In Search Of Practical Ways To Share IT Services In Government

By on October 28, 2011 at 8:17 AM
The MITRE Corporation, in partnership with the Federal Service-Oriented Architecture Community of Practice (SOA CoP), recently hosted the SOA for e-Government Conference: Practical Models Across the Federal Government.

The event drew more than 250 practitioners from industry and government to discuss examples of how government is effectively adopting SOA technologies to enhance flexibility, share data and operational capabilities, and reduce costs.

The day-long conference, held on October 11 at MITRE‘s McLean, Va., campus, was the 12th in an ongoing series launched by MITRE and the Federal SOA CoP in 2006. Co-sponsored by both, the conferences aim to enable government and associated organizations achieve the benefits of SOA through collaboration, demonstration, and community efforts.

The theme of the conference was composable services, or shared services that are designed and architected to work together.

Medical records, geospatial services, biometric identification, and military service records are a few of the areas where composable services are being used or are underway.

Here is a slide show of the key topics. Among some of the key observations shared at the conference:

Julie DelVecchio Savage, chief engineer in MITRE’s National Security Engineering Center, delivered the keynote address about a MITRE research program working on ways to bring adaptive, responsive command and control systems to the field.

Melvin Greer, senior fellow and chief strategist, cloud computing, Lockheed Martin, presented a “Practical Guide to Cloud Computing” developed by the Cloud Standards Customer Council, the first customer-led consortium to shape the open standards of cloud computing, of which MITRE is a member.

The event also included a panel discussion and demonstration of model-driven SOA. Eight service providers presented their products and technologies in the exhibitor space.

“The SOA conferences provide best practices and valuable, practical advice to implement service-based approaches in federal agencies,” said Gabe Galvan, who leads Enterprise Business Transformation in MITRE’s Center for Connected Government.

“Participants from both government and the private sector exchange ideas and information to help them succeed in their programs by embracing a service-based approach to critical application development and delivering mission benefit. This knowledge helps save time, reduces complexity and risk, and, ultimately, saves money.”

“The conferences keep getting better and the participant response is extremely positive,” added Dave Mayo, President of Everware-CBDI and Co-Chair of the Federal SOA COP. “Everyone comes away with something concrete that they can apply to further their own SOA initiatives.”

Held every six months, the SOA for e-Government conferences are free and open to government personnel, contractors, and service providers. To learn more about the series, the date of the next conference, or to view conference presentations, visit http://www.mitre.org/work/info_tech/soa/ or http://semanticommunity.info/Federal_SOA/.

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