ticAPP – Digital Transformation in the Portuguese Government

Francisco Miguel de Lemos Santos

, Andr

e Vasconcelos

1,2

, Jos

e Tribolet

and Pedro Viana

INESC-ID, Instituto Superior T

ecnico, Lisboa, Portugal

AMA - Ag

encia para a Modernizac¸

ao Administrativa IP, Lisboa, Portugal

Keywords: Enterprise Architecture, Public Administration, Digital Transformation, Center of Excellence, ticAPP,

TOGAF.

Abstract:

IT is fundamental to digital transformation. Digital transformation focuses on driving the organization to a

new level, exposing and extending its processes beyond the organization. Enterprise Architecture provides the

tools and methodologies to manage the complexity of Digital Transformation. A Digital Center of Excellence,

named ticAPP, is going to be assigned to support the Public Administration’s Digital Transformation process.

This paper focuses on building the future state Business Architecture of ticAPP, and how to enable its con-

tinuous evolution. We need to ensure the future state of ticAPP is not conﬁned by the technology used and

that it takes into account both Government’s and ticAPP’s strategic goals. To accomplish that, we follow a

Top-Down Design approach development of ticAPP’s Business architecture, based on TOGAF ADM method-

ology. In the ﬁnal steps, we will evaluate ticAPP’s maturity level using the Architecture Capability Maturity

Model framework that is included in TOGAF and calculate its maturity rating.

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Context

The Portuguese ICT Strategy (CTIC, 2017) acknowl-

edges that, IT in the Public Sector has become a

bigger challenge than just going paper free and pro-

cess automation. It must simplify the way citizens

and businesses interact with the Public Administra-

tion. New concepts introduced in the IT environment,

such as Data Science and Artiﬁcial Intelligence, en-

able a deep transformation process within the Pub-

lic Administration. One of the key transformations

is designing services, focused around citizens and

businesses (CTIC, 2017). On the one hand, citi-

zens expect public services to be simpler, easy to

use and to access, through mobile devices. Informa-

tion about a subject should be presented at one lo-

cation, to avoid wasted time navigating through nu-

merous portals, which are still in place in the Por-

tuguese Administration. It would also be desirable to

submit information once, and it being updated across

the necessary information systems (CTIC, 2017). On

the other hand, the Public Administration has a ver-

tical structure, that creates information silos. To pre-

vent that situation, the Portuguese ICT Strategy pro-

motes the cooperation across the Public Adminis-

tration, in order to develop cross-functional services

efﬁciently. A central challenge of this strategy is

the need to account for the reinforcement and shar-

ing of digital skills. Sharing between public bod-

ies avoids redundant platforms and unnecessary por-

tals, cutting back on costs and wasted resources.

One measure of this strategy and stated in the Coun-

cil of Ministers document, a Digital Center of Excel-

lence (Portuguese Council of Ministers, 2018), named

ticAPP will be created.It will operate under the su-

pervision of AMA I.P (Ag

encia para a Modernizac¸

da Administrac¸

ao P

ublica). It supports public enti-

ties in their digital transformation process, by retain-

ing knowledge and skills within the public adminis-

tration. It supports the solutions design for the pub-

lic services, publishing guidelines and best practices

documents on how to develop web applications for the

government. This increases coherence across public

administration web portals. It will revise the informa-

tion systems architecture currently in place, contribut-

ing to clearly deﬁned and accurate external contracts

and increased efﬁciency and efﬁcacy.

1.2 Problem Deﬁnition

Literature about other Digital Centers of Excellence,

show that they share similar strategic goals and per-

612

Santos, F., Vasconcelos, A., Tribolet, J. and Viana, P.

ticAPP – Digital Transformation in the Portuguese Government.

DOI: 10.5220/0007728606120619

In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2019), pages 612-619

ISBN: 978-989-758-372-8

form the same activities. Our problem is how to de-

sign ticAPP business architecture, and how it can act

as a reference architecture for other Centers of Ex-

cellence in Public Administrations. Our goal is to

to develop an artifact for a consistent approach on

how to implement a Digital Center of Excellence.

