Case Study: Registers Of Scotland / BT Partnership

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Date:	22 August 2006
Title:	Registers Of Scotland / BT Partnership
Originator:	Jim Gordon (RoS) / Michael Anniss (BT) Registers Of Scotland / BT Partnership
Address:	Meadowbank House 153 London Road Edinburgh EH8 7AU
Email:
URL:	www.ros.gov.uk

Abstract - short definition of the project (approximately 10-15 words)

Registers of Scotland and BT implement e-Gif/OSIAF standards using innovative enterprise architecture based approach.

Background - give a brief outline of the partners involved and the context of the case

In December 2004 Registers of Scotland (RoS) and BT entered into a 10 year Strategic Partnership Agreement. The partnership is an overarching initiative for the delivery of both current IT services and also projects that RoS sees as key to its future development.

RoS and BT are working together to deliver a detailed business transformation programme aimed at improving the Agency's internal processes as well as enhancing external products and services to the Agency's customers. At the heart of this is the design, implementation and management of next generation technologies to enable successful business transformation.

The approach to managing the long term ICT environment is based on the creation of an overall enterprise wide ICT architecture (EWICTA) within which best practice, standards and reusable components are defined, developed and maintained. The EWICTA provides an overall view of the relevant elements of the technical architecture and the basis for the adoption of specific designs, protocols and standards.

Each of the major architecture views (Infrastructure, Information, Business Services, Technical Services and Security) have a defined position on the adoption of standards and identify how e-GIF/OSIAF standards have been adopted.

As the partnership progresses new solutions are aligned to the EWICTA (within which the e-GIF/OSIAF is embedded) to provide the basis for evaluation of each new project against the overall enterprise architecture. Each individual project is expected to align to the enterprise architecture unless there are specific reasons for variation.

This alignment mechanism ensures that alignment to the e-GIF/OSIAF is defined once for the partnership and then applied to each individual change. This provides increased consistency in alignment to e-GIF/OSIAF and enables much improved cross partnership investment and decision making about the adoption and implementation of the e-GIF/OSIAF.

Existing practices - describe how the information is/was shared before this initiative

The existing practices were focused on the development of each individual solution with the specific project and technical teams making decisions about overall architecture and standards adoption. While the e-GIF/OSIAF always provided a background for architecture and design it was not addressed in a co-ordinated and consistent way.

Intended outcomes - describe the expected outcomes of the case

The intended outcomes for the implementation of the EWICTA within which the e-GIF/OSIAF is embedded are:

Increased clarity in the adoption and implementation of e-GIF/OSIAF standards
Improved decision making about e-GIF/OSIAF
Consistency in approach and implementation of new solutions
Increased understanding of e-GIF/OSIAF and its importance across the programme

Note that we are currently at the beginning of establishing this approach with the expectation that the initial definition within the EWICTA will be in place by the end of 2006. In the meantime the basic principles are being communicated to the development teams providing an initial understanding and basis for the design of the current solutions.

Challenges faced - describe the challenges and barriers that had to be addressed

The are a number of key challenges associated with e-GIF/OSIAF:

The variability of e-GIF/OSIAF itself. Some parts are well defined while others are more speculative and in some cases provide links to early standards body discussions rather than formal and agreed scenarios, definitions or protocols. This makes it difficult to interpret and address some of the e-GIF/OSIAF elements.
e-GIF/OSIAF needs to be applied both internally and externally. The application of e-GIF/OSIAF to external interfaces based around the emerging web services protocols, syntax and semantics provides good clarity and significant basis for definition, understanding and deployment. The application of e-GIF/OSIAF to internal components and interfaces is more problematic. The internal ICT estate of all organisations is dependent upon an evolving history of solutions many of which are Commercial Off The Shelf Systems (COTS) based. This results in a lack of ability to control the structures of those solutions which may not align well to e-GIF/OSIAF.
e-GIF/OSIAF needs to be addressed from an enterprise rather than an individual project perspective, to ensure that decisions are made efficiently and that product, design, interface and protocol decisions apply generically and are not subverted by limited individual change requirements.
A definition and alignment process is required to ensure that the e-GIF/OSIAF-related decisions are understood and communicated and then applied in a consistent and effective manner. This process must also provide the basis for communicating the importance (and any associated business implications) of adopting e-GIF/OSIAF to the business stakeholder in individual projects who often have little visibility of their wider impact and do not see the relevance to their specific business objectives.

