Designing a Department

Building the Homeland Security Department has been a lot like renovating a house. Architects have been assembled and they have put pen to paper to show how 22 different agencies, previously scattered among different departments, will fit together under one roof.

They've created a real document, known as an enterprise architecture. On its face, it's a blueprint that shows how the department's myriad computer systems are laid out and work together-or don't, in some cases. The architecture gives managers an idea of which systems-from those supporting administrative functions such as payroll processing to more mission-oriented applications such as terrorist watch lists-need to be connected, separated or torn down.

But when the architecture is complete, its designers hope it also will describe, in useful detail, how Homeland Security really works.

Department officials completed the first version of the architecture in 2002, and they plan to have a new version ready sometime this month, says Lee Holcomb, DHS chief technology officer. Version 2 will be an improvement over its predecessor, he says. For instance, border security will be described in terms of inspecting passports, checking names against watch lists and examining customs manifests. The business architecture describes activities, not technology systems. But the systems ultimately will be based on business-oriented descriptions.

The new architecture is being crafted to some extent by committee. Technology leaders have brought together a range of experts in each business area, from law enforcement to intelligence analysis to airline security, and they are helping "build out," as Holcomb puts it, the architecture that fits what they do. That still leaves technology chiefs to bring together all the pieces, but the approach recognizes that front-line employees and experts are best suited to describing the kinds of systems and infrastructure they need.

Consulting the employees who will use the systems may seem like a logical approach, but Holcomb says very few federal agencies have crafted their architectures with the business side in mind. Instead, they focus on technical elements and applications, using nuts-and-bolts language. That has made architectures relatively useless to nontechnologists.

One reason that business-based architectures are rare is that it's difficult to get managers to appreciate how an architecture can help them, Holcomb says. Far from a technical manual, an architecture is a guide for better understanding an organization's mission, he explains. By thinking about their agencies in terms of business processes, managers are more likely to find ways to make operations more efficient and to avoid duplication.

They're also more likely to understand how aspects of their operation do, or don't, work together. Bringing the architectures of several agencies together for comparison can help managers discover how to use one system among many organizations, Holcomb says. A driving philosophy for technology managers is: Build once, use often.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge hopes the architecture will help transform the department from a conglomeration of agencies into a single entity, Holcomb says. The first test of that transformation may occur at U.S. borders and ports of entry, where the department is installing the new US-VISIT program to track the comings and goings of foreigners. Officials want to create "one face at the border," Holcomb says.

In the past, visitors had to negotiate with officials from multiple agencies when entering the United States. The enterprise architecture helps managers understand which functions all those agencies have in common-from checking passports to checking watch lists of terrorist suspects. Using the "build once, use often" approach, officials hope Homeland Security's component agencies not only will share information but collect it from and deposit it into the same databases.

That horizontal approach to building systems also applies to administrative functions such as personnel and payroll processing. Today, Homeland Security is in the process of integrating more than 30 financial management plans onto one system, Holcomb says. Human resources systems also are being consolidated.

Before they can build common systems, technologists have to get users to speak the same language during the design process, says Lee Smith, Homeland Security's lead enterprise architect. For instance, what a group from one agency always has called a financial management system another group from a different agency refers to as an asset management system, Holcomb explains. Under the business architecture approach, it's vital to understand the purpose a system serves, no matter what it once was called.

Homeland Security officials appear to have a firm grip on what architectures are and why they're useful. But that doesn't completely account for their ability to move the architectural process along.

A technology executive hired to work with Homeland Security on the process says that a big factor in the department's success was getting senior leaders, including Ridge, to support the effort. That made it easier for technologists to keep working, despite protests by lawmakers that the process was taking too long, says Tim Keenan, president of High Performance Technologies Inc., a Reston, Va., company that builds systems and architectures for government agencies. "They stuck to their guns," he says of the Homeland Security architects.

Keenan adds that because the architects have taken time to craft a more detailed plan in Version 2, large projects such as VISIT will benefit. Program managers will be able to make visible through color-coding, for example, all the technological components in the architecture associated with the VISIT entry-exit process. That, he says, will make the job of building new systems or integrating existing ones much easier.