Realizing SDGs with Government Enterprise Architecture

In 2016, the member states of the UN adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The cornerstone of this agenda is the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed to provide direction and guidance to nations with ambitions to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development by 2030.

I. What are the Sustainable Development Goals?

Comprising of 17 goals and 230 indicators, the SDGs provide a performance based, business oriented foundation to government enterprise architecture initiatives. Figure 1 shows the 17 goals at the highest level. 

Each of the 17 goals is further assigned targets that are quantified and decomposed into multiple indicators. Figure 2 shows an excerpt of the indicators for Goal 1 as an illustration. In short, the SDGs provide an excellent foundation for strategic performance management.

II. National Digitalization Initiatives

Many countries have initiated or are in the midst of digitalization programmes. In most cases, these digitalization programmes tend to be highly skewed toward adopting new and emerging technologies, to the point that the actual purpose of improving quality of life for people takes a backseat and is often overlooked and sidelined. It is not hard to find countries (and consultants) touting their use of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Cognitive Computing and Blockchain in some way, without any context of how these will actually address real problems and make a difference to people’s lives. Most enterprise architects (coming from ICT backgrounds) either refuse to or are unable think beyond technology. Their only exposure to “business” would be limited rudimentary knowledge of government processes and services.

In their eagerness to show progress, many governments take a piecemeal approach to digital transformation initiatives. It is well-known that a more integrated and holistic thinking is needed, but seldom do lawmakers and bureaucrats have the patience or inclination. In fact, many a times lawmakers and bureaucrats prefer to solve the same problems over and over again to justify their existence and value, rather than solving them once and for all. Because, if the latter happens, then they have the insecurity of not being seen as important anymore. Figure 3 shows a comparison of factors that impact digital transformation in governments. It is clear that disruptive thinking is needed to achieve full benefits of digitalization.

III. What is Government Enterprise Architecture? Why is it Important?

Across the world, governments are facing increasingly complex challenges that require greater collaboration, tighter integration and deeper connectedness between traditional organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. Nowhere is the need for Boundaryless Information Flow? greater than in governments. This is exacerbated by technological and operational advancements citizens get exposed to, oftentimes wondering as to why governments cannot be tech-driven, agile and more open to change. Additionally, citizens expect governments to take a longer-term approach, involving them, transcending election cycles, with the aim to build resilient governance systems. In contrast, usually, governments are and will largely continue to operate on the premise of fragmented authority and rewarding agency-centric behavior, with one of the rationale being the need discourage concentration of authority to a few groups or entities.

Against this backdrop, effectuating public service innovation for better citizen outcomes is a culmination of clear vision, enabling policies, efficient modern operations, smarter technology, and measurable goals amalgamated into a holistic construct – Government Enterprise Architecture (GEA), defined as a whole of government approach to support government ecosystems by transcending boundaries for delivering services in a coordinated, efficient and equitable manner.

IV. The World Public Sector Report 2018

In April 2018, the UN released the World Public Sector Report. Titled “Working Together: Integration, Institutions and Sustainable Development Goals”. The report emphasises the need to embrace integration in the deepest and broadest form. The report talks about the need for institutional frameworks to deliver integrated policies that effectively address existing interlinkages among the SDGs to achieve progress. Promoting integration implies finding ways to foster cooperation and common approaches among institutions at all levels dealing with closely interrelated issues.

To analyze integration efforts from an institutional perspective, this report considers three standard dimensions of integration: horizontal integration, i.e. integration across sectors or institutions; vertical integration, i.e. how the actions of national and sub-national levels of government can be aligned to result in coherent outcomes; and engagement of all stakeholders in the realization of shared objectives. Taken together, these three dimensions of integration cover all the relevant categories put forward by the literature such as, among many others, participation, partnerships, and coherence, as well as the two commonly used notions of whole-of- government approaches and whole-of-society approaches. Figure 4 lists the five main reasons why adoption of SDGs can accelerate integrated thinking. 

V. How Does Enterprise Architecture Enable the Achievement of SDGs?

Early in 2018, the Ministry of Electronics and IT, Government of India released the India Enterprise Architecture (IndEA) Framework. This is deliberately designed as a generic framework where the scope and footprint of the “enterprise” can be government entities at national, state and local (urban and rural) levels.

The vision of IndEA is “to establish best-in-class architectural governance, processes and practices with optimal utilisation of ICT infrastructure and applications to offer ONE Government experience to the citizens and businesses through digital services enabled by Boundaryless Information Flow?.” The IndEA comprises of eight distinct yet inter-related reference models, each covering a unique and critical architecture view or perspective.

• Part 1 [India Enterprise Architecture Framework]: This details the eight reference models based on TOGAF?. This is shown in Figure 5.
• Part 2 [IndEA Adoption Guide – A Method Based Approach]: This describes how IndEA can be adopted by government entities with TOGAF? ADM as the underlying methodology.

