The Open Group , a supplier-independent technology alliance, and the United Nations Information and Communication Technology (ICT) agency, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), announced a collaboration to accelerate Innovation and transformation of public services to improve citizen outcomes and make the most effective use of ICT infrastructure.
The Open Group and ITU will work together to promote, guide and build digital government strategies and citizen-centric enterprise architecture (EA) capabilities globally.
Houlin Zhao, Secretary-General of ITU, said: “Digital public services have never had such a profound impact on the lives of citizens around the world. Through this partnership with The Open Group, the International Telecommunication Union will increase its efforts to help governments around the world accelerate deployment. And expand influential, citizen-centric digital solutions to support economic recovery and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).”
With the necessary guidance and information, resource-constrained countries will be better able to transform digital strategies into implementable large-scale systems. Therefore, the strategic alliance established between the ITU and The Open Group will fill the gap between digital investment and best-practice architectural approaches to achieve sustainable development goals.
Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) said: “The use of digital solutions and technologies for high-end digital public services is essential to support the response to and recovery from the COVID-19 epidemic. When launching digital public services on a large scale, the use of an architectural approach is the key. Enterprise architecture enables the government to meet the needs of departments with different requirements, while promoting the overall modernization of the organizational change process and government services. By working with The Open Group, we can create Tools and guidelines needed to put enterprise architecture methods into practice.”
The work to be undertaken as part of this cooperation will be performed by The Open Group Government Enterprise Architecture Working Group . The working group will develop processes that enable seamless information flow across different government ecosystems, making existing EA resources—including guidelines, frameworks, use cases, and methodologies—more accessible to everyone. By providing access to these resources, The Open Group and ITU will help governments build the capabilities needed to implement architectural methods on a large scale based on their specific national needs.
Steve Nunn, President and CEO of The Open Group said: “The Open Group is honored to work with the International Telecommunications Union to jointly advance the transformation of digital public services and ultimately provide a better experience for millions of citizens around the world. The countries that get the best results from digital investment are those that have established and adopted a digital government enterprise structure that meets the purpose. Based on this, we will work with the International Telecommunication Union to popularize the use of the necessary methods and tools to establish Future-oriented digital architecture and infrastructure, especially for resource-constrained countries.”