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Committee
on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee
on Oversight and Investigations U.S. House of Representatives, 107th Congress
of the United States Wednesday, March 13,
2002 Hearing
Written Statement of Leon A. Kappelman, Ph.D.Director,
Information Systems Research Center Farrington
Professor of Information Systems
Professor,
Business Computer Information Systems College of Business Administration, University of North Texas Introduction
Mr.
Chairman and esteemed Members of the House Subcommittee on Oversight
and Investigations of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, thank you
for this opportunity to testify about the progress I have seen over
the past 10 months in how the Department of Veterans’ Affairs
manages information and information technologies (IT) in support of
its mission. During
May, June, and July of last year I had the honor of facilitating the
efforts of over 20 of VA’s senior IT and business leaders, from all
Administrations and Department staff offices, in forming what came to
be know as VA’s Enterprise Architecture Innovation Team.
Over the course of 15 days and five very long weekends, with
plenty of individual time in between studying, writing, and working in
small groups, they created and unanimously endorsed the document that
was approved by Secretary Principi in September 2001 and that you know
as VA’s “Enterprise Architecture: Strategy, Governance, &
Implementation.” Since
then I conducted an analysis and review of VA’s project management
practices and also had the privilege of facilitating, in October and
again just a few weeks ago, two working conferences attended by more
than 200 of VA’s senior and technical IT managers.
The short
story is that in these past 10 months I have seen a profoundly
positive transformation in how VA manages IT.
I remember how at first many of the members of the Enterprise
Architecture Innovation Team believed that it was undesirable and
impossible for VA to have a single integrated enterprise architecture.
That belief was replaced by the revelation that it is not only
possible but also highly desirable to have a single integrated
enterprise architecture in order to manage IT to achieve the noble
vision of “One-VA.” And
they put their new beliefs into action by laying the foundations of
good IT planning and governance in their “Enterprise Architecture:
Strategy, Governance, & Implementation” document.
But the vision and planning of 20-some people, no matter how
senior, does not suddenly transform an enterprise with over 220
thousand personnel, a budget larger than most of the world’s
countries, and historical roots in distinct and separate enterprises. The
next steps are well underway, as evidenced by what I experienced first
hand at the two VA CIO conferences that I facilitated over the past
five months. But they are
steps on a long, and in some ways never-ending journey; and so, I am
here today to suggest to you, the Congressional leaders who are in
essence the “Board of Directors” of VA, and the elected
representative of their “stockholders,” the people of the United
States, that your cooperation, and support may also be called for if
success is to be maximized. VA’s
Enterprise Architecture Innovation Team did not take the easier,
softer road in creating their vision for a One-VA Enterprise
Architecture. They
created a new IT governance structure that is beyond the reality of
VA’s current organizational structure, they selected the most
comprehensive and complete framework for organizing their work, they
incorporated performance measurement, project management, and
continuous quality improvement into their plan, and they acknowledged
that a profound change in the attitudes and culture of VA would be
necessary for their fundamental success.
John Zachman may have said it best in the cover letter he wrote
to Secretary Principi to accompany the “Enterprise Architecture:
Strategy, Governance, & Implementation” document: I
would like to take a moment now to talk about the road that lies
ahead. The role of the
Information Technology community in an Enterprise is not simply to
build and run systems. This
is what results in disintegration, “stovepipes.”
Rather the mission of the information folks in any Enterprise
is to engineer and manufacture the Enterprise such that it is aligned
with the intent of General Management and is flexible, adaptable,
interoperable, integrated, lean, etc. and responsive to the
Enterprise’s "customer" (as well as to other Enterprise
“stakeholders”). … This is a new way of life.
There is no quick fix. This
is not a project. It is a
“process.” It is
different from the Industrial Age past.
It is the Information Age present!
