Forrester: - Making Leaders Successful Every Day

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is the hottest three-letter acronym in government IT circles. Forrester's survey data shows that government agencies' adoption of SOA is strong and getting stronger. Why? SOA directly addresses government agencies' most pressing goals: integration of program functionality and information across organizational boundaries in a heterogeneous technology environment. And using the approach of wrapping legacy systems in SOA environments means agencies can transform their processes without funding huge, risky rip-and-replace projects for legacy applications. Agency chief information officers (CIOs) must step up to the plate and provide strategic leadership to ensure that their agencies maximize SOA's potential, by making best practices and design guidance available for all initiatives that can benefit from this approach to business and technology.