Service-oriented architecture (SOA) can demolish the status quo. Decades of siloed system design have left most government organizations with antique, rickety systems that don't play well with others. By putting new SOA wrappers on old proprietary applications, modular interfaces can be built, shared, linked, reused and recombined as needed, to create an infinitely interoperable IT utopia.
No need to rip and replace old systems; instead, they can be refurbished and extended internally and even externally via the Web. This is where SOA shows promise well beyond rejuvenating legacy enterprise systems, says Bill St. Arnaud, senior director of advanced networks at Ottawa-based CANARIE Inc.
"SOA is now seen as a key component in a broad range of fields beyond enterprise IT: chemistry, biology, everything," he says. "Whether it's a traditional payroll application or radio telescope research, it makes sharing, mapping and transferring data, and creating new mash-ups, simple."
SOA can also have a profound impact on business processes. Many complex processes that require human back-and-forth can be automated as SOA-based Web services, which in turn can invoke other Web services, and then others, throughout the service chain. "If GM orders a phone line from Bell Canada [for example], it has to be validated, checked, tested, delivered and invoiced by many people," says St. Arnaud. Instead, all the specialized steps in the transactions can be itemized, agreed in a contract, and automated as interlinking Web services between both companies.
Take-up of SOA is stronger in more competitive markets, he says. In the U.S., about 70 per cent of companies say they plan to invest in it over the next two years, according to IDC Canada research. In sluggish Canada, the figure is 40 per cent, with the public sector lagging still further behind the private sector.
Building this SOA utopia won't be easy. There are many impediments, ranging from making the business case to fix systems that aren't entirely broken to governance and liability issues to standards wars, notes St. Arnaud. Nevertheless, SOA is slowly but surely creeping into many areas of Canadian government.
The way SOA works
In 2005, the Alberta Ministry of Justice deployed a SOA-based enhancement to its maintenance enforcement program (MEP), driven by new legislation enacted the year before. Dubbed "Deadbeat Dad" legislation, the Ministry was concerned with finding ways to track and enforce adherence to court orders by withholding access to government services, explains Stuart Charlton, enterprise architect at BEA Systems Inc. in Toronto. "So if someone doesn't pay child support, they might suspend their driver's licence."
As in other provinces, Alberta's ministries and government departments are far from integrated. Tracking thousands of these MEP cases over time, sometimes more than 10 years, and building in the triggers for enforcement actions based on patterns of misbehaviour was a major system undertaking within the Justice Ministry. But developing processes to ensure actions are executed by a multitude of external ministries would have been a monumental inter-departmental undertaking.
Instead of labour-intensive back-and-forth between multiple departments - phoning, faxing, exchanging forms and information - the Ministry of Justice used Web services to automate the workflow. "The new approach is to agree on a shared contract that meets the needs of the consumers and producers of services and information," says Charlton. "The biggest challenges in SOA are coming to those contractual agreements between parties, and the processes and change management around that."
But once these issues are settled, the technology itself is relatively straightforward. A producer posts the services it has made available for common use - for example, an application that identifies an Albertan as an MEP case - through an electronic interface based on SOA standards, which can be used by any authorized consumer using the same Web-based technology. All the various conditions for an exchange between departments, including exceptions that require human judgement, are agreed and scripted in advance.
Continued: Treasury Board policies and standards
Related content:
SOA: A better ballgame with BTEP
SOA: It's architecture, not technology
SOA: Understanding the architecture
Where to start SOA: Identifying the big business driver
SOA at work: Ontario's common components
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