Introduction

Our client is a small division of a large Federal Finance Agency that is in charge of administering and enforcing economic and trade sanctions determined by US foreign policy and national security goals.

Background

The agency’s office uses a number of software application systems to track and manage cases, applications, transactions, and other financial documents. Recently, the division has experienced increased workload due to changes in US foreign policy as well as high staff turnover. The change in US foreign policy and high staff turnover has led to a substantial backlog of unprocessed paperwork. 

In addition, the organization’s business units are extremely siloed; each section of the organization has its own separate software application and database which creates redundant data in the system. The current systems used at this office are a mixture of in-house solutions and legacy systems developed by other contractors years ago. The organization wants to consolidate its systems to increase collaboration, streamline operations, and improve efficiency. 

Problem statement

An enterprise architecture plan is an overall structural strategy for all IT systems in an organization. This plan combines the business needs of key stakeholders to help an organization achieve its future goals. The officials of this agency have outlined the need for an overall structural strategy for all IT systems within their organization. Deloitte has been hired to assist with the analysis of the current systems and develop an implementation plan for a new, shared enterprise architecture solution spanning across all divisions of the organization.

Key considerations:

• There are seven different internal systems being used by the organization. Each system uses the same development environment and database platform.
• Most of the business units consist of lawyers and ex-military officers, who are experts in their field but not necessarily technology-oriented.
• Many of the business units still work with hard-copies of cases and licenses that they need to process and hand-deliver to other business units for review.
• High employee turnover has left remaining employees stretched very thin, including the IT department, whose time is mostly consumed providing maintenance support to employees using each of the systems.
• Additional goals of the project include adapting to foreign languages, standardizing internal reporting and decreasing throughput time for form processing.