Citizant Enterprise Architecture: It’s All About the Results
Citizant has helped federal and state organizations successfully manage large, complex projects and programs. The combination of our dedicated professionals, solutions skill sets, and rigorous processes has helped our civilian and defense customers achieve tangible results that meet stakeholders’ requirements. As a result, we can confidently refer all our past and current customers. Our goal is to continue to improve on our performance and protect our coveted reputation for excellence.
Citizant maintains an organizational focus on Enterprise Architecture (EA) and has spearheaded some of the Federal community’s most successful EA initiatives. Citizant tailors and streamlines our EA approach to the mission and priorities of our clients to provide practical solution with early business results. Our strong process orientation and ability to streamline methodologies provides timely, effective and quality solutions that are fit for purpose and do not overburden your organization. This flexible approach is based on robust, proven methods and industry best practices and allows us to scale projects — up and down — efficiently while maintaining quality.
The following project overviews highlight the depth and breadth of our past performance enabling agile EA solutions across the Federal government.
Transforming HUD’s Grants Management with Enterprise Architecture
(2003 – Present)
In 2004, HUD faced several challenges regarding grant applications: HUD had 43 competitive funding opportunities using 72 different grant application forms. To make matters worse, most of the grant programs did not support electronic data exchanges. HUD also had to meet its obligation to enable simple, unified electronic interactions between grant applicants and federal agencies as envisioned in the Grants.gov initiative. Faced with numerous grant programs, unique data collection requirements, limited time, and evolving standards, HUD needed a flexible solution to start streamlining its forms while being responsive to changes from HUD program offices. Using EA methods, Citizant’s team architected and implemented a solution that provides the foundation for a centralized database for grants management. Citizant’s EA-driven analysis enabled HUD to convert 99% in less than a year —far exceeding the OMB goal of converting 25% of its competitive discretionary grant applications to Grants.gov electronic within a year. As a direct result of Citizant’s work, HUD was able to reallocate $2.5 million from grants system development to fund other core mission initiatives, and has realized $1.5 million in cost avoidance.
Using EA to Provide Measurable Results at FTC
(2007 – Present)
At the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Citizant guides the entire EA lifecycle, aligning the requirements for existing and new IT assets with the business processes and technology services that support the FTC’s mission-critical services. Leveraging its deep knowledge and experience in EA, Citizant is helping to create a program for development, maintenance and governance of the enterprise architecture that integrates business strategy and artifacts to improve strategic decision-making. In less than six months, Citizant completed the first phase of the program, which involved documenting the technology and application architectures, aligning these to the business mission. The Commissioner commented on the value of EA in guiding the procurement and migration for the new Data Center. Citizant’s focus on practical, actionable EA solutions produced value for the FTC even at this early stage of the program.
Supporting IT Investment Decisions at CMS
(2007 – Present)
In August 2007, Citizant began working with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to analyze and document complex business processes across the organization, allowing CMS to better evaluate and validate IT investment decisions. By leveraging its business process modeling expertise, the Citizant team is building both baseline and target business process models that help business owners identify areas for improvement in the target business landscape. In addition to identifying reuse and consolidation opportunities, this comprehensive analysis of the business, application, data, and technology components will also guide CMS’ Health IT modernization efforts and support mission-critical goals. Citizant facilitated collaboration and information sharing throughout the project to ensure that the EA team and the business stakeholders were speaking the same language. In fact, one business owner commented that their business modeling diagram has ‘become the most valuable piece of paper we have.’ Citizant is helping CMS better serve more than 90 million Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, while also facilitating collaboration and information sharing between the business and information technology communities.
Transforming Legacy Assets to Federated Information Sharing Solutions
(1999 – Present)
Citizant began working with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in 1999 when the agency was in jeopardy of losing funding for the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) modernization program. To get the program on track, Citizant's team created an EA framework and governance to integrate and align this IT modernization effort. Citizant developed the current and target data architectures to guide modernization efforts and participated in the alignment of those architectures to the Dept. of Homeland Security’s (DHS) newly created enterprise architecture. Citizant also defined guidelines for and participated in compliance reviews at the agency and program levels, developed policy, and supported governance to foster collaboration and the exchange of best practices. Additionally, the CBP team plays a vital role in standardizing data elements with DHS and with 50 U.S. and global organizations to ensure development of International Trade Data Standards. In large part as a result of Citizant’ contribution, CBP has received a number of industry awards, including the Computerworld Honors Program’s 21st Century Achievement Award.
Helping HUD Get Green on Data Integration
(2004 – Present)
In 2004, HUD prioritized and expedited the goal of a “Yellow” OMB Scorecard rating in Enterprise Architecture, asking the team to improve its rating by June 2005. To achieve this, Citizant conducted a best-practice analysis and created the Segment Data Architecture Development Methodology (SDADM). The SDADM detailed a step-by-step methodology, ensuring that HUD could maintain line-of-sight visibility from business processes and strategic goals to IT data assets. As part of the SDADM, Citizant facilitated close collaboration between HUD and DOI to share lessons learned and best practices. Not only has the SDADM been recognized as a Leadership in Enterprise Architecture (LEAD) best practice and been posted on CORE.gov for inter-agency collaboration and use, HUD’s EA scorecard rating for 2005 improved dramatically — leapfrogging the Yellow rating and going straight to Green. Acknowledging HUD’s action-oriented data architecture method, OMB recognized HUD as a leader across the government in EA with a mature program for IT modernization designed to deliver substantive results. According to the Chief Architect that led this initiative, “it's been the gift that keeps on giving: It's been a key part of getting to green/staying green in EA.”
Yielding Dividends for HUD with Data Quality Improvement Program
(2002 – Present)
A 2001 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that HUD was at high risk of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. To remove its programs from GAO’s “high risk” list and mitigate the issues related to Data Quality that were impacting the Annual Performance Plan reporting and the Annual Financial Statement audits, HUD created the Enterprise Data Management Practice (EDMP). EDMP’s goal was to provide data standardization and quality improvement of the Department’s mission-critical systems. Citizant collaborated with the EDMP to implement a Total Information Quality Management (TIQM™) methodology. This methodology was designed to ensure that HUD’s critical information systems produce the highest quality data by establishing a structured, repeatable approach to assess the quality of data; promoting continuous improvement of data within information systems; and including governance to institutionalize the value of Data Quality across the Department. In the 2005 Inspector General’s audit, HUD moved from a “Material Weakness” to “Reportable Condition.” Additionally, the Department’s Data Quality initiative was awarded Government Computer News’ Promising Practice award and was featured at MIT’s International Conference on Information Quality.
Helping DOI Make Information Trusted and Accessible
(2005 – Present)
A key part of the EA strategy of the Department of the Interior (DOI) is to promote enterprise-wide data sharing, exchange, and re-use. To make trusted information accessible to DOI bureaus, partners and citizens, Citizant supports DOI in the areas of data architecture, authoritative data sources (ADS), and data quality. Citizant provided leadership for DOI’s Authoritative Data Source (ADS) strategy, which included conducting best-practice analysis on ADS strategies and implementations; developing an authoritative data source strategy and implementation plan for the DOI; and developing a formal enterprise data quality program. The ADS process is an integral set of activities in DOI’s Methodology for Business Transformation (MBT) and provides a foundation for an integrated, business-driven data solution that is tied to DOI’s performance goals. Citizant’s achievements at DOI were recognized with the 2008 Wilshire Award for Metadata Best Practices.
Transforming Data into Knowledge at FRA
(2006 – Present)
Citizant works with the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) CIO office to develop the future data architecture that will transform silos of data into an enterprise-wide knowledgebase. The Citizant team builds EA content as an integrated asset, using standard modeling notation to mature the different FEA reference models — Business, Data, Technical, System and Performance — and has created an agency-wide repository. Under the direction of Dr. Scott Bernard, FRA’s Deputy CIO, Citizant is piloting a new approach to service oriented architecture (SOA) that focuses on authoritative information for transforming the IT environment from point-to-point integration to loosely coupled, business-driven services. Additionally, the Citizant team is streamlining the capital planning process so that it is integrated with FRA’s objectives for EA, investment lifecycle, and project management. To help ensure a sound foundation for FRA’s EA program, the Citizant team has brought together some of the best minds in the industry. These industry thought leaders, including a former OMB Chief Architect, industry analysts, and the director of MIT’s Total Data Quality Management program, have been instrumental in identifying pain points and building the foundation for a successful SOA initiative.
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