SAF/CIO A6 Enterprise Architecture Division (A6SA) is seeking a way to enable an overarching enterprise view of USAF architectures, which will ultimately enable the USAF to analyze architecture data and architecture data analytics. Additionally, an enterprise architecture (EA) repository would provide USAF leaders with trusted information and a strategic advantage, ultimately empowering decision-makers to optimize planning and resourcing for the Air Force to effectively support readiness and warfighting goals.

The sprint brought together 22 participants, including industry partners from Avolution, Inc.; Braxton Technologies, LLC; AT&T; Microsoft; OE Data; SNIA; Planview; PatchPlus Consulting; and Tableau.

The group was presented with several use cases, and then teams established problem statements specific to the use cases and the personas they developed within them. The problem statements issued from the following themes:

• Capabilities Assessment – There is currently no means to identify, assess and determine impacts of any change across the enterprise.
• Cybersecurity – Cybersecurity requirements and information are not integrated with the architecture information.
• Positioning, Navigation, & Timing (PNT) – Siloed efforts, organizations and solutions inhibit users, operators and warfighters from precisely executing PNT.
• Application Rationalization – There is an inability to identify applications and systems that are unable to meet federal mandates and are redundant, broken and obsolete.

Stakeholders recognized that recommendations from this sprint should seek to meet a few specific needs regarding EA, rather than trying to meet every possible need. Participants, therefore, developed three primary themes:

1. Business Process Automation (BPA) – The automation of human tasks such as workflows, auto populating data, and so forth to improve delivery and reliability of information and substantially reduces costs associated with man hours.
2. Data Mining – Interactive analysis, as in mining data from a repository, combined with comprehensive modeling, to reveal dependencies between applications and systems in a specific context. Decision makers can then see impacts and choose the best options for meeting their organization’s objectives.
3. Access/Authority Over Data – Use EA to provide the necessary structure to ensure the data being added to the repository is relevant to those who are accessing it. BPA will work to ensure relevant, authoritative data and standards are integrated across the service and DoD, saving countless man-hours.