With that understanding, I would like to impart on you some
advice that may help as you continue down your road to
institutionalize the Department of Veterans Affairs Enterprise
Architecture: ·
Do not underestimate
the difficulty and complexity of engineering and manufacturing the
most complex object yet conceived by humankind – the Enterprise.
This will take time and determination. ·
This is a new way of
life, a revolution in thinking, a discipline, an engineering process.
Change of this magnitude takes time and perseverance.
Do not get discouraged. … ·
Make executive
education and technical training a continuous process.
Don't assume anything. It
is easy to forget long-term issues in the short-term stress of daily
life. ·
And remember, the
state of the art is only fifty years old or so and the "playing
field" still pretty level -- there is still much to learn and
discover, and many opportunities to create advantage and value. (John
A. Zachman, July 20, 2001 letter to Secretary Principi, appended in
its entirety at the end of this written testimony.) Background and Perspective
It may be a “small
world,” but it is also a very complex one.
And human beings have done a good job of succeeding in it.
Anthropologists credit much of that success to our bigger
brains, and how we’ve used them to develop languages, tools, and
technologies. One
especially useful mental technique we’ve developed is to seek
simplifying explanations for what are often complicated realities.
We find comfort, value, and usefulness in the various theories,
hypotheses, models, frameworks, taxonomies, and paradigms that help us
better understand and manage our world, our organizations, our
technologies, and our lives. In
fact, such partial truths underpin almost all of our scientific and
technical progress, as we improve our understanding of reality, the
“truth” if you please or what Einstein called “God’s
thoughts.” Our
simplifying mental models have their downside, however, depending on
the importance of the things they leave out.
Consider this: In the
“science” of 1850s’ medicine, microorganisms and disease were
not related and thus the death rates from infection averaged around
50% in European hospitals and contagious diseases spread easily.
It’s not that bacteria weren’t killing people, it’s just
that our view of the world did not recognize what was actually
occurring, until Semmelweiss, Pastuer, and Lister came along.
But many years passed before this new paradigm and their
discoveries were adopted as new behaviors and practices, and yet even
as the 20th century began surgeons still worked in their
street clothes. IT is an enabler.
IT alone doesn’t make organizations more efficient,
effective, or better places to work. In fact, the exact same off-the-shelf software application
can be part of great success in one organization and total failure in
another. It’s not the
technology, but how we use it. And
we are still in the early stages of learning how to really use IT to
enable the success of people and the organizations, societies, and
economies they create. In short, we haven’t really figured out yet how to get much
bang for our IT bucks. If you question that
conclusion, consider the research of Paul Strassmann (former top IT
executive at the Department of Defense, Xerox, and General Mills)
which indicates that only about one in five businesses gets a
reasonable rate of return from IT spending and that two in five
actually get a negative value added from IT investments.
Or if you read the IT press, I wonder if you’ve ever seen a
list of CIO key issues that didn’t have some version of “IT
alignment with organization goals” in its top 5?
Me either. But
why, after 30 years on the top of our concerns, haven’t we figured
out how to do alignment? The
sad fact is that we don’t even have decent metrics to measure
alignment. Therefore,
given total quality management creator W. Edwards Deming’s
admonition that we cannot manage what we do not measure, it’s no
wonder we are still not managing alignment very well. Consider this: The
profound change in the world that we call the “industrial
revolution” had its beginnings in the second half of 18th
century England and came to America in 1790 when Sam Slater built the
first steam-powered cotton-processing machine.
In 1797 Eli Whitney pioneered standardized parts and division
of labor in the manufacture of muskets.
Ninety-five years later the Duryea brothers built the first
gasoline-powered automobile. Still,
20 years more would pass before Henry Ford combined the moving
assembly line technique with division of labor and interchangeable
parts in a way that began the transformation of manufacturing as we
knew it, lowering the price of the Model A from $850 in 1908 to $310
in 1926 (with some help from Frederick Taylor’s 1911 publication of
“Principles of Scientific Management”), and thereby transforming
our socio-economic milieu. The information age
began in 1945 with the “invention” of the computer as a result of
a war effort that required massive amounts of mathematical
calculations, a U.S. Federal government with the vision and resources
to fund the work, and the creativity of Eckert, Brainerd, and Mauchly.