It must be a ﬂexible architecture to allow the inte-

gration of new services and must identify the neces-

sary business elements: organization structure, pro-

cesses, strategies, products, policies, initiatives, and

stakeholders. Enterprise Architecture can help us to

understand the current scenario of an organization,

through as-is views, and what its target state should

be, through to-be views. Typically, when aiming for

a to-be model of the organization, a top-bottom ap-

proach is used. This ensures the future state of the or-

ganization is not conﬁned by the technology used and

that the solution can be traced back to the strategic

drivers placed. TOGAF framework focuses on strate-

gic alignment, between Business and IT, which makes

the Top-Down Design a suitable approach. Focusing

on the layers most important to the problem, Busi-

ness and Information Systems, we asked the follow-

ing questions:

1.3 Document Structure

This paper comprehends 4 parts: the Introduction, al-

ready covered, where we identiﬁed the problems that

motivated the development of this paper, and how En-

terprise Architecture can be used to solve them. In

State of the Art, we describe the relationship between

Enterprise Architecture and Digital Transformation.

We introduce three cases of Digital Centers, imple-

mented in different Public Administrations: UK, Italy

and Singapore and analyze the differences and simi-

larities between them. We also provide an overview of

the frameworks and languages associated to the prac-

tice of Enterprise Architecture; In the Proposal sec-

tion, we develop a ﬁrst draft of TicAPP’s architecture,

focusing on its governance structure. In the Evalua-

tion section we deﬁne how we plan to evaluate ticAPP

architecture. We consider its external quality, i.e its

ﬁtness for use, which is perceived by the stakeholders

and internal quality as the quality of the model itself.

2 STATE OF THE ART

2.1 Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise Architecture (EA) provides a coherent set

of principles, methods and models used in the de-

sign and realization of an enterprise’s organizational

structure, business processes, Information Systems

(IS) and infrastructure (Lankhorst, 2005). An effec-

tive EA contributes to a better alignment between the

two domains it concerns: Business and IT (Alonso,

2010). This results in more integrated services that

feel responsive to the citizen. It helps to deﬁne bet-

ter business requirements that promote an efﬁcient

and effective IT infrastructure. It facilitates informa-

tion sharing and implementation of best practices and

guidelines across the organization. Within the busi-

ness domain, the business architecture manages the

design, development, implementation and improve-

ment of the company business, adding value to busi-

nesses. The absence of deﬁned standards, running re-

dundant resources to support the business, which can

result in inconsistent data, makes it difﬁcult for a com-

pany to answer business and economic changes. In

the public administration, we also have to account for

political drives. Enterprise Architecture, provides the

tools and methodologies needed to address the com-

plexity of digital transformation working around new

and arising issues systematically (McSweeney, 2016).

In the public sector, Enterprise Architecture aims for

better resource sharing and enable efﬁcient informa-

tion exchange across departments. It improves ser-

vice delivery, enhancing back ofﬁce processes, adopt-

ing shared platforms. Shared platforms are open plat-

forms that improve sharing of resources and coordi-

nation across departments when delivering citizens, a

service. It must be incrementally extensible, as new

partners gradually desire to join. They derive from

clear political objectives, which leads to the conclu-

sion that, in order to be successful, it is important

for an Enterprise Architecture program to be strongly

backed by the Government. Considering a real case

of Enterprise Architecture, the UK xGEA was cross-

Government Enterprise Architecture. It allowed the

integration between existing architectures and future

ones across the government. The outcome was a

blueprint for the government to have business and IT

aligned.

2.2 Center of Excellence

A Center of Excellence is, usually, a small team that

supports an organization. They are built around a

speciﬁc knowledge area, relevant for the organization

and of particular importance for the business (e.g Big

Data, Business Process Management, Software De-

velopment). Their main objectives are to:

• Deﬁne best practices to be used across the organi-

zation

• Deﬁne standards and promote the use of shared

applications, processes, data and business func-

ticAPP – Digital Transformation in the Portuguese Government

613

tions to increase coherence in the organization

• Identify and reduce points of duplication of effort

across the organization

• Training and education

Implementing a Center of Excellence in an organiza-

tion results in improved consistency and better IT and

business alignment (Accenture, 2013). In the follow-

ing section, we present three examples of Digital Cen-

ters of Excellence. They were chosen due to their im-

pact on transforming their governments, by enhancing

the operation of the public administration services.

2.2.1 UK Government Digital Service (GDS)

The GDS aimed to improve citizens’ relationship

with the government by delivering better services

and helped the government to become more efﬁcient

and effective, thus reducing the costs incurred by IT

(GOV.UK, 2018a). On the one hand to improve cit-

izen interaction, GDS created a single point of ac-

cess to the government services to facilitate access

to information, the GOV.UK. On the other hand , it

was necessary to build digital skills and capability

across the Public Administration. The GDS Academy

was created to equip the government with more spe-

cialized people and ready to handle the problems of

the digital future. One driver of this transformation

was Digital Identity, which allows people to prove

their identity online. Working with several partners

across government, they developed the GOV.UK Ver-

ify Platform. Verify is used to protect public ser-

vices against identity fraud and other malicious ac-

tivity. The GOV.UK Verify turned the UK into ref-

erence in digital identity. Other European countries,

like Italy, have incorporated similar systems, sharing

the same guidelines, standards and best practices of

the underlying UK version. The UK also aims to

leverage public data, to enable better data-based de-

cision making. They built and expanded data science

and analytic capabilities across government, and im-

proved data sharing across organizational boundaries.

