December 10, 2000
Welcome to the latest issue of the
Enterprise-Wide IT Architecture Newsletter!Supporting the Enterprise-Wide IT Architecture (EWITA) web site at http://www.ewita.com/
We welcome comments on format and content as well as suggestions for articles and sites to be explored. Please let us know by sending us a e-mail at
mailto:ewita@ewita.comMailing List Information
We have over 200 people on our mailing list representing most government agencies, many states, and countries and vendors. Is there a better way of reaching this diversified group of IT Architects and IT architectural interested people, than to go through this newsletter?
If you have articles, white papers, sites of interest, let us publish them to this exclusive list of IT architectural interested people. Forward articles, white papers and sites to mailto:ewita@ewita.com.
Site Information
There have been over 11,000 hits on the site since inception (1998). Since May of 1999, there have been over 8600 hits to the site, 1714 of them coming from 159 unique referrers, with a average of 262 unique visitors each month.
|
Country |
% |
|
Major Domains (.com, .net, .gov, .mil, .edu) |
65.84 |
|
Australia (.au) |
6.95 |
|
United Kingdom (.uk) |
5.01 |
|
Canada (.ca) |
4.44 |
|
United States (.us) |
4.13 |
Other Countries accessing EWITA
Indonesia (.id) , Italy (.it) , Germany (.de) , South Africa (.za) , Netherlands (.nl) , Malaysia (.my) , Belgium (.be) , Sweden (.se) , Saudi Arabia (.sa) , Singapore (.sg) , France (.fr) , Mexico (.mx) , Switzerland (.ch) , Norway (.no) , Poland (.pl) , Czech Republic (.cz) , Turkey (.tr) , Finland (.fi) , Lebanon (.lb) , Austria (.at) , Brazil (.br) , Mauritius (.mu) , Spain (.es) , Taiwan (.tw) , Columbia (.co) , Greece (.gr) , India (.in) , Israel (.il) , Japan (.jp) , Korea, Republic of (.kr) , New Zealand (.nz) , Peru (.pe) , Russian Federation (.ru) , China (.cn) , Denmark (.dk) , Hong Kong (.hk) , Iceland (.is) , Ireland (.ie) , Jordan (.jo) , Pakistan (.pk) , Portugal (.pt) , Slovenia (.si) , Thailand (.th) , Uruguay (.uy)
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Finding Information on the Internet
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Hammering away in the garage
Finding Information On the Internet
As we all know the Internet is a great source for information, though some of it may be of questionable value.
Many government, educational, commercial organizations, and standards groups have architecture information that pertains to various sized organizations. This information is available to the public and most government and educational is not copyrighted. Many examples are available that can be used for what I call "Strawdogs", discussion documents for consensus agreements. The question is how to find these valid documents and how to determine their veracity.
When researching the Internet, I primarily use two tools, Copernic and Google. I use two versions of Google, the standard and the advanced search engines.
While there are many other search engines and meta search engines, I like these two, as they generally allow me to find appropriate information.
For example to find information about Enterprise Architecture:
Google - Standard
You can receive a maximum of 100 entries at a time.
This engine will deliver 649,000 records about enterprise architecture out of a total of 1,326,920,000 web pages. This search took sub second to deliver the first 100 sites. Of these 100 sites on 5 or 6 did not directly reference the Enterprise Architecture subject. Standard Google allows searches within the initial search. Google saves the cached pages so you can scan them easily. A search on the "similar" function, similar pages for www.state.ky.us/kirm/arcstand.htm resulted in 22 hits of which 7 represented individual states.
Google - Advanced
This version of the image delivered 11,600 records about "enterprise architecture". This search took sub second to deliver the first 100 sites, by specifying state or commonwealth, 78 hits of which 24 were state sites. By specifying .us as the site id, the search engine returned 23 hits.
Note that there are no consistent standards about the structure of the name, for instance California uses the structure suffix ddd.ca.gov where ddd is the organization. The engine has a feature to eliminate similar results, when that option is not set the results increase to 168 selections based on the original 23.