Information technology has made astonishing progresses over the
past six decades, and many good things have come of it.
But the hard evidence is scarce that all that hardware and
software has actually contributed much to making organizations more
profitable or better places in which to work. Organizations are
perhaps the most complex things ever created by humans, and invariably
they are built and evolve in a haphazard manner.
Thus, the ongoing saga of one management paradigm after another
purporting to solve all of our problems.
Likewise, the ongoing parade of IT silver bullets.
Sure we endure, even succeed, but the waste is enormous. And IT’s continuous cycles of buy, rework, and scrap,
combined with absurd complexity and wretched quality, are a major
component of all that squander. Consider
that perhaps such inefficiency and carelessness are not altogether
necessary in the information age.
What if we could
engineer our systems and the organizations they serve the same way we
engineer airplanes and buildings?
Ever wonder why is it that 45-year old B-52s are still the
backbone of the USA’s strategic bomber force, or that 65-year old
DC3s and 30-year old 747s still fly the world over, or that we can
remodel and renovate buildings so that they provide service decade
after decade, even century after century?
The answer is
“architecture” – the design, engineering, and documentation of a
complex artifact so that it fulfills its purpose and facilitates the
coordinated activity of the various specialists required to create,
maintain, and operate it. Applied
to organizations, doing “architecture” is described by John
Zachman, the creator of the state of the art organizing framework for
enterprise architecture, a “semantic model” or “language” if
you please, as the engineering and manufacturing of an enterprise that
is aligned with the requirements of management, and is flexible,
adaptable, interoperable, integrated, lean, and responsive to
customers and other enterprise stakeholders. I’m not
100% sure today just what “engineering and manufacturing an
organization” totally means, any more than Eli Whitney in 1797
understood the full potential of standardized parts and division of
labor in manufacturing, but I do know that it implies a profound a
change in our thinking about organizations and the technologies IT
professionals provide and manage for them.
I also know that some of the best managed enterprises in the
world are making the investment of time and resources to figure it
out, and that the U.S. Federal government is funding the most
concentrated effort in the creation of the ideas, techniques, and
tools needed to make the promise of enterprise architecture and the
information age enterprise a reality.
Just like the Federal government provided the dollars for the
research and development that led to the creation of the computer some
60 years ago. The
effort to invoke these disciplines was initiated by the U.S. Congress
in 1996 through the passage of the Clinger-Cohen Act that requires,
among other things, every Federal agency to have a CIO and to align IT
with the business through enterprise architecture. A brilliant and forward thinking policy initiative, with
commendable ongoing guidance for its implementation provided by OMB
and GAO, but Clinger-Cohen was short-sighted in that it does not even
consider the possibility or desirability of a government-wide
enterprise architecture. The
necessity of at least a basic Federal government-wide data
architecture is becoming painfully clear to those charged with dealing
with the world of today that requires the ever greater integration of
information across Federal agencies for initiatives like e-government
and homeland security (and sometimes data integration across levels of
federal, state, local, and even foreign governments and the private
sector). The lesson is
simply that we cannot know all the details today for what tomorrow
holds and there is an ever-increasing need for us all to be able to
intelligently and proactively correct our course as we get new
information and learn from our mistakes. Conclusions
VA
is massive in size, enormously complex, and highly decentralized.
VA also has significant workforce development concerns, a long
history of independent parts, and an organizational culture and
structure that are not conducive to those parts working well together.
VA has set the bar high for itself and by doing so can serve as
the “poster child” and proving ground for the information age
Federal government agency. But
VA needs some things from Congress too, and I humbly offer you the
following suggestions: ·
Hold them accountable,
but understand and honor their long-term vision: The long-term future
is built upon short-term accomplishments.
