Integrating Federal Agencies through SOA and the FEA

The United States federal government is the world’s largest single consumer of information technology, spending over $52 billion on IT in 2005, but it still struggles to produce measurable gains in public-sector worker productivity and to provide electronic access to government services.

To meet these challenges, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) created the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) in 2002 to guide the enterprise architecture efforts of most government organizations. Understanding the high-level goals of FEA, and to use Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) to achieve these goals, is crucial for succeeding in transforming enterprise architecture within the federal government. Service-enabling core agency business functions, building shared, reusable Service and infrastructure components, and enabling cross-agency governance are all essential elements of achieving such goals.

Addressing the needs of the US federal government, Software AG provides a range of SOA infrastructure products and associated professional services. Software AG has extensive experience in many agencies within the federal government, and is able to leverage its crossvision