Big Ideas

Leaders of these organizations now face a moment of reckoning and—in the chaos of that moment—an opportunity to craft the modern, technologically nimble institutions resilient enough to continue delivering the crucial services upon which their publics so desperately depend. They must use technology to drive out cost, with the core thesis being that to emerge stronger, they must become more modern organizations that use technology to reduce cost and improve services, rather than viewing technology as an ever-expanding cost center. Those that seize the opportunity may survive. Those who let it slip away will fail.

We’ve covered the Principles of Ecosystem-Oriented Architecture (EOA) and Mapping your Cloud Ecosystem in previous articles. We’ll now make the concepts discussed in those previous articles more real in context of Public Sector organizations. To do so, let’s spend some time speaking less about technology and begin describing workloads that incorporate functions and scenarios upon which a typical agency might rely on its cloud ecosystem to perform.

"Ecosystem Map" is both one of the 25 dimensions of the AI Strategy Framework and a foundational concept in ecosystem-oriented architecture (EOA), which makes this article doubly important reading for strategic thinkers on both fronts. The “map” metaphor is instructive here. It is used to distinguish an ecosystem map from the various forms of architectural diagrams, nearly all of which tend to include more technical minutiae than a typical ecosystem map. Whereas an architectural diagram provides specific parameters for specific technical solutions, an ecosystem map presents a higher-level, more visionary view of an organization’s cloud ecosystem. This analogy is fundamental to understanding and practicing EOA.

We were working with eight to ten years between major disruptions from the dawn of the consumer internet. But these “wave periods”, that is, the time between the crest of two waves, have shortened to three to five years since the rise of the public cloud. It makes sense: As the evolution of computing technology and capacity picks up steam, it similarly accelerates. Innovation begets innovation. Generative AI was only made possible by the incredible computing power and connectivity available in the cloud. Now, AI is further accelerating this pace of change, shortening the time we have available before new waves crash upon the shore. The grace period for organizations to get their act together and position themselves for the next wave is growing much shorter; the margin for error is much narrower.

There’s an incredibly important transition in the broad information technology space that is often lost in the furor and excitement over generative AI. Simply “wanting AI” doesn’t cut it. So, the AI Strategy Framework begins with the Strategy and Vision pillar that sets forth five dimensions beginning with vision, extending to creating the actionable roadmap and architecture necessary to actualize that vision, and finally establishing the programmatic elements necessary to drive that vision to fruition. These dimensions help organizations formulate and take action on their big ideas.