A Framework for Alignment of Data and Processes Architectures Applied in a Government Institution

Abstract

The alignment of business processes and information technologies (IT) is among the top concerns of IT management surveys, because it has a direct impact on the organization’s agility and flexibility to change in response to business needs. Previous works have proposed frameworks and methodologies for alignment management; however, they suppose manual tasks such as applying surveys or comparing artifacts. Enterprise architecture is a valuable instrument to assess and achieve such alignment. In that direction, we introduce a framework to support the alignment of business architecture (BA) and information architecture (IA) via the comparison of their constituent components applying ontology matching techniques. Our key objectives are: (1) to support the process of evaluating alignment BA–IA and (2) to detect potential alignments and misalignments between BA and IA. We apply this approach in the Colombian Institute for the Evaluation of Education through the evaluation of misalignment heuristics.