The Office of the Chief IT Architect's 5 Year Goals
The Office of the Chief IT Architect (OCITA) is responsible for the planning activities that support the NIH enterprise architecture (EA) program. It has established and prioritized five year goals, which it is actively working towards. Below are the high level objectives that OCITA plans to accomplish over the next 5 years.
Goal 1: Define the NIH information architecture
Information Architecture specifies the key elements of information systems the NIH uses in executing its business processes. These elements include the information itself, the applications that use the information to enable the business processes, and how applications and information together support the enterprise’s business functions. Use and implementation of the NIH Information Architecture will enable accurate and consistent reporting to NIH stakeholders. This will address two main challenges at NIH, appropriate use of data and accuracy of collection.
- Receive sign-off from NIH Steering Committee on a future state information governance structure.
- Identify the authoritative source for 100% of the top level data assets in the Enterprise Conceptual Data Model.
- Enable NIH Office of the Director (OD) and NIH Institute of Center (IC) budget officers to produce consistent, real-time annual budget reports for Congress.
- Receive sign-off from the Architecture Review Board (ARB) on five conceptual data models (person, organization, role, grants, and contracts).
Goal 2: Enable 25% of new or existing NIH systems to leverage at least one reusable service
- Ensure that NIH creates and publishes at least three (3) new services to the Integration Services Center (ISC) service catalogue per year.
- Ensure that each new service is used by at least two systems per year.
Goal 3: Achieve a common, shared future state vision for the architecture supporting research funding and management at NIH
- Create a draft of proposed Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) services to support the new NIH Research Funding and Management System (RFMS).
- Complete data and business process modeling for the future state of NIH Grants Management and Research and Development (R&D) contracts.
- Partner with Office of Extramural Research (OER) to complete a transition plan to migrate current eRA data and services to the new NIH RFMS.
- Enable the development of one new service to support NIH RFMS.
Goal 4: Implement the to-be architecture for internal and external people
- Create a to-be architecture that will support people management and authentication policies.
- Define NIH people management and authentication policies and guidelines.
- Form a centralized NIH Identity Management Steering Committee.
Goal 5: Establish the EA repository as the authoritative source for information about NIH systems
- Complete development and initial data population of major NIH applications in the EA repository. Completed in FY2008.
- Develop the capability to provide automated data feeds to HHS reporting systems, in response to data calls.
- Align current and new applications to level-3 NIH business processes.
- Identify candidates for reuse.
Goal 6: Improve the currency and completeness of the EA Technology Architecture
- Develop a strategy for maintaining the currency of the technology architecture.
- Update 100% of bricks that are greater than three (3) years old.
- Update all technology standards every three years.
Goal 7: Increase NIH alignment and awareness of the Enterprise Architecture by 20%
- Instantiate Enterprise Architecture (EA) alignment with the Enterprise Project Lifecycle (EPLC).
- Implement a tracking mechanism for assessing alignment with EA standards and/or taxonomies.
- Establish regular methods and frequency of communication to increase NIH-wide awareness of EA.
- Provide EA related recommendations to five systems in the concept design phase per year.
Goal 8: Foster innovation, leadership and professional development within the OCITA organization
- Require each OCITA program lead to lead at least one training/ Enterprise Architecture Topic Series (EATS) session per year.
- Institute a quarterly 1:1 meeting with program leads to discuss professional development, career goals and the correlation to OCITA initiatives and goals.
- Institute an individual reward/recognition system for outstanding accomplishments.
- Secure adequate staff to support organizational priorities.
- Complete a succession plan prior to any OCITA team member’s departure.
Goal 9: Increase operational efficiency within the OCITA organization
- Identify baseline performance metrics for OCITA. Completed in FY2008.
- Identify target percentage increase.
- Align OCITA organizational staff, capabilities, and processes to achieve all goals.
