Towards an enterprise architecture for public administration using a top-down approach

The use of Enterprise Architectures is becoming increasingly widespread in the private sector. Borrowing insights from enterprise reference architectures developed during the last decade, IT vendors and companies belonging to specific industries are establishing reference data and process models advancing the standardisation of their businesses and creating a more integrated environment for their activities. Although public administrations share the same problem of non-standardisation, which is being magnified rapidly in a changing and demanding environment, little has been done so far in the direction of integration. This article builds a basis, shows initial directions and attempts to stimulate interest in a PA enterprise framework. Following a top-down approach and employing concepts from the fields of public administration, enterprise integration and generic process and data modeling, the outline of the ArchPad enterprise architecture for Public Administration is presented.