FDIC Enterprise Architecture Framework


FDIC Enterprise Architecture Framework was the Enterprise Architecture framework of the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. A lot of the current article is about the Enterprise Architecture Framework developed around 2005, and currently anno 2011 out-of-date.

Overview

The FDIC's framework for implementing its Enterprise Architecture was based on Federal and industry best practices, including the Chief Information Officer Council's Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework and the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture. FDIC's framework was tailored to emphasize security. The historic FDIC EA framework complies with the FEAF and highlights the importance of security to all other components of the architecture.
The FDIC EA framework included five components. The first component, the Business Architecture, focused on FDIC's business needs. The next three components, the Data Architecture, Applications Architecture, and Technical Infrastructure Architectures, focused on the technological capabilities that support the business and information needs. The final component, the Security Architecture, focused on specific aspects of interest to the Corporation that span the enterprise and must be integral parts of all other architectures.

History

Historically, Federal agencies managed IT investments autonomously. Until the new millennium, there was little incentive for agencies to partner to effectively reuse IT investments, share IT knowledge, and explore joint solutions. Starting in the second half of 1990 a collective, government-wide effort, supported by the Federal CIO Council, utilizing the Federal Enterprise Architecture, was undertaken in an effort to yield significant improvements in the management and reuse of IT investments, while improving services to citizens, and facilitating business relationships internally and externally.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation first realized the value of Enterprise Architecture in 1997, when two business executives had to reconcile data that had come from different systems for a high-profile report to the banking industry. The FDIC's first EA blueprint was published in December 2002.
In 2004 the FDIC received a 2004 Enterprise Architecture Excellence Award from the Zachman Institute for Framework Advancement for its initiative to manage corporate data collaboratively.

EA framework topics

Historical FDIC EA framework

The FDIC EA framework from 2005 included five components.
The banking business model of 2008 had become more complex, giving rise to financial instruments such as collateralized debt obligations and structured investment vehicles to manage risk. These instruments created greater dependencies between the domestic and international financial markets. Financial institutions of that time should have, therefore, struck a balance between regulatory, legislative and banker concerns while appropriately managing risk.
Notionally, as cost savings are realized from a simplified IT environment and more efficient processes, the savings can be reinvested for IT improvements or accrue to the Corporation. This self-funding model is shown on the right.

2008 - 2013 technology roadmap

The technology roadmap outlined the major initiatives for standardizing the IT environment and increasing IT’s efficiency and effectiveness over five years. The initiatives were determined by various sources including business-side IT roadmaps, executive management planning meetings, client planning sessions, and client year-end reviews. The three major initiatives identified were enterprise architecture, security and privacy programs, and fiscal discipline.
The enterprise architecture initiative focused on simplifying the environment to ensure stable and economical performance for mission-critical applications. Simplifying the environment to decrease costs included activities, such as decreasing the number of application systems and migrating applications off the mainframe. Efficiencies were also hoped to be gained by expanding capabilities for manipulating large data sets and storing traditional paper-based files electronically. The SOA service center was intended to manage code for all development teams to discover and use, which was expected to save time and costs in application development, testing and deployment.
The organization planned to continue to enhance IT security and privacy programs to address new and evolving risks by improving controls over sensitive data. In some cases, technology, such as scanning outgoing e-mail for sensitive information and encrypting removable storage devices, could mitigate potential risks. The other cornerstone of mitigating risk was educating employees of emerging security and privacy issues.
Lastly, in order to continue sound fiscal discipline and responsibility, the organization planned to establish IT baselines and metrics, study steady-state costs, manage service level agreements, and more judiciously choose new development projects. These three areas – enterprise architecture, security and privacy programs, and fiscal discipline – are shown below with the estimated time frames.