside projects
• Develop an information technology repository.
• Establish a process for achieving consensus on standards and project scopes
• Develop a formal engineering approach for implementing the enterprise architecture

John Jones is the Chief IT Architect at the National Institutes of Health. He is providing the NIH-wide focus on improving and integrating information systems that involve 2,500 IT professionals, located in the corporate organization and dispersed throughout the 17 Centers. The focus is on leading by example, with the benefits of shared and reliable information and increased involvement of both corporate and dispersed IT professionals in NIH's future architecture. John has been involved in the management of information technology for 20 years. He is in his fourth year at NIH. Before his current position he held IT management positions at Sandia National Laboratories. His breadth of exposure to the management of design, development, implementation, and planning for IT has made him a firm believer in applying the appropriate technology; with a focus on a future that provides users with quality information services and improves integration across the organization.