Nigeria is a country that has a high consistency of business support, people support, adventium investors, incremental people support and also owners of the largest black population on plant earth. This oxymoron cuts across so many world dynamics of business, people and government. For a country of this magnitude with a daring capacity and potentials, it is only expected and mandatory that a seasoned national

 Technological Architectural Framework, for Interconnectivity between all

facet of governance, public life, industrial and investment life of Nigeria, that

supports it's growing developmental increases and futuristic forecasting in areas

that that takes care of Security, Planning & Statistics, Education, Employment,

Mediplan & Medicare, Local Govmnt-to-Local Govmnt Interoperability, State-to-State

Interoperability, Federal-to-State Interoperability and Federal-to-Local Govmnt

Interoperability and Others is "Created" 

A national enterprise architecture (NEA) is a rigorous description of a structure of

an enterprise, which comprises enterprise components (business entities, state and

federal entities), the externally visible properties of those components, and the

relationships (e.g. the behavior) between them. NEA describes the terminology, the

composition of enterprise components, and their relationships with the external

environment, and the guiding principles for the requirement (analysis), design, and

evolution of an enterprise. This description is comprehensive, including enterprise

goals, federal/state business process, roles, federal/state organizational

structures, organizational behaviors, federal/state business information, software

applications and computer systems.

Practitioners and Experts of NEA calls themselves enterprise architects & governance

automation consultants. A National enterprise architecture is presumptuously

developing an enterprise architecture for country caring the countries due diligence

and processes at hand. By producing a national enterprise architecture, it provides

and identifying opportunities to improve a national enterprise, in a manner that

more effectively and efficiently pursues a people oriented national business

framework.The term enterprise is used because it is generally applicable in many

circumstances, including: 

A) Public or private sector organizations

B) An entire business or corporation

C) A part of a larger enterprise (such as a business unit)

D) A conglomerate of several organizations, such as a joint venture or partnership

E) A multiply outsourced business operation

The term enterprise includes the whole complex, socio-technical system, including:

A) people

B) information

C) technology

D) business (e.g. operations)

Concurrently a National defining or redefining of her NEA boundary or scope of 

enterprise to be described is an important first step in creating an enterprise

architecture, in country like Nigeria and other State level architectural Enterprise

Applications used. Generally an a National Enterprise Architecture or means more

than the information systems employed by an organization, or a country frameworks. 

A National Enterprise architects use various business methods, analytical techniques

and conceptual tools to understand and document the structure and dynamics of an

enterprise or a country. In doing so, it produces lists, drawings, documents and

models, together called artifacts, or "Practical Bill of Technical Framework"

(PBoTF). These artifacts describe the logical country business functions, business

capabilities, business processes, people organization, information resources,

business systems, software applications, computing capabilities, information

exchange and communications infrastructure within the national enterprise

frameworks. It is therefore fundamental and cardinal circumspect that a country

collection of these artifacts, sufficiently complete to describe a country NEA

Integration as useful and practical way for a successful implementations of an

source of technology integration nationally, also  credible EA practitioners

describes a country has put in place this sought of preparation called  'enterprise'

level architectural description, or enterprise architecture, by practitioners, is

bound to impact the lives of it's people. 

Paradoxically, the UK National Computing Centre EA best practice guidance states: 

A) An EA is a comprehensive set of cohesive models that describe the structure and

functions of an enterprise and continues

B) All individual models in an EA or a NEA are arranged in a chronological manner

that provides an ever-increasing level of detail about the enterprise: its

objectives and goals; its processes and organization; its systems and data; the

technology used and any other relevant spheres of interest.

The Nigeria Government we know have initiated serval implementations of various

technological integration programs across her chain of departments and chains of

MDA's, but we are yet to have a singular "Grand Interoperability National Enterprise

Architecture" frameworks that mid all facet of national governance. From ministries

to ministries they all probably have different IT Integrations and Operating

Policies cum Framework guiding there existence. It is, expensive to in "Building a

National Framework", but is also more surely expensive not having a one singular

"National Enterprise Architecture" for a rapidly growing country like Nigeria and

Africa. Again and again, a tactical Technological Application such as ERP(Enterprise

Resource Planing Applications) that handles all facet of working smart ethics, and

is the most country churning the highest rate of age 18-40, needs to reappraise her

values for coordinations of feature citizens. 

Thus, a Framework like the popular TOGAF architectural framework, buttresses the

very essence of a national NEA, as an enterprise architecture framework with bundles

tools, techniques, artifact descriptions, process models, reference models and

guidance used by first world technology developers and solutions architects in the

production of a national enterprise-specific architectural solutions for an emerging

nations across the globe. Developed country enterprise architecture frameworks break

down the practice of enterprise architecture into a number of practice areas or

domains. Spewak in his book divided the NEA practice into two domains at 'level 2':

business modelling and current systems and technology, and three subordinate domains

at 'level 3': data architecture, applications architecture, and technology

architecture. The final level of Spewak's EAP is the implementation or methods

level, which deals with "how" to migrate the Enterprise to match newer applications

model.

Thus, it is no more news that the emergence of structured technological inclusion in

governance is a means, and way of life for developing countries like Nigeria, that

has no structure of framework, for its national fabric. Paradoxically, a well

structured Strategic Architecture model allows for a flexible division into up to

ten domains covering many aspects of a countries enterprise from its objectives and

goals through its projects and programmes to its software applications and

technology. This practice allows enterprise architects to describe a national NEA

enterprise from a number of important perspectives. This practice also encourages

the contributions of many individuals and allows the practice as a whole to make

good use of individual domain-specific expertise and knowledge. By taking this

approach, enterprise architects can ensure a holistic description is produced, for

developing country.

Interestingly, a commonly ascribed to or popular four domains and their component

parts look like this:

A) Business: 

Strategy maps, goals, corporate policies, Operating Model

Functional decompositions, business capabilities and organizational models expressed

as enterprise / line of business architecture. Business processes, Workflow and

Rules that articulate the assigned authorities, responsibilities and policies.

Organization cycles, periods and timing. Suppliers of hardware, software, and

services. 

B) Information:

Information architecture - a holistic view on the flow of information in an

enterprise. 1) Data Architecture- describes the way data will be processed, stored ,

data flows and used by the projects teams that will use it. 

2) Master Data Management, is the authoritative, reliable foundation for data used

across many applications and government business processes with the goal to provide

a single view of the truth no matter where the data is located

3) Metadata - data that describes your enterprise data elements, 

4) Business Intelligence Analytics & Reporting BI (Business Intelligence) is a broad

category of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and

providing access to data to help the organization users make better business

decisions. These include the activities of decision support systems, query and

reporting, dashboards, scorecards, statistical analysis, forecasting, and data

mining. It also includes Reporting Data Stores (Operational Data Store (ODS),

Datamart and DataWarehouses) 

5) Data Quality helps identify, analyze, improve, and measure the data quality and

data integrity issues and improvement efforts

6) Data models: conceptual expressed as enterprise information architectures,

logical, and physical

7) Data Life Cycle Management Processes to govern how to create, classify, update,

use, distribute, and archive, and obsolete data and information

C) Layers of a National of or a Federal Enterprise Architecture 

1) Applications: 

Application software inventories and diagrams, expressed as conceptual / functional

or system enterprise / line of business architectures

Interfaces between applications - that is: events, messages

2) Technology:

Inter-application mediating software or 'middleware'.

Application execution environments and operating frameworks including applications

server environments and operating systems, authentication and authorisation

environments, security systems and operating and monitoring systems.

Hardware, platforms, and hosting: servers, datacentres and computer rooms

Local and wide area networks, Internet connectivity diagrams

Intranet, Extranet, Internet, eCommerce, EDI links with parties within and outside

of the organization

D) Operating System

Infrastructure software: Application servers, DBMS

Programming Languages, etc. expressed as enterprise / line of business technology

architecture.

The NEA it self as important as it is, helps to describe a workable working

framework architecture of an enterprise that aims primarily to improve effectiveness

or efficiency of a country business itself. This includes innovations in the

structure of organization, the centralization or federation of business processes,

the quality and timeliness of business information, or ensuring that money spent on

information technology (IT) can be justified, centrally or nationally through a pool

of tentative integrators. One method of using this information to improve the

functioning of a business, as described in the TOGAF architectural framework,

involves developing an "architectural vision", we Nigeria and many African countries

currently lack, a simple description of their business that represents a "target" or

"future state" goal, or national goal. Once this vision is well understood, a set of

intermediate steps are created that illustrate the process of changing from the

present situation to the target. These intermediate steps are called "transitional

architectures" by TOGAF. 

Documenting and documentations, of a national enterprises architecture framework is

done in countries like the U.S. Federal Government, in the context of her Capital

Planning and Investment Control (CPIC) process. They have organizations, like the  

Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) reference models, that serves as a framework

to guide Federal agencies and states in the development of their architecture.

NEA till date, stands out as an Enterprise architecture that should be a key

component of country information technology governance process. In Dubai it is

evidence in their Customs and AGL Energy who have implemented a formal enterprise

architecture process as part of their IT management strategy. While this may imply

that enterprise architecture is closely tied to IT, this should be viewed in the

broader context of business optimization in that it addresses business architecture,

performance management and process architecture as well as more technical subjects.

Depending on the organization, or country enterprise architecture teams may also be

responsible for some aspects of performance engineering, IT portfolio management and

metadata management. Recently, protagonists like Gartner and Forrester have stressed

the important relationship of Enterprise Architecture with emerging holistic design

practices such as Design Thinking and User Experience Design, for countries.

A General Enterprise Architecture Framework Coverage

a) Business Technology Management

b) Design Thinking, c) Enterprise Architect

e) Enterprise Architecture Assessment Framework

f) Enterprise Architecture framework

g) Enterprise Architecture Planning, 

h) Enterprise engineering, 

I) Enterprise Life Cycle, 

j) Enterprise Unified Process

In all these, expressed knowledge available to be mined and implemented into the

national fabric of nations like "Nigeria" they rather debase the sane importance of

owning a national enterprise architecture, that streamlines all strata of governance

and outlined conformity to the public sector. The billions and counter billions that

are been, spent either in organizing a national population count, an electoral

election, or a national project spread would have spent in developing a life time

framework for easy Integrations, and data mining intelligence, in Nigeria.

AF Dowell Mirin