Please don’t make the mistake of demanding short-term IT
accomplishment without long-term relevance, because the result will be
rework, scrap and replace. There is a need for incremental progress, but with balance.
The long-term goals of One-VA and a One-VA enterprise
architecture that they have set for themselves should not be
sacrificed for short-term gain; although, sometimes a well planned and
executed short-term compromise may be appropriate. ·
Provide policy
guidance and assistance: VA is entering new ground as they strive
toward One-VA. The
current organizational structure and budget authority of VA are not
conducive to One-VA or enterprise architecture. Historically VA has optimized the parts and sub-optimized the
whole. You are asking
them through Clinger-Cohen, and they are asking themselves through
One-VA, to shift the balance toward optimizing the whole through
massive integration. They
will need your patience, help, and guidance. ·
Provide funding for
this change: Resources are needed especially for the things that have
never been done before in VA. I’m
not talking about IT projects – They will stand or fall on their own
merits. But there is a
real need for additional funding for the VA central office IT
organization and for the Office of the Chief Enterprise Architect, as
well as for the establishment of a VA-wide Project Management Office.
But VA is a socio-technical enterprise, made up of people and
technologies, thus all of this will be for naught if there is not
funding and acknowledgement of the significant effort in education,
training, and organizational culture development that is required in
order to realize One-VA. These
are not IT issues, these are VA issues and they will require the
active involvement of VA’s business and IT personnel, as well as the
assistance of change management professionals. The
two CIO conferences that were held since last October are indicative
of the kind of change that is going on in VA.
For the first time ever, the more than 200 professionals who
are responsible for the various pieces of the VA IT pie came together
to create a shared vision for a One-VA enterprise architecture and
plans for achieving it. For
the first time ever, they worked together face-to-face.
For the first time ever, the parts all talked with each other
and with the central office. For
the first time ever, they listened to each other, and responded
accordingly. And it’s
not just about plans for enterprise architecture, but also about cyber
security, project management, network infrastructure, workforce
development, performance measurement, and fulfilling VA’s support to
homeland security. It’s
not about business as usual either, but rather a profound change in
the culture from one of dis-integration and fear, to one of
collaboration, trust, and accountability.
But even the vision and planning of 200 IT managers, no matter
how senior, does not suddenly transform an enterprise with over 4,000
IT professionals, several hundred thousand other personnel, and tens
of millions of customers. This
is not a project. There
is no silver bullet. This
is a new way of life for VA, the change will happen incrementally, and
we are all part of it. The
question each must answer is “What part will I play in the creation
of One-VA?” If I can answer any of your questions or provide you with any additional information, I am always at your service. Attachment: John Zachman’s cover letter to Secretary Principi accompanying version 10.01 of VA’s “Enterprise Architecture: Strategy, Governance, & Implementation”: Zachman
International Information
Strategy and Architecture 2222
FOOTHILL BLVD. SUITE 337 l
LA CAÑADA, CA 91011,
USA l
1-818-244-3763 (PHONE AND FAX) July
20, 2001 The
Honorable Anthony J. Principi Secretary,
Department of Veterans Affairs 810
Vermont Avenue NW Washington,
D.C. 20420 Dear
Secretary Principi: I
had the privilege of being present for the final two weekend working
sessions that produced this historic milestone document, the
Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) Enterprise Architecture
Strategy. I was impressed by your vision for the Department and your
sense of urgency for addressing this vital issue. The Strategy has all
of the attributes of a successful undertaking: Enterprise vision,
business and information technology collaboration, and top management
support. I was also impressed by the Department’s realization that
Enterprise Architecture is actually a business issue, not a technical
issue. And I was extremely pleased that the 20 VA delegates to this
Enterprise Architecture Innovation Team represented equal numbers of
business executives and information technology executives. The
evidence of this complete business-technology collaboration was
manifest in the Team's presentation to you during
the final session … with Laura Miller, Assistant Deputy Under
Secretary for Health defining Enterprise Architecture and why it
is so important, Guy McMichael, Acting Assistant Secretary for
Information Technology discussing the long term political and
business ramifications, and Ventris Gibson, Deputy Assistant
Secretary for Human Resources Management describing the framework.