Government legacy systems made it hard to share in-

formation. There was too much duplication, overlap

and contradiction in the government. They addressed

this issue through the development of a shared Plat-

form as a Service (GOV.UK.PaaS) for government

services. The GDS houses approximately 850 peo-

ple (GOV.UK, 2018a). It is part of the Cabinet Of-

ﬁce and it is governed by the Ministerial Group on

Government Digital Technology (GOV.UK, 2018b).

Their main business activities are simplifying public

services, increase collaboration between departments,

by creating shared platforms based on open standards

and apply Data Science for better decision-making.

2.2.2 Italy Team Digitale

The Digital Transformation Team (Team Digitale)

was organized to create a new, more effective, Italian

Public Administration built on fundamental blocks,

where the services for businesses and citizens and the

Public Administration itself are developed (TeamDig-

itale, 2018). The team is composed of 29 experts with

management and technological skills, namely soft-

ware development, Cybersecurity, UX and Data Sci-

ence. Their strategy was devised in three fronts, each

with its role on Digital Transformation of the Govern-

ment: At a national level, to deﬁne the rules, standards

and implement enabling platforms, which are solu-

tions that offer fundamental, crosswise and reusable

functionality in individual projects (TeamDigitale,

2018). These platforms make the methods of delivery

uniform, which enables consistency across the Pub-

lic Administration The Central and Local administra-

tions developed services that best suited their needs

by following the guidelines previously established.

This was accomplished through the use of in-house or

external providers, and collaborating with the private

sector, to explore new solutions that easily integrate

with the national platforms. These actions aimed to

reduce the complexity of the services provided to citi-

zens and businesses, by having secure, scalable and

reliable architectures, supported by clearly deﬁned

APIs. It also supports data driven decision making,

by introducing recent data analysis methods such as

Big Data and Machine Learning As part of their strat-

egy, Team Digitale re-launched 3 existing platforms:

A central payment platform for all administrations

(PagoPA), a digital identity service to facilitate ac-

cess to digital public services (SPID) and a single

national database for Italian Residents(ANPR). Then,

they built new ones on top, such as Developers and

Designers Italia, two open platforms for public ser-

vices’ front and back-end development. The Data &

Analytics Framework, used for sharing and analyzing

public data, to avoid information silos between ad-

ministrations. The API Ecosystem is an API Manage-

ment system, comprising standards and guidelines to

expose and share functionality across the Public Ad-

ministration through APIs. Operation and technolog-

ical principles were deﬁned by Team Digitale, with

Security and Privacy as the most important principles

that cannot be compromised. Every service and pol-

icy should be as simple as possible, to facilitate usage

by the citizens. It should also prioritize a mobile ap-

proach when developing services, and explore exist-

ing open source technologies. Existing assets should

be enhanced, instead of rebuilding what is already in

place. The architectures follow modern design enco-

ICEIS 2019 - 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

614

mpassing reliability, ﬂexibility, security and service-

oriented approaches. Rely on data to solve complex

problems supported by Machine Learning and Artiﬁ-

cial Intelligence and perform analysis to produce use-

ful information and share it publicly, along with other

documents illustrating new developments and bene-

ﬁts associated. The team has a long-term vision for

the Italian administration’s transformation, with con-

tinuous learning and improvement and adding, how-

ever it will also identify intermediate milestones to

add value to the citizen more quickly. It is a cross-

organizational effort where each administration im-

plements its digital transformation such as rationalize

data centers, share data with other organisms, adopt

cloud solutions, the development of a single digital

identity system and include a payment platform in

the services delivered, according to will ﬁnd in the

strategy deﬁned and several guidelines. The guide-

lines are meant to create a fundamental set of archi-

tectural and design principles, rules of usability and

interoperability as a basis for the operational strategy.

The drivers behind these initiatives meant to reduce

expenditure of administrations, improve the quality

of services offered to citizens and businesses and the

tools made available to public administrations. Enter-

prise Architecture is present in Team Digitale strat-

egy. They have a comprehensive description of the

organizational structure, where they identify their IT

areas and their main business arctivities, such as sim-

plify interaