The Ministry of Education Malaysia is one of Malaysia’s largest ministries. It oversees the entire country’s public education system, including pre-school education, primary schools, secondary school, and pre-tertiary education. The spread of more than 10,000 schools and several teacher training and development institutions shows that the Ministry meets its growing operational needs by adopting new digital capabilities. The Ministry’s operations depend on three main entities: students, teachers, and learning institutions. Learning institutions are the primary data source, with teachers and learning institution administrators responsible for performing data entry. Data governance is a procedure that defines the roles and duties of the person in charge of data management in an organization to gather and appropriately use educational data, ensure the protection of personal data, and establish data standardization, consistency, and adequate educational data use across agencies. The adoption of Enterprise Architecture will be a significant factor in delivering the new age of digital services. For the data handling in the Ministry of Education Malaysia, the combination of data governance and Enterprise Architecture will produce a data-driven architecture that accelerates time to value and demonstrates accurate results to stakeholders. Thus, this paper aims to propose a data governance model for the Ministry of Education, Malaysia.
Projection of the future state of Enterprise Architecture should be considered as compulsory and aligned to business needs. EA should be able to create lineage to each of the EA parts to get the business values and by developing the Future State EA, it can articulate the impact and value of the current state.
Organisations should develop a high-level implementation approach on how to derive the Future State EA and Gap Analysis through the following activities:
1) Gather insights and information from the relevant key stakeholders through Visioning Workshops to be used in developing Future State EA.
2) Analyse the Current State EA of IT landscape and conduct Gap Analysis by identifying areas that are not being addressed in the Current State of EA.
3) Assess and propose the medium-to-long term EA realization that includes work packages to transit towards the Future State EA which includes the detailed EA Plan with a 3-5 years’ timeframe to define the target for business, data, application, and technology architecture.
4) Develop Future State EA that complies with EA principles, standards and policies to support the transition architecture towards realising the Digital Strategy.
The Future State EA should be aligned with organisations’ business objectives and values. The current EA baseline needs to be reviewed and analyse as well as identifying the gaps for areas that are not being addressed in the Current State to realise the Future State EA by utilising the EA Gap Analysis Matrix as depicted in the diagram that helps to highlight opportunities that need to be grasped.
Figure 1: EA Gap Analysis Matrix
From the selection of principles, standards, policies and outcomes of gap analysis, the production of Architecture Views can help to represent Future State EA based on the EA Metamodel which is part of the EA Framework. The Architecture View and artefacts shall be stored in the Digital EA Repository which will include all the architecture domains (business, data, application and technology) and also examines all the relevant states of architecture (Current State, Transition and Target State EA).
A Transition Architecture shows the enterprise at an architecturally significant state between the Current State and Future State Architectures. The Transition Architectures are used to describe transitional Future State Architectures necessary for the effective realisation of the Future State Architecture.
The outcome of Gap Analysis and Future State EA is used to derive the Architecture Requirements that are crucial to be served as an input for the solutioning and implementation phases as part of the various Transformation Project initiatives. Organisations will be able to see the ‘future’ clearly when knowing exactly what success the enterprise architecture will bring to the business. The future state EA will bring organisations the improvement that they want to see.
original article by
Aaron Tan Dani
President of Singapore Computer Society EA-Chapter aarontan@scs.org.sg
Enterprise Architecture Maturity & Competency Development for a Succesful Digital Transformation
A Digital transformation initiative’s success extends beyond technology. It would require an enterprise wide culture change within the organisation and its people to extend its digital capability. To succeed in this journey, organisations should address its people, process and technology towards a digital savvy workforce that is aligned with the intents of EA in realizing the goals and objectives.
As depicted in the Competency Development Framework diagram, the centre focus for successful transformation lies in the competency of the Enterprise Architecture team that covers the holistic engagement to innovate and disrupt, measure and driving continuous transformation and deliver measurable outcomes.
Figure 1: Competency Development Framework
The first step is to assess the performance of its EA maturity based on the enterprise dimension factors. This will determine the appropriate action plans to be implemented to bring organisations towards a higher maturity level. The assessment further will provide recommendations that will focus on improvements, and benchmarking against relevant organisations and industry. An overall EA Assessment is also necessary to identify the current state of the digital transformation adoption which will cover the organisation that includes but not limited to Investments, Finance, HR, Governance, Risk & Compliance, IT, Legal and Secretariat, so as to develop a strategy to best execute the digital initiative and address any opportunities or gaps. The aim for this engagement is to realise the outcomes of a digitally connected enterprise from Strategy to Business to Information to Application and Infrastructure and vice versa.
The EA Maturity Assessment comprises of an assessment framework with methodology to measure the EA Maturity level using both the qualitative and quantitative assessment method as well as the actual conduct of a diagnostic survey.
Figure 2: The EA Maturity Assessment Process
The assessment will include the digital competency to identify performance gaps and learning measures in upskilling the team competencies in the areas of business, data, application, technology and solution architecture development. To achieve this and base on the results of the assessment, appropriate digital skillsets program should then be identified based on global EA best practices from TOGAF® Architecture Skills Framework together with the IT Architecture Body of Knowledge (ITABoK®) Skillsets to upskill a practical development and achievable target for achieving a higher performance level for a digital savvy workforce.
For EA to be effective, it must have measurable KPI to deliver business values and communicates them using business outcomes to make better decisions. For example, the figure shows the outcomes of key performance metrics for performing technology rationalization with the target of 70% for rationalization decision that fit with Future State EA and 90% for stakeholder’s approval decisions.
Figure 3: EA Key Performance Metrics Example
The ability to be able to develop the right EA Maturity & Competency models will lead to a greater digital capability where it can assist organisations to identify the right element along with the right time to increase IT approaches in digital transformation initiatives. Through EA Maturity & Competency Development, the digital transformation journey will be much clearer due to the fact that the organisational needs are taken into consideration. Every organisation should consider taking this ‘health check’ to ensure the digital initiatives taken are operating efficiently.
Related websites: Join the EA activities in Singapore and learn how you can implement Digital-Business-driven EA in your organisation. Computer Society EA-Chapter:http://www.scs.org.sg/Chapter/ea-homepage
Learn more about ITABoK (IT Architecture Body of Knowledge) skillsets and about the roles, scopes and impacts of EA Specializations. IASA:www.iasahome.org
Acquire successful Digital Transformation adoption with ATD Enterprise Architecture consulting and training services. ATD Solution:www.atdsolution.com
Figure 1: EA Gap Analysis Matrix
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