Systems Integration's New Look

hen Mike Tiemann told his high school classmates at their reunion in October that he is an information architect for the federal government, "their eyes rolled into their heads," he recounts with a chuckle.

But Tiemann, who manages the information architecture program for the Energy Department and heads the interagency Information Architecture Working Group, predicts that information architects soon will be more commonplace in federal agencies. Most of the problems that give government a bad name can be solved only by development of an architectural plan that lays out the relationships among computer systems, the functions they perform and the data they process, he says.

As an example of the benefits of information architectures, Tiemann cites the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has shed its image as a bumbling, laggard organization and now responds to disasters swiftly and efficiently. One key enabler has been information technology, which FEMA uses to support its new philosophy of averting disasters and keeping a step ahead of those that can't be averted.

Another example: the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), the FBI databank that's available online to police nationwide. Without NCIC's data on wanted and missing persons, criminals' records, and stolen weapons and vehicles nationwide, police would find their jobs much harder to do.

These are concrete and visible examples of what sounds like a difficult and abstract notion. But information architectures are not optional, no matter how abstruse they may seem. Under the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act, agencies are required to develop them. The law, the same one that created the chief information officer job in major agencies, defines an information architecture as "an integrated framework for evolving or maintaining existing information technology and acquiring new information technology to achieve the agency's strategic goals and information resources management goals."

No Cohesion

For agencies, one of the most troublesome aspects of developing an architecture is complying with the requirement that it "integrate" systems. The government suffers from overlapping, duplicative and single-purpose information systems that do not form a cohesive whole. But a push is under way to harmonize and connect the disparate pieces, a push that's giving new meaning to the term "systems integration."

"We're living with the legacy of a failed integration approach," Energy's Tiemann says, one that left agencies unable to see the big picture and assess their progress toward accomplishing their missions. When Tiemann worked at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, he recalls, the agency had systems to track the hydropower dams that it regulated, the licenses it issued for new dams and the projects that were under way. But none of the totals could be matched up with the others to provide an integrated picture of hydropower trends, because any one project might have several dams and two licenses, for example, or one planned dam and no license yet.

The term "systems integration" came into vogue a decade or more ago and quickly became the all-purpose label for a wide variety of IT services that generally were performed by contractors. The most common such service was system development, which involved assembling, or integrating, system building blocks--hardware, software and communications--and writing additional programs to accomplish the specified system functions. Agencies envisioned single-purpose systems like the ones described by Tiemann, and that's what they got.

Building Blocks

Agencies still are building new systems, but their approach today is a little different. They are building fewer systems from scratch and are using more commercial, off-the-shelf hardware and software as their building blocks. This trend appears to cut into the demand for integration services. After all, most of us work on PCs that come equipped with the necessary software and simply plug into an office network. Customization often is limited to setting up electronic mail accounts and adding screensavers with the agency logo. And if everyone in the agency uses Lotus Development Corp.'s Notes, for example, or Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite, sharing information should be easy.

The supposition about less spending on integration is supported by analyses such as the annual forecast produced by the government division of the Electronic Industries Association. EIA predicts federal spending on IT over the next five years will be flat and reports that "the number of new large, traditional contracts continues to dwindle." And yet by all accounts, systems integration spending is growing. The most recent Federal Procurement Data Center statistics, as reported by Eagle Eye Publishers Inc., show agencies' systems integration spending grew sharply between fiscal 1996 and 1997, increasing from $3.1 billion to $4.7 billion in just one year.

The increase is fueled by the rapid development of better computer and communications technology. It's no longer surprising to hear that a 2-year-old computer is obsolete. At the same time, agencies are turning to outside providers for services that used to be performed in house, and this shift explains why overall spending hasn't changed much even though the systems integrators are taking in more revenue.

But another driver is the new definition of "systems integration" that is closer to the original meaning of the words. In the new push for integration, agencies are pulling together their disparate older systems and building robust bridges among them. These bridges go beyond the superficial, such as the spreadsheet used to call up numbers at the desktop, and reach toward the relationships between sets of information. This is the level at which the issues are architectural ones. "The integration requirements are much broader than they were in the past," Tiemann says.

One agency that is integrating its systems under this new definition is the Education Department's Office of Postsecondary Education. Until this year, the office had 11 different computer systems--one for each of its 10 programs and a system for the entire office. Each had its own data center, software, support staff and so on, even though their data and their customers overlapped.

Under the leadership of Jerry Russomano, the department's director of program systems services, the office's student loan systems are being consolidated to reduce cost and improve services to college students and educational institutions. "I'm essentially disintegrating the stovepipes," Russomano explains. He is tearing down the physical, technical and functional dividers that separate the systems from one another. Potential cost savings are in the millions, while the public will enjoy faster and more efficient service after the consolidation.

Focus on Service

That focus on customer service and more efficient operations is a hallmark of the new systems integration. In the past, says William M. Purdy, a senior executive at American Management Systems Inc. in Fairfax, Va., the government tended to devote much of its attention to defining its system requirements. After a lengthy planning and procurement process, a systems integrator like AMS would assemble the system called for in the agency's detailed technical specifications.

"The major change that's happened in the last two or three years," Purdy says, "is that the government is now talking to industry about its business problems." There's an emphasis on results such as faster customer response times, reduction in labor hours, or less paperwork for the public, he says, and an interest within government in employing commercial practices and standards. "Systems integration has changed its focus to business solutions," says Purdy, who adds that he is relishing the new environment. "This is very exciting for industry," he says. "It's a whole new set of challenges."

"Agencies are beginning to wake up and realize they can no longer afford" the prevailing situation, Tiemann says. Besides their inability to see the big picture, executives are beginning to recognize that the lack of integration among their systems hinders their agencies' responsiveness, he adds. When new challenges arise, such as the year 2000 problem, the switch to the new European currency or (down the road) the need to change telephone number or Social Security number formats, the agency is hamstrung by the difficulty and expense of the modifications.

Above all, Tiemann says, "where the integration is really important is in the provision of services." When Americans can call a toll-free number for L.L. Bean, FedEx or their mortgage company and take care of their business, they expect no less from their government. But with today's fragmented information systems, the government simply can't deliver such seamless customer interaction. "There's a heck of a lot of data integration and technology integration and application integration that's needed to make that service-level integration apparent," the architect says.

Vendors increasingly offer products and services that enable stovepipe systems to exchange data and act as if they are one system. But Tiemann questions the effectiveness of quickly installed and inexpensive bridges. For example, a relatively new kind of software called middleware transforms data from one system into a format for use in another. But Tiemann calls middleware "just another whole layer of problems for integration."

Wanted: Sound Foundations

In the end, he predicts, many agencies will have no choice but to bite the bullet and undertake the kind of fundamental restructuring that Russomano is carrying out at Education. Their only alternative may be to replace existing systems with an entirely new generation of technology. The latter approach is more drastic, but the market acceptance of the new enterprise resource management software products, such as those from Peoplesoft and SAP, proves that it can be justified.

Federal agencies have been slower than their private-sector counterparts to acquire these new systems that integrate financial management, human resources management, procurement and other administrative functions. But experienced systems integrators agree that the federal government looks more like the corporate world every day.

"Eighty percent of what we do" in the federal market today, says Bob Backstrom, a veteran marketing executive at Litton PRC Inc., "is just like the private sector."

As best commercial practices become the norm, the agency systems that have been in use a decade or more can't handle the load. Like a house with a sagging foundation, they need improvements that go below the surface. Then it's time to call in the information architects to straighten out the systems and provide a solid structure on which to build in the next century.