I never thought I'd see the day!! This
document is insightful, coherent, comprehensive, and innovative --- a
tribute to the clarity of vision and understanding
that only can result from intense communication. I must also mention
the gifted facilitation by a group of dedicated folks led by Professor
Leon Kappelman that truly demonstrated the determination and
perseverance of mountaineers on expedition. Finally, I was impressed
with the stamina and commitment of the entire VA Enterprise
Architecture Innovation Team. There was an intensity of participation.
None were reticent to contribute. All were accepted and respected.
From 7 AM in the morning ‘till 12 Midnight, Thursday through
Saturday weekend after weekend, the team remained focused on the
“summit” of the Strategy. I would like to take a moment now to talk about the road that lies ahead. The role of the Information Technology community in an Enterprise is not simply to build and run systems. This is what results in disintegration, “stovepipes.” Rather the mission of the information folks in any Enterprise is to engineer and manufacture the Enterprise such that it is aligned with the intent of General Management and is flexible, adaptable, interoperable, integrated, lean, etc. and responsive to the Enterprise’s "customer" (as well as to other Enterprise “stakeholders”). I, in fact, suggest the name of “Information Systems” or “Information Technology” be changed to “Enterprise Engineering and Manufacturing” to set the correct perspective. July
20, 2001 Page 2 The
role of “Enterprise Engineering and Manufacturing” is to engineer
and manufacture the Enterprise, and Enterprise
Architecture is the essential engineering of the Enterprise before
manufacturing it in order to deliver something coherent that
Management needs, to minimize “scrap and rework” and to avoid
“legacies.” I believe that the Long Term Objectives of
“Enterprise Engineering and Manufacturing” is to make every cell
(“primitive model”) of the Framework for Enterprise Architecture
explicit, enterprise-wide, horizontally integrated across each row,
vertically integrated down each column, at an excruciating level of
detail in order to: constitute an inventory of reusable components
from which the Enterprise can be “assembled-to-order,” serve as a
baseline for managing
change (to the Enterprise), and provide the knowledge base for the
Enterprise to which the external environment
can be related and evaluated and from which management can derive
their strategic advantage. This
is a new way of life. There is no quick fix. This is not a project. It
is a “process.” It is different from the Industrial
Age past. It is the Information Age present! With that
understanding, I would like to impart on you some advice that may help
as you continue down your road to institutionalize the Department of
Veterans Affairs Enterprise Architecture: 1.
Do not underestimate the difficulty and complexity of engineering and
manufacturing the most complex object yet conceived by humankind –
the Enterprise. This will take time and determination. 2.
This is a new way of life, a revolution in thinking, a discipline, an
engineering process. Change of this magnitude takes time and
perseverance. Do not get discouraged. 3.
Things will have to be implemented periodically so you have to accept
some risk of “scrap and rework," but build that risk and cost
into the short term strategy. Set realistic expectations. 4.
Make executive education and technical training a continuous process.
Don't assume anything. It is easy to forget long-term issues in the
short-term stress of daily life. 5.
And remember, the state of the art is only fifty years old or so and
the "playing field" still pretty level -- there is still
much to learn and discover, and many opportunities to create advantage
and value. Finally,
I would like to extend my congratulations to you and your blue ribbon
Enterprise Architecture Innovation Team for having the vision, courage
and commitment to begin this process to move this most valuable
federal department, into a position to better serve our Nation’s
veterans and their families in the 21st century. Thank
you for inviting me to take part in this historic and notable
undertaking. I wish you all the very, very best!! John A. Zachman Back to Witness List |