Enterprise Architecture

GEA-NZ Overview

The Government Enterprise Architecture for New Zealand, GEA-NZ, is a unifying common language and classification framework that agencies can leverage to describe common capabilities and optimise delivery of All-of-Government (AoG) goals such as the Directions and Priorities for Government ICT and Better Public Services – Improving Interaction with Government – Results 9 and 10.

At the heart of both the Directions and Priorities for Government ICT and Better Public Services initiatives is the intention that agencies collaborate to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness. Common approaches are to be adopted for common needs. Hence there is a need for a common language and classification framework to describe common business processes, ICT capabilities and solutions. GEA-NZ provides this common language and classification framework.

Unlike an Enterprise Architecture developed specifically for an agency, the AoG GEA-NZ is descriptive, rather than prescriptive. Its focus is on describing business and ICT capabilities that enable sharing and re-use among agencies. It has not been developed to replace existing agency business and ICT development plans, but to complement them while facilitating AoG optimisation.

GEA-NZ Principles

The principles adopted for the use of GEA-NZ – and which therefore also guided its development – are presented below:

GEA-NZ Executive View

At its top level, the GEA-NZ model has 3 major subdivisions called ‘Regions’: the Strategy Region, the Business Region and the ICT Region.

A high level view of the GEA-NZ is presented below.

The Strategy Region contains key strategic focus considerations and references to goals such as those described in Directions and Priorities for Government ICT and Better Public Services.

The Business and ICT Regions are decomposed into ‘Zones’.

The Business Region contains 3 Zones:

The ICT Zones are:

Devices used by State sector employees and clients to access common services, as well as peripheral devices such as printers.

Includes Internet and private government networks, voice, video and multi-channel communications technologies.

A group of assets that make services available to end users. The service consumer touches the service delivery capability here from their client device, via the Communications Zone.

Provides the capability to orchestrate and manage services offered in the Business and Operational Functions layer, and utilises utility services such as authentication.

Provides core business services, contains mission critical business data and information and the systems which perform business operations on this data.

Provides the common infrastructure, security and management supporting the other ICT Zones

The ICT Zones are decomposed into ‘Blocks’ which are not described in this summary.

GEA-NZ Reference Models

The GEA-NZ has several ‘Reference Model’ classification taxonomies.

Existing Reference Models include:

• The ‘GEA-NZ Business Reference’ (GBR) model – applicable to the Business Region
• The ‘FEAF Service Reference’ (FSR) model – applicable to the ICT Region
• The ‘FEAF Technology Reference’ (FTR) model – applicable to the ICT Region, particularly the Foundation Zone
• The ‘FEAF Performance Reference Model’ (FPR) is a Reference Model under development applicable to both the ICT and Business Regions. It is included to level 2 as a guide to the sorts of measures to be included in a GEA-NZ Performance Reference (GPR) model.

Placeholders for Reference Models yet to be developed include:

• The ‘GEA-NZ Process Activity Reference Model’ (GAR) – a placeholder for a model to be developed, applicable to the Business Region
• The ‘GEA-NZ Information Reference Model’ (GIR) – a placeholder for a model to be developed, applicable to the Business Region

GEA-NZ Standards

GEA-NZ has inherited previous ICT standards such as the Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) version 3.3 dating from 2008, as well other Standards such as Authentication Standards. All these standards applicable to the ICT region are undergoing review and update to reflect contemporary standards.

GEA-NZ Suite of Artefacts

The GEA-NZ suite of artefacts includes:

• GEA-NZ Strategic Service Visions: these define objective future states for services

• The Government Common Capabilities Roadmap: describes common capabilities that are already available, capabilities that are planned and their planned delivery dates, capabilities’ high level features, and dependencies that have been identified. The Government Common Capabilities Roadmap is one of the tools designed to implement the Directions and Priorities for Government ICT and Better Public Services.

• GEA-NZ Viewpoints and Reference Architectures: these set context and interpret GEA-NZ detail from a specific stakeholder perspective, such as a listing of – and grouping of – the functional components required to deliver a particular business outcome.

• GEA-NZ Model: is the overarching model which has a three-tiered structure:
  • The Framework model tier provides the overall model framework and contains the Reference Model classification taxonomies. It does not contain content such as standards, common capabilities, or technologies which are contained in the lower tier level detail and surfaced based on the context of the business need.
  • The AoG model tier is built on the structure and classifications inherited from the Framework model tier. It includes AoG applicable metadata and models such as reference architectures, patterns, common capabilities and the Government Common Capabilities Roadmap, and descriptions of underlying technologies. It also includes traceability to Government strategies and policies.
  • The Agency model tier includes detail for agencies, e.g. agency-specific standards for DIA. As with the AoG model tier, the Agency model tier also inherits structure and the classifications from the Framework model tier. Where applicable, Agency models can reuse content from the AoG model tier. Furthermore, the development of Agency models can provide content (e.g. reference architectures) that could be reused at the AoG model tier. This approach is one method of enabling the GEA-NZ principle of ‘Knowledge capture and sharing’ and helps achieve all-of-government efficiency and effectiveness by facilitating a level of cross-agency re-use.

• GEA-NZ Context Document. This document provides a high level overview of the GEA-NZ v2.0 content, describing its structure and internal and external linkages. The document describes the motivations for constructing and using the GEA-NZ v2.0, such as the directives of the Government of New Zealand, good practices performed in other government administrations and good practices performed in commercial enterprises.