Enterprise Content Management and Federal Enterprise Architecture (from the archive)
While doing a little housekeeping on my site I rediscovered this presentation I did a couple years ago on Enterprise Content Management and Federal Enterprise Architecture. It was for the Gilbane conference on content management technologies in government. My notes from the conference are also available. Continue reading »
Filed under Content Management, Information Architecture | Comment (0)EPA Web Work Group 2007
I attended this year’s Environmental Protection Agency Web Work Group conference in Crystal City. As always, there were a few stand-out sessions. This year, the MVP was the Office of Water’s case study on their recent web conversion. You can read more about it near the end of the post.
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Content Management in Government - Gilbane Conference Wrapup
I spoke at the Gilbane conference on content management technologies in government on Wednesday. It was a good conference experience, and I hope they do it again next year. There were about 50 attendees, so it had the personal intimate feel of a retreat. The attendee list seemed to be balanced 50/50 between feds and consultants. There were three plenaries and eight pairs of sessions in two tracks. Almost all the sessions were case studies, which was amazing. The conference was in the Reagan Building downtown, which is just fabulous. The food was good, although the space for lunch was a bit odd. There were about fifteen vendor tables from a range of companies. Paying the bills and so forth. Tony Byrne of CMSWatch was the conference chair, and he definitely did a good job selecting speakers.
I spoke about Content Management and the Federal Enterprise Architecture. I got good feedback and a number of interesting questions. My favorite was whether the Business Reference Model (a government-wide taxonomy of business functions) is appropriate for the public as a means of organizing government content. My answer was ‘probably not’ since the BRM is meant to be a back office artifact used for planning. It uses language that is inappropriate for the general public. Maybe the general organization scheme might be useful even if the specific labels aren’t. But that asks the question - is there a taxonomy of the whole federal government’s operations that is appropriate for the general public? I believe OMB or GAO maintains a taxonomy intended for librarians (I need to do more research obviously). But librarians are not the general public, and taxonomies for libraries may or may not be appropriate for the web. Firstgov has gone down that road a bit, but they have struggled - the problem is very difficult. (Full disclosure - the original question was from someone who works at Firstgov).
I took copious notes in seven sessions, which I’ve included verbatim after the break…
Filed under Content Management | Comments (3)Enterprise Information Architecture in Context (Revised)
Back at the beginning of October I spoke at the 2005 East Coast IA Retreat on Enterprise Information Architecture. The presentation was about using the language of Enterprise Architects to talk about IA and particularly content management among enterprise planning folk. So I went over the Zachman Framework and offered ideas on how to extend the framework to accommodate user experience (and IA). I am planning a more extensive post on the topic soon.
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Several people expressed an interest in a download version of the diagram: original v1.0 | final v2.0. Version 2.0 extends and enhances the original, which I blogged about here: EIA in Context diagram.
I created this graphic to give everyone a starting point, a point of common understanding. The graphic depicts how enterprise information architecture (EIA) relates to enterprise content management (ECM). I originally envisioned the two things as being part of the same overall process, but I came to a realization that they are better understood as two separate activities.
As I see it, ECM is a permanent ongoing process to control a never-ending stream of content - to file it, organize it, and deliver it to the people who need it. EIA is the intelligence behind content management. It translates user needs, business goals, policies, and standards into a coherent plan for content management.
On the left side of the document are the inputs that inform and drive EIA. Even in organizations where there is no formal EIA, these kinds of inputs exist and are actively sculpting the content landscape. My diagram is pretty specific to the federal government landscape in the US, but you can extrapolate the kinds of inputs that are relevant in your organization.
In the center of the diagram are the products of EIA, five kinds of structures. These structures are the key to everything. In fact, that part makes me a bit nervous, because they are very hard to define in such a small space. For examples of search and navigation structures, see Lou Rosenfeld’s EIA Roadmap diagram.
On the right side of the diagram, we see how these structures help people create and catalog content, organize and publish collections, and filter and deliver content to audiences. They are the translation of an entire organization’s rules and knowledge into a set of rules that help people find and use content they need to get work done. That’s pretty powerful stuff.
Filed under Content Management, Information Architecture | Comments OffBusiness Processes and Content Management
Another aspect of the Enterprise Information Architecture in Context diagram (PDF) that people have asked about is the nature of the intersection between content and business process. As with any IA issue worth talking about, it depends. I’ve identified four kinds of intersections between a business process and content. There are probably more, but these four cover a lot of ground. So I put the out there for people to think about, comment on, and refine.
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