Output structure/capture - Google
Google outputs standard HTML, each found item starts with the text string "<p><A HREF=". The default file name is the words GOOGLE SEARCH followed by the search terms. A saved file can be imported into Netscape bookmarks, however there is a lot of "clutter that goes with it.
A clean(er) capture, can be made by reading the file into WORD 97 or WORD2000 and stripping off the extraneous information, saving HTML format, then importing it into the Netscape bookmarks. The properties description and the title are somewhat cluttered but the information is easily understood. Importing into IE does not work unless converted to bookmarks.
Copernic
There are two versions of Copernic a free version and a charge version. The information presented here is for the free version.
Copernic loads on your machine and interfaces with multiple search engines.
Each time this program is loaded it validates that it is using the latest set of search engines. The free version has a limited set of engines, however these are the most popular. A maximum of 999 results are made available. Each search engine can be limited, up to 300 results each. When the search parameter is entered into the program, it interfaces with a component on the server and starts multiple concurrent searches. Searches resulting in the same website are combined and weighted.
Results of searches can be grouped into folders and are saved from one time to another. Searches can be refined or rerun, either replacing the file or modifying the file and results can be exported to a standalone file.
The Search term "enterprise architecture" (both words) for four engines using a maximum of 999 results and maximum of 300 results from each of the four engines (Google, GO, Lycos and Altavista) resulted in 1000 results with from 1 to four hits. Time was less than 2 minutes; a progress monitor shows the progress and counts for each engine. You may refine an existing search (which results in the pages being stored on your computer). You can leave the original list or delete those that do not meet the refinement criteria. Obviously this process takes a lot longer than the original search.
Output structure/capture - Copernic
Copernic is designed to export the searches to database, text, Html, Xml, or a Comma separated variable file, which eases the reformatting of the data to a friendlier format or for merging into a large list of pointers. Importation into Netscape results in a usable but cluttered file. It probably would be better to import into Excel, eliminate the duplications and extraneous information and export it to HTML.
Existing Lists of Architecture sites
There are many existing lists of architectures sites, perhaps the best known is the GSA list at GSA - ArchitecturePlus and Carnegie Mellon's SEIs http://www.sei.cmu.edu/architecture/sites.html, I would also like to think that the EWITA link site at http://www.ewita.com/links/links.htm is also becoming well know. The primary problem with these lists is the maintenance of the pointers. As sites are added, deleted or changed the modifications may not make the list because of author time constraints.
Conclusion
To find the freshest sites the best way is to use search engines and tools, resulting in some amount of "overkill" because of duplication of names, or page naming differences. Generally you want only the entrance to a site and not each page name or slide number. Lists remain useful, but become outdated fairly quickly.
Key Words to access sites similar to EWITA
|
Percentage of Inquires |
Key Word |
|
22.04% |
architecture |
|
11.41% |
enterprise |
|
9.44% |
technology |
|
8.92% |
information |
|
Combined Keywords |
% |
|
enterprise architecture |
18.53 |
|
information technology architecture |
11.82 |
|
technology architecture |
6.39 |
Totals do not equal 100%; other words and combinations make up the difference.
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British Central IT Unit Office of the e-Envoy
The Office of the e-Envoy is leading the drive to get the UK online - the UK Government's strategy for the information age.
This site recently announced the UK online Citizen Portal
The UK online Citizen Portal, a unique first step towards establishing a 24-hour point of access to available government online information and services, was launched on 4 December for a testing phase. Visit http://www.ukonline.gov.uk/ to view it,
The British have a council of "champions" - The Information Age Government Champions are a group of 35 senior officials from across central and local government, tasked with taking forward the Information Age Government strand of the Modernizing Government agenda in order to meeting the Prime Minister’s target that by 2005 all government services will be e-capable. Their role is to oversee the development of the corporate IT strategy for Government, ensuring that it focuses on the needs of citizens and business, and taking ownership on behalf of the Government.
