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Boundaryless Information Flow is Real and Relevant

Boundaryless Information Flow to Manage Our Safety

EA, Business Agility, and Boundaryless Information Flow

Enterprise Architecture: Return on Investment

Deciding on Open Source

Managing the Flow

Certification - A Part of a Virtuous Circle

Directories - If There Were No Directories I Couldn't Find IT

Boundaryless Information Flow & Enterprise Architecture

Thinking Strategically about Certified Products

Architecture: Make IT Work for You

Open Source and Standards

Architecture: An Essential Tool for the CIO

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CIO Corner with Terry Blevins

Boundaryless Information Flow to Manage Our Safety

Last weekend I traveled to my hometown to attend my niece’s high school graduation party. I was far away from San Francisco, far away from Reading, far away from Boston and Washington, far away from work, far away from Boundaryless Information Flow. Or was I?

Toward the end of the day’s festivities people had a tendency to collect in small groups and chat about what’s going on in their lives, work included. I sat down and chatted with an old friend who happens to be the Chief of the Fire Department. He knows what I do so he asked for some thoughts on what’s going on with the information technology that supports the public. It was a very interesting discussion. It started with an eerily similar story. The Fire Department and the Police Department were actually starting to discuss sharing information to improve the overall effectiveness of public safety services. A great goal!

I heard that the subject information was essential to daily operations of each department. Management decisions were constantly being made based on this data, from long-term decisions, such as planning decisions, to short term decisions, such as resource allocations. Having the right information was critical. Sounds familiar? I think so. It doesn't matter how big or small an organization is, information drives decision making, and decision making is what management is all about!

After the Fire and Police Departments established that information is a shareable asset they embarked on a discussion of how to realize its potential. A group of personnel got together to discuss how to improve overall management through information sharing and discussed issues of their information technology environments. I'm sure you guessed the key issue; the group that got together discovered that their information was stored away in silos that didn't readily give up information to outsiders like organizations on a different side of a boundary.

The next step for these organizations was pretty clear: they needed help so they brought in a consultant. The consultant was more focused on implementation than understanding the bigger picture, so suggested that the right approach was to replace the systems that managed the information with a common set of applications and underlying database technologies. Well, this didn't fly with the Fire Chief. Why? Because it was suggested that everyone change. That everyone replace their applications, databases, processes, and that everyone be retrained who maintained or used the systems. Who is going to pay for this? He mentioned that his ability to make decisions would also be thwarted; his information is currently presented in an optimal way for his decision-making. His counterparts were likely in the same situation. The consultant also didn’t realize that what was being suggested took away flexibility from the autonomous organizations. Nor did he realize that this approach was short sighted. How would it support sharing of information with hospitals that might be the next target for information sharing? Not the best approach.

I suggested to my friend that his problem was indeed an example of the problem that inspires the work at The Open Group and that our vision of Boundaryless Information Flow™ captures the essence of a desired future state. The approach that we see is not one of consolidation and homogenization, but one of support for heterogeneous environments. What he needed to do was look for holistic approaches to understand and describe his environment, such as our Business Scenario process, and look for open technologies that allowed information to be freed from silos and delivered to those that need them, in an optimal form. He understood this and was glad to hear that his concerns about the consultant’s approach were valid and a different solution was needed. And he was hopeful that information technology providers would start to realize the need for holistic solutions instead of saying replace this and that and then all your problems will be solved.

Sometimes it is surprising that you really do not have to go far to understand what’s going on. Real people are having real problems with information technology, real people that are providing real services to each of us, services that someday might even save our lives.

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