Thoughts on Solving the Federal Debt Issue

There is a straightforward, though culturally and politically difficult, way to reduce the US Federal debt.  It is through the proper application of process Enterprise Architecture as applied to the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (and embodied in DoDAF 2.0).  This is what the Clinger Cohn Act envisioned; but what hasn't panned out, so far.

Using Enterprise Architecture would spotlight where organization's have gone beyond their charter; sometimes well beyond, bureaucrat's that are spending on private agenda's, and many types of waste making the departments costly, ineffective or both.

There are two keys to effective use of Enterprise Architecture in this setting.  The first is in integrating Enterprise Architecture into the business processes of the organizations such that they have the power to more optimize the organizations processes and systems to meet their mission and/or charter.  Technically, this is relatively straightforward, and should be simple, except for the second key.  That key is to change the department, agency, or bureau's culture and the power of management to enable them to spend on private agendas, while having it seem to be part of the charter.  This is the hard part because of the threat to the power of the mid-level managers.

A second problem is getting the Enterprise Architecture with its associated Asset and Enterprise Architecture Repository set up and running.  More on this in a future post, "Using Enterprise Architecture to Reduce the Federal Debt".