The site points to Strategy documents (PDF and HTML)
This is e-government: a strategic framework for public services in the Information Age. It fulfils the commitment in the Modernizing Government White Paper to publish a strategy for Information Age Government. It focuses on better services for citizens and businesses and more effective use of the Government's information resources. Implementing it will create an environment for the transformation of government activities by the application of e-business methods throughout the public sector. The strategy challenges all public sector organizations to innovate, and it challenges the center of government to provide the common infrastructure, which is needed to achieve these goals. The strategy is endorsed by the Information Age Government Champions.
The site also has what they call framework policies
Framework policies
|
Web sites |
The framework policy focuses largely on electronic publishing and the creation of a sound organizational basis within departments for managing their online presence, on good content and on technical standards that provide for consistency and the widest possible access to public sector sites. |
|
Web Security Profiles |
Draft guidelines for public consultation. |
|
Call centers |
The call center guidelines set out an approach to implementing call centers in the public sector, ensuring they are viewed as part of an overall business change process. The guidelines provide a set of standards for ensuring public sector call centers are accessible, efficient and helpful and provide a consistent and accurate interface to government services and information. |
|
Smart cards |
The smart card framework policy provides a set of standards and guidelines to facilitate interoperability. It also provides advice on acquisition issues for public authorities; to ensure that accessibility is an integral part of any card scheme; and to provide guidance on data protection issues. |
|
Authentication |
Effective government online and call center services will require a widely accepted means for citizens and businesses to authenticate themselves for the purposes of those transactions. The authentication framework policy and guidelines establish a common approach to authentication for government departments, agencies and the wider public sector. |
|
Digital TV |
Although digital TV is still very new and will continue to develop over the next few years, this early guidance is considered essential to ensure that public sector organizations are suitably informed about the strategic opportunities and practical implications of deploying digital TV based services. |
|
Security |
Information Age Government services, from simple information-giving websites to large, complex transactional services, are reliant upon the application of appropriate IT security measures. The security policy represents a call for a general alignment with best e-commerce practice. This applies across the public sector, and extends to all service delivery channels and all bodies that deliver public services. Supplementary guidance on specific security topics will also be published including Trust Services, Confidentiality and Privacy, Business Services Security and Network Defense Security Requirements. |
|
Privacy |
This annex sets out a work program to deliver a privacy policy for Information Age Government. |
|
Electronic records management |
The framework on electronic records management provides guidelines to support greater commonality and inter-departmental working in electronic document and records management, and in the sharing and exchange of electronic records across the GSI. |
|
Metadata |
This annex sets out a work program to deliver a metadata policy for Information Age Government. |
|
Interoperability |
The interoperability framework policy sets out the policy and standards for achieving interoperability across all government departments and the wider public sector. |
|
Implementation guidance |
|
|
Skills in the Information Age |
This paper sets out a holistic approach to meeting the skills needs required to deliver an Information Age government. |
|
Guidelines for local government |
This paper sets out guidelines for implementing e-government in local government. |
|
Portals |
This document describes the proposed development of a governmental portal that is intended to appear as an easy to use, consistent and reliable means of accessing government services. |
This is a should read for all federal and state IT architects that are working on portals or trying to get their organization on-line. Think about it, a whole nation with a single direction from the highest level of the organization.
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There were no sites suggested this time. Any sites out there that should be checked out let me know. You vendors that read this should be interested in nominating your sites. Feel free to nominate them! If no site is nominated before the next issue I will drop this feature.
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Site Statistics
I was wondering how the site, and mailing list was doing as far as growth was concerned. While reviewing the statistics for the last six months, year and since inception, I was very pleased on the growth rate and have included some of that information for you to see what WE have accomplished. Thanks to those that have helped this last year.
Assistant Newsletter Editor and Web person
Steve Rodgers received some very positive feedback from a Management style analyst that reads this newsletter. Good work Steve.
HELP
Do you have pointers, articles of interest to the EA community, would you like to write an article? If so, please contact me, so we can, together, further the EA Community
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Please go to the
EWITA website at http://www.ewita.com and select the "New" icon on the banner, the welcome or the admin page------------------------------------------------------
Feedback:
Thanks for the great article on Retention.
Strong work!
Bill
Bill Werst
mailto:Bill@growthassociates.org
http://www.growthassociates.org