I head up Parliament’s Enterprise Architecture team. You might be wondering ‘what is enterprise architecture?’ It’s a framework for understanding, defining and mapping how an organisation works, which then helps us make effective decisions about technology. And in Parliament this can be quite a challenge.
We’re a large, complex organisation, with over 12,000 users. This includes Members of Parliament, their staff in Westminster and in their constituency offices, Members of the House of Lords, and a few thousand people who work in a huge variety of roles from catering to security to communications, to help make Parliament happen. We’re often working with centuries of tradition. And we have a legacy of IT systems, some of which stretch back over many decades, and some of which are bespoke to Parliament, designed around those traditions and processes.
Embracing innovation and new technology is important for Parliament for many reasons. It can help us to be more efficient, flexible, and to provide better services and better meet the needs of our diverse users.
But we need to do this sensibly and effectively, with a long-term vision, and so we use an approach called capability-based planning, a well-established methodology (we align to the TOGAF standard by The Open Group).
The principle of this is that we focus on the capabilities we need as an organisation rather than on technology. We don’t just jump in and buy every ‘shiny new thing’ or automatically adopt every new innovation, rather these decisions are firmly based on enhancing our capabilities.
Our approach starts with:
- Knowing where we are – this means having a clear picture of the digital technologies that Parliament uses and how those technologies support the work of Parliament.
- Knowing where we need to get to – this means that we need to have a clear understanding of the plans of all the teams in Parliament, and how they see the way they work changing over the next three to five years.
Where we are
A model of Parliament
Our first step in ‘knowing where we are’ has been to create a model of Parliament. In creating this we’ve kept the following in mind:
- ‘All models are wrong, some are useful’ – this is my catchphrase! The point is that no model can ever be perfect. Mainly because models can’t include every detail, and to a lesser degree because change is constant. We have to be comfortable working with ambiguity and be able to recognise where a model has reached a point where it is useful and will allow us to have insightful conversations.
- A lot of value comes from the process of working with colleagues across Parliament to develop the model, perhaps more so than from the model itself. We’re aiming to develop a shared understanding of how Parliament works and how digital helps. The model itself is a byproduct of those conversations.
- One way of creating a model is to use the hierarchy of an organisation. But, while the organisational hierarchy of Parliament is important, it would result in a more complicated model of Parliament which didn’t identify capabilities shared between the House of Commons and the House of Lords. So we haven’t used the hierarchy as the basis for our model.
We started this process in earnest a couple of years ago by creating an initial version of a business capability model that we could go back to stakeholders with. If two years seems like a long time to you, well this type of work does initially take a long time in a complex organisation – we need a really solid foundation. We’re now onto our second version of that model which we continue to develop. For those who are interested in the detail, you might like to take a look at where we are with the model.
Mapping the landscape
We have also been mapping all the applications and technologies we use in Parliament – our digital landscape. Historically we’ve had lots of lists of these, normally in spreadsheets. But using an Enterprise Architecture tool gives us a better visual representation of these relationships. This is helping us to draw links between capabilities, applications and technologies.
Heatmaps
As we map the landscape we are carrying out a scoring process looking at things like technology risk, how critical a capability is to the core work of Parliament, and how well a capability is supported by digital tools. These scores are represented by heatmaps, using colour (green, orange or red) to give a quick visual representation which helps us make decisions on where we need to invest.
Where we need to get to
Plans and strategy
Alongside this, we have started work on understanding the strategies of individual teams across Parliament. We want to know how they expect their work — and ways of working — will change over the next three to five years. We aim to develop a shared understanding of the challenges they face.
Roadmaps
Understanding the strategies and ways of working of teams across Parliament is the starting point to developing roadmaps – plans which set out how we’ll meet our long-term goals. These also consider the lifecycle of the existing technology used by teams, and how emerging technologies might impact ways of working in future. For example, we’re doing a lot of work at the moment to understand how AI may change the way Parliament uses digital tools.
Next steps
We’re at the beginning of this journey. We need to grow the Enterprise Architecture team to support this work, so if you are interested in joining us keep an eye out on opportunities on our recruitment website. We’ll be hiring several roles very soon!