Motivation: The efficiency and value generation of any organization depends on effective collaboration and utilization of shared resources.

The lack of it leads to redundancies, overrun costs, management and operational challenges. The larger the organization, the more this effect is pronounced. In terms of government implementation, taking a whole of government approach, that includes Ministries, Agencies, Municipalities etc. and their departments leads to the best results. EA is a management tool that makes it easier for such organizations to share their resources and services so that they can focus on accomplishing their core objectives in an efficient and effective manner.

Figure 1 an Early Glimpse of NEA

What is NEA ? NEA, The National Enterprise Architecture, is an instance of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabias Enterprise Architecture. The approach adopted for NEA focuses on improving effectiveness, efficiency and delivering value by leveraging EA Practices, blue prints, and Maturity Models etc. and hence optimizes the operations of the entire government. Its taxonomical components the reference models will provide a vocabulary for categorizing the architecture elements of the government. These reference models are designed to facilitate cross-agency analysis and the identification of duplicative investments, gaps, and opportunities for collaboration within and across agencies.

What has the team achieved so far: The NEA team has conducted a comprehensive study of the existing EA methodologies used across government and commercial enterprises. Some of the countries we looked at included Singapore, USA, Korea, Australia and the United Kingdom. These countries were selected for their leadership role the in development and use of EA in their governments and the knowledge the team gleamed from studying them is currently being used in developing the taxonomical components of NEA. The team plans to publish the data by the end of the 2013 for public consultation. The team as of now has developed Vision-Mission-Objectives, NEA Approach (the method), NEA Principles, Technical and Data Reference Models to name a few. Site Visits: The site visits to Singapore and Korea gave the team a unique look into the way EA is practiced by some of the leading adopters of EA in government. This experience was beyond what could be gleaned by going through documents published by these governments. Hearing about the challenges faced by these countries and some of the best practices has helped the team avoid some of the issues that these countries faced in the adoption of EA. The NEA website will be continuously updated to include the deliverables that are being created by the team, We invite the members of Yesser to review them and provide their feedback. We will continue to keep you, our esteemed colleagues, informed.