Introduction to enterprise architecture

Abstract

In current business practice, an integrated approach to business and IT is indispensable. As a real-life example, take the Dutch government, who undertook a massive redesign of the entire chain of organisations involved in the social security system. Within this context, the collection of employees’ social security premiums was transferred from the central social security organisation to the tax administration. This sounds logical, since collecting taxes is superficially very similar to collecting social security premiums. However, this seemingly simple change entailed a major redesign of organisational structures, business processes, IT applications, and technical infrastructure. Enormous flows of data need to be redirected within and among the different organisations: more than 600,000 payroll tax returns are filed each month, a large proportion of which arrive within a peak period of a couple of days. Controlling such changes cannot be done by just ‘winging it’. But how can we get to grips with this complex, multi-faceted world?