GC Enterprise Architecture/Enterprise Solutions

This page is a work in progress of proposed ideas, please send us your feedback on the Enterprise Solutions content to the [TBS Enterprise Architecture team]

December 15, 2020 DM CEPP presentation, Advancing Enterprise Solutions

Enterprise Solutions definition

Enterprise solutions are internal and external Government of Canada assets capable of being re-used again or repeatedly. The Business Capability Model will be used as a baseline to describe the functionality of the GC re-usable asset.

Re-usable assets can include and are not limited to:

  • User journeys and business process models
  • Information and data standards
  • Application software and accelerators
  • Technology solutions
  • Security and privacy standards and guardrails
  • Procurement vehicles

Benefits of Enterprise solutions:

  • provide a more cohesive digital experience for users and other stakeholders,
  • reduce the total cost of ownership to provision external and internal services
  • enhance integration and collaboration, create transferable skill sets, and leverage innovative work across the GC and the private sector.

Decision Making Framework for Enterprise Solutions

Presented at GC EARB on June 4th, 2020

Under the Policy on Service and Digital, departmental CIO’s are responsible for “submitting to GC EARB, proposals concerned with the design, development, installation and implementation of digital initiatives”. They are also responsible for “adopting, as applicable, enterprise solutions within their respective department.”

Decision Making Framework
Decision Making Framework

Decision Making Framework

Increasingly, a number of departmental digital initiatives propose solutions that address matters with common business capabilities, resulting in a diverse range of applications in operations across the GC IT landscape. TBS has recognized a need to provide assistance to departmental CIO’s to inform decision-making with respect to the adoption of enterprise solutions.

The following presentation is the first iteration of a working draft of a decision making framework that will be used as a guide for the adoption of enterprise solutions. The framework will be added to the revised GC EARB presenter template. Please send us your feedback on the decision making framework for enterprise solutions to the [Enterprise Architecture team]

The following initiatives endorsed by GC EARB have characteristics of Enterprise Solutions, re-usable assets

This registry of GC Enterprise Solutions are classified in the layers of the EA framework, BIATS.

Business Architecture

GC BCM v2.0 (GC Business Capability Model)

Investing in Enterprise Capabilities at CBSA, 2020-01-31

GC Digital Workspace standards and profiles

Accessible Information and Communication Technology (ICT), 2019-06-19

Standard for ITSM Integration, 2018-06-28

Information Architecture

A Framework for Government-Wide Data Governance & Stewardship, 2020-03-02

Enterprise Data: Update to the Enterprise Architecture Review Board, 2019-07-04

API Store, 2019-04-04

Data Analytics as a Service, 2019-03-21

GC Data Strategy, 2018-05-31

Enterprise Data Management and Architecture, 2018-05-31

GCdocs and GCdocs Managed Service, 2018-05-31

Data Sovereignty & Public Cloud, 2018-03-22

Enabling interoperability

CDXP

Grants and Contributions, 2017-11-09

Application Architecture

Canada School of Public Service – Next Generation Digital Learning Environment, 2020-07-02

Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) Industrial Security Systems Transformation (ISST) Project GC EARB – 2020-06-18

Communications Security Establishment – NextGen HR and Pay for High Security Organizations - 2020--06-04

Digital Comptrollership Program (formerly Financial Management Transformation)

NRCan – Canadian Geospatial Platform (Federal Geospatial Platform), 2020-03-26

SSC IT Service Management Tool Project (Service Management Transformation Program), 2020-03-02

Statistics Canada cloud architecture for Drupal, GC reference architecture for the GC, 2020-01-17

NSERC/SSHRC/CIHR – Tri-Agency Grants Management Solution, 2019-11-14

Open Source Standards and Whitepaper, 2019-10-03

GCcase

Canada.ca Search Engine, 2019-06-19

eProcurement Solution, 2019-05-02

Gartner Assessment of CRA/CBSA SAP Strategy, 2019-03-21

ATIP Online Request Service (AORS), 2019-02-07

VidCruiter SaaS, 2018-11-18

Multi Department Impact Assessment and Cumulative Effects Related Systems

Open First Whitepaper, 2018-09-13

Asset Discovery & Inventory Management. 2019-08-30

Talent Cloud, 201-07-12

Enterprise Managed SharePoint service, 2018-05-31

Project and Portfolio Management (GC PPM), 2018-05-31

Technology Architecture

TBS – Process and status of Split Tunneling requests, 2020-06-18

Digital Communications and Collaboration (DCC): Network and Security Design Principles, 2020-03-26

Cloud eXchange Point (CXP) readiness process, 2020-01-31

GC Cloud Enablement: Cloud Connection Patterns, 2019-12-19

SCED and A unified, consolidated, and regionalized hub strategy for interconnectivity to and from the GC infrastructure, 2019-12-05

Digital Communications and Collaboration (DCC), 2019-11-14

Enterprise Mobile Device Management, 2019-06-13

GC Mainframe Strategy, 2019-06-19

Cloud

SSC Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) service, 2020-07-30

Security Architecture and Privacy

Enhancing email security with Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC)., 2020-01-31

Digital Credential and Access Management, 2019-09-19

Enabling Secure Access to Protected B Cloud Services, 2019-09-19

Cyber Security Digital Identity Reference Architecture, 2019-07-04

Pan-Canadian Trust Framework, 2019-05-02

Sign IN Canada Way Forward, 2019-05-02

Verified.Me POC, 2019-05-02

MyAlberta Digital Identity, MADI-2019-05-02

Update of the GC Digital Identity Strategy, 2019-01-10

HTTPS Everywhere” Standard, 2018-03-08

Last update on 2020-08-04

Updates completed from the following GC EARB meetings
2020 2019 2018
2020-01-17 2019-01-10 2018-03-08
2020-01-31 2019-01-24 2018-03-22
2020-03-02 2019-02-07 2018-04-05
2020-03-26 2019-03-07 2018-04-26
2020-04-09 2019-03-21 2018-05-10
2020-04-23 2019-04-04 2018-05-18
2020-05-07 2019-05-02 2018-05-31
2020-06-04 2019-06-13 2018-06-14
2020-06-18 2019-06-19 2018-06-28
2020-07-02 2019-07-04 2018-07-12
2020-07-16 2019-07-25 2018-08-30
2020-07-30 2019-08-22 2018-09-13
2019-09-19 2018-09-27
2019-10-03 2018-09-27
2019-10-31 2018-10-19
2019-11-14 2018-11-01
2019-12-05 2018-11-15
2019-12-19 2018-11-29
2018-12-13


Value proposition

  • For Government of Canada employees,
  • Who are involved in modernizing their departmental programs and services.
  • Enterprise solutions re-usability framework is a classification framework and registry of GC reusable assets based on common business capabilities and user journeys,
  • That enables employees to provision reusable assets when modernizing their departmental programs and services and to contribute reusable assets for others to reuse.
  • Unlike today where there is limited guidance for reusability resulting in GC departments implementing duplicated assets.
  • The Enterprise solutions re-usability framework establishes an operational framework to increase reusability across GC departments that will result in the following benefits:

Reusability Classification Framework

Option Description Illustration
Centralizated These reusable assets are standardized to the entire GC in a consolidated manner, governed by a centralized authority and are provisioned by a single centralized service provider. It maximizes utility of major investments which address common business needs, have Enterprise-wide scope, long durations, and require participation from all departments and agencies.

Example: SSC Secure Cloud Enablement and Defense (SCED)​, desktop standards, data standards

Pros: Enables cohesive, horizontal integration across Enterprise to enables consistent frictionless utilization by stakeholders and administration. Maximizes consistency of technology.

Cons: Increases risk of vendor lock in. Does not allow for department specific customizations to address non-standardized business processes.

Distributed These reusable assets are identified by common departmental needs, governed by those departments and are provisioned through distributions and shared/clustered instances of the assets. This model leverages enterprise standards, product owners, departmental clusters, governance and oversight. This model may also leverage distributed technical infrastructure to support solution clusters.

Examples: FMT accelerators / Product Owner guardrails / Open Source toolkits, distributions, and templates, M365 (MS Teams) – Federated via DCAM tenants.

Pros: Recognizes layered approach of Enterprise Architecture Framework and enables governance of one or many aspects of Business, Information/Data, Application, Technology, Security, and Privacy for reuse by departments with similar business processes or non-functional requirements.

Cons: Although the risk of vendor lock in is mitigated comparted to the Enterprise Service Model, it may be challenging to replace technology components that span multiple departments.

Interoperable Reusable assets are developed by departments using standards and published for provisioning by others. This stand alone, or decentralized option allows departments to implement their own unique assets but publish and consume APIs and Open Source software centrally led guidance and standards.

Examples: IBM Curam (BDM – Public Cloud-hosted Containterized microservices exposed as APIs)

Pros: Enables reactive solutions to address business processes not shared across departments. Limited risk of vendor lock in.

Cons: Limits reuse across departments. Talent supporting technology components in the federated model have fewer opportunities to build skill sets useful across the Enterprise.

Departmental Reusable assets are developed for provisioning within a department or are not reusable at all as there is are no common business capabilities and user journeys.

This option allows departments to implement one-off, niche services, with reuse within their department or none at all.

Examples: Agriculture Canada SeqDB – Botany, Mycology, and Entomology Collection Management

Pros: Enables maximum flexibility for departments

Cons: Does not easily allow for reuse. Encourages niche skills not portable across the GC

Registry of GC reusable assets

Proposed model for registry
Classification Business capabilities addressed User Journeys addressed Source of assett
Centralizated
asset name
asset name
Distributed
asset name
asset name
Interoperable
asset name
asset name
Departmental
asset name
asset name

Detailed Enterprise Solution Fact Sheet

Any truly enterprise solution should be able to easily describe itself and it's qualities & properties. Use the following fact sheet to hold and maintain the quick reference information for any solution that has merit for the enterprise. The values can then be used by anyone either looking to compare potential alternatives or looking to improve / extend the existing enterprise solution. The information in this chart also provides an indirect guideline for those involved with the enterprise solution to highlight gaps and develop a roadmap towards a more well rounded solution.

General
Name:
Major Business Capability: Business Owner:
Minor Business Capability: Service Owner:
Specific Business Capability:
Nuanced Business Capability:
Date endorsed by GC EARB:
Website:
How many departments use it? How many users?
Operational Costs
Last Year CAP EX ($k) Last Year OP EX ($k)
This Year CAP EX ($k) This Year OP EX ($k)
Next Year CAP EX($k) Next Year OP EX ($k)
# of people to operate:
Last Year:
This Year:
Next Year:
Information

Archived Enterprise Solutions material