Effective communication of decisions and the desired architecture and design across the full community of ICT service must be established and reflect the different perspectives, of business, commercial, control and governance, project delivery and on-going operation groups.

Approach taken - describe the approach taken in tackling the challenges / implementing the solution

The approach taken is to provide a central strategy and enterprise architecture governance and control process based on the creation of the EWICTA and formal strategy and governance team. The EWICTA is based on BT's implementation of the Zachman framework with extensions to cover strategy, principles and policies and generic strategies and approaches for various ICT solution and service elements.

The strategy and governance team is a virtual team made up of the key architects and designers across the programme. They have a part-time role in developing the EWICTA collateral that includes the e-GIF/OSIAF alignment elements and are then responsible for applying the full set when developing the Solution Architectures for each new change.

The interaction with the RoS business is enabled through bi-weekly sessions with the RoS Intelligent Customer Function (ICF) which is responsible for the cross RoS view of the ICT solutions, service and their development.

Each of these elements are currently being developed by the virtual team with a target date of the end of 2006 for their completion. In the meantime all of these elements are being discussed and shared to ensure that existing developments follow the emerging EWICTA and e-GIF/OSIAF based implementations.

Actual outcomes - describe what was actually achieved. Note this may vary from the intended outcomes

The following outcomes have been achieved so far:

The base EWICTA has been set up with the virtual team working on the initial drafts of the enterprise architecture.
The e-GIF/OSIAF clauses have been evaluated and new solution responses have been defined against each clause.
New solutions informally review their alignment to the emerging EWICTA to ensure architectural conformance and hence e-GIF/OSIAF alignment unless specific situational requirements determine otherwise.
The process has been reviewed and accredited for e-GIF/OSIAF compliance.
New solutions developed by different projects are increasingly identifying common components and working together to optimise effectiveness and efficiency.

Business benefits - describe any business benefits attributed to this initiative e.g. improved productivity

The following business benefits have been achieved:

The partnership targets for promoting re-use and developing common business processes are being supported by the emerging shared architectural view of each solution.
Teams are working together in an improved and collaborative fashion.
Opportunities for exploiting the RoS information base across existing and new markets and clients are more clearly identified and their underlying structures understood.
The adoption of e-GIF/OSIAF ensures that interaction with these external entities will be easier in future.

The real business benefits in terms of demonstrable re-use, cost reduction and increase in quality cannot be evaluated until the solutions developed through this process are implemented and proved.

Lessons learned - describe what conclusions and recommendations based on the experience gained in this case

These are currently early days but the main lessons learned so far are:

The architecture needs to be described and managed in a relatively simple manner that can be easily communicated. This is currently being achieved through a simple internal web page based approach.
e-GIF/OSIAF has some good and some less good elements which need to be clearly understood. Using e-GIF/OSIAF for external interfaces and fundamental internal structures such as names and addresses is clearly useful. Other elements, such as specific authoring/development tool selection, and the more speculative and less well defined standards are less useful.

Full implementation is a major structural, technical and communication exercise. The initial work on addressing this has progressed well but will need constant review and improvement.

General application - suggest elements of this initiative that may be applicable to other sectors or applications

The approach is purely generic in character. It is being developed to be applied to all sectors and client scenarios as part of the overall definition, management and governance of a specific client ICT estate and service.

Additional information - describe what interoperable standards/specifications were adopted and/or include any references to additional details that may be relevant such as schemas or sample xml

The RoS /BT Partnership received e-GIF/OSIAF accreditation in July 2006 and the Accreditation Authority specifically noted that the approach described above was an excellent role model for this activity.

In particular the approach shows how e-GIF/OSIAF and Enterprise Architecture can be integrated at the outset of a transformation exercise and how the implementation of shared services can be developed in an effective and robust way.

If you have any enquiries on this case study, please contact eGIF@ncc.co.uk.

e-GIF Accreditation Authority
National Computing Centre Ltd
Oxford House
Oxford Road
Manchester M1 7ED

Tel: 0161 242 2121
Fax: 0161 242 2499
www.egifaccreditation.org