Using Interoperable Process Models in a Multi-agency Planning Toolkit for Enterprise and C4ISR Architecture Analysis

The Center for Enterprise Modernization, the civil-agency center of the MITRE Corporation, is performing continuing research to explore the issues surrounding enterprise modernization planning in a multi agency environment. The objective is to support integrated mission and information technology planning covering enterprise strategic plans, performance management, investment plans, and information resource management plans through more detailed representations of mission and business processes that are coupled to the Enterprise Architecture. Increasingly, government initiatives such as e- Government, along with new governmental challenges such as homeland security, require groups of agencies to interoperate at the mission activity and organizational levels, as well as at the information system support level. The collaborating agencies typically have incompatible architectures at varied stages of development and sophistication. Additionally, key aspects of successful interagency collaboration depend also on the interplay of human and IT and non-IT systems forming a work flow or activity network. Issues include timing, synchronization, priorities, bandwidth, systems compatibility, and agency-unique syntaxes. The syntax issues exist at both the data and information exchange levels, with information exchange syntax differences impacting both human and machine information exchanges. The Multi agency Planning Toolkit effort includes use of process models developed in several commercial process modeling environments, as well as static information architecture products conforming to defined architecture frameworks. One research goal is to find ways to easily move architectural and process information between the static architecture environments and the dynamic process model environments. A second goal is to explore environment to environment level interoperability of the process models built in different COTS environments. This later capability will support use of existing models from individual agencies as active components of a larger multi agency planning environment.