Welcome to the second issue of Architecture & Governance Magazine. I’d like to thank everyone for your supportive response to the premier issue. Particular thanks go to those of you who offered suggestions on topics for future articles. Your feedback is an important part of our editorial planning process. Please keep your suggestions coming!

It happens once a quarter, or twice a year, or maybe even on an annual basis. The CEO and executive team sit down at a table and talk about goals and objectives. In these meetings, the CEO typically owns the vision. She talks, for example, about how many stores she wants to open or how many countries she wants to sell into.

Transformation is the latest concept to capture the attention of business and IT executives alike. Driven by a combination of improving economics, changes in the competitive landscape, a flurry of mergers and acquisitions and more aggressive public policy objectives, most enterprises are moving from a tactical to an increasingly strategic stance. Even the U.S. Federal government, in the 2005-2006 FEA PMO Action Plan, identifies its objective as “transforming government.”

If you haven’t met your company’s Enterprise Architecture team, you might want to schedule an introduction. In the year ahead, Enterprise Architecture will become a governing force in IT decision-making. New projects will require EA concurrence, and spending decisions will get hung up in architectural and governance review processes.

Although enterprise architecture has a loyal following, not everyone embraces it.

Those who believe in the benefits of enterprise architecture champion it vocally. But talk alone won’t convert the skeptics of what some experts say is the best approach to effectively using information technology.

More and more federal agencies are leveraging the “lessons learned” in the commercial sector by blending their IT and agency objectives through the use of architecture, reuse and modeling tools.

By now, you have probably heard about the Enterprise Architecture Interest Group.

But like other professionals, you may be wondering whether the organization is a good fit for you and the company or agency you work for. The EAIG, a growing not-for-profit organization, has made it easy by offering the following litmus test:

Join the EAIG if you want to…

The Role of the CIO.  With IT representing about 70% of all capital expenditures, estimated in total at over $1 trillion dollars per annum, CIOs are expected to “run IT like a business,” maintaining specialized skills and expertise in: