This presentation describes the experience of the Czech Republic in implementing Enterprise Architecture as a management method in managing the development of digital services, the achievements and gained Lessons Learned. The presentation focuses on:
•The brief history of eGovernment development in the Czech Republic showing the need for strong coordination based on architectural methods.
•The Role of The Chief Architect of eGovernment as a dedicated Authority for cross-sectoral eGovernment & IT coordination using Government EA.
•Strategic, legislative, and methodological anchoring of this authority, based mainly on the adaptation of the standard The Open Group TOGAF and ArchiMate.
•Conditions and tools for the application and enforcement of the coordinated development of eGovernment in the Czech Republic, in particular by approving agency concepts and projects by this authority.
•Management of the development of shared services and enforcing their reuse; with the support of the National Architectural Framework, the National ICT Strategy and the National Architecture Plan.
Access to the Czech Government EA has been guided at least since 2007 by the principle of “data circulating, not citizens”, which was reflected in the basic pillars of eGovernment of the Czech Republic. However, even massive investments in these building blocks in previous decades have not sufficiently led to the desired effects to reduce administrative burdens, to speed up the handling of client cases and to reduce the cost of implementing individual public administration services.
After 2014, it was necessary to proceed in two directions: on the one hand, to identify, enact and build the still missing central shared eGovernment services, in particular supporting Front-End of digital customer services, while forcing hundreds of authorities to move forward in their digital transformation and build their eGovernment solutions in a coherent and full use of these shared services.
At the same time, the Czech Government EA began to play its irreplaceable role, which is now materialized in solutions like interconnected service channels of agencies sharing client data in the so-called public administration data pool or Citizen Portal with significant and rapidly growing number of digital self-services.