From an SDG perspective, the PRM, BRM, DRM and IRM are the primary dimensions, while the GRM, ARM, TRM and SRM are the enabling dimensions. The four primary dimensions are of direct concern to lawmakers and bureaucrats, tasked to run governments. The broad steps for national, state and local governments to design architecture initiatives are as below:

PRM: Identify SD goals, targets and indicators that are relevant. It is to be noted that SDGs are designed for national level governments, therefore all the goals may not be relevant for sub-national level governments. Additional inputs can be taken from the World Bank World Development Indicators. The Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2018 gives a very good idea of where countries stand vis-à-vis their achievement of SDGs and therefore what areas to focus on. Critical aspects covered in this step should include:

• What to measure and monitor?
• When and how frequently to measure and monitor?
• What methods should be used to measure, analyze and evaluate?
• When should the results be analyzed and evaluated?
• Who should measure and monitor?
• Who should analyze, evaluate and validate the results?
• How and when should the results be reported?

BRM: Firstly, map existing government services that contribute to the identified goals, targets and indicators. Secondly, identify new or modified services that are needed to fulfil the requirements of goals. Thirdly, plan to transition out services that do not support or enable the fulfilment of any goals or are rendered irrelevant in a digital era. The close relationship between the performance and business dimensions is depicted in Figure 6.

DRM: Identify the data needed to realize government services, and data that is needed to provide raw inputs to targets and indicators. Data is arguably the most difficult asset to govern and manage. Meta-data standards are equally important, while data quality is a showstopper. Critical aspects covered in this step should include:

• What data is needed?
• Where is the data needed?
• When is the data needed?
• Who needs the data?
• Who owns the data?
• How often / frequently is the data needed?
• In what form is the data needed?
• How is the data going to be used / consumed?
• How is the data protected from illegitimate use?
• Where is the data stored?

IRM: Identify integration requirements to realise whole-of-government perspective needed to achieve the SDGs. Figure 7 shows the integration needed are various levels and dimensions. Integration of any kind is driven by the mission priorities that are translated to actionable goals and performance indicators. These set the overall direction for the organizations. The results and outcomes require aggregation of data from various sources (services and underlying business processes) and generating a set of analytics. The goals and performance indicators are converted to a portfolio of services enabled by underlying business processes, which are consumed by users (citizens and businesses). These services can range from being department specific to spanning the entire ecosystem. Realization of cross-domain, cross-sectoral services require data interchange, common data standards and communication protocols.

Amalgamating the four primary dimensions (PRM, BRM, DRM and IRM) provides the mechanism to identify, adopt, measure, monitor and report SDGs. Published in 2013, my book titled “A Systemic Perspective to Managing Complexity with Enterprise Architecture” first elaborated the need to take a systemic view of businesses, including governments. The book presented several causal diagrams to illustrate the same. The World Public Sector Report 2018 embraces and recommends a systemic approach as well, to depict the linkages between SDGs. Figure 8 shows an example of health-electricity-life expectancy nexus causal map. As a simple example, the link between access to electricity, which is relevant to the Ministry of Power and infant (or neo-natal) mortality relevant to Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is clearly visible - thus demonstrating the need for these two ministries to integrate and interoperate. 

SDGs are meant for national governments. Therefore, when applied in the context of any sub-national level governments (e.g. state government, city government or local government) certain goals and indicators may not be directly relevant. That said, some tweaking can be done to make them suitable at any level. Integration is achieved when the goals, targets and indicators are linked downwards (decomposition); upwards (aggregation); and laterally (across and diagonal). Most digitalization efforts focus on creating the underlying technology infrastructure required to deliver digital services. These include citizen IDs, internet subscriptions, mobile penetration, app downloads, digital signature, digital payment among others. While these are essential, they are definitely not enough. Moreover, the scope for standardization on these capabilities are immense. That said, it is entirely possible to embrace all these capabilities and yet continue to operate in silos. i.e. services that may be paperless, cashless, faceless but not integrated (frictionless). Because the strategies, goals and policies are in silos, so are the information systems. ICT is merely a reflection of lack of systemic architectural thinking, treated as a perfunctory activity.   

VI. The Final Word

The need for integration is an ambition for all governments. Governments are known to operate in silos, and more often than not citizens bear the brunt of government inefficiencies. ICT amplifies both efficiency and inefficiency. Agenda 2030 is a move in the right direction. The SDGs cannot be achieved without integrated thinking, and enterprise architecture is the institutional framework that provides the mechanism to realize integration. There is no dearth of digital initiatives, wherein most citizens do not believe that anything actually has changed or will change for the better. India, for instance, is targeting a USD 1 trillion digital economy by 2025. With 1.3 billion minds, this is possible as the intellectual bandwidth India has is unparalleled. However, merely an ambition is not enough. To translate this ambition into action our minds have to work together, take an inclusive approach and focus on the critical areas, anchored around the SDGs.

Comments and feedback are welcome.

Primary References:

1. A Systemic Perspective to Managing Complexity with Enterprise Architecture; 2013; Pallab Saha.
2. Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2018 from the World Development Indicators; 2018; The World Bank. 
3. India Enterprise Architecture Framework; 2018; Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology; Government of India.
4. India’s Trillion Dollar Digital Opportunity; 2018; McKinsey & Company.
5. Report of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators; 2016; United Nations.
6. Working Together: Integration, Institutions and the Sustainable Development Goals (World Public Sector Report); 2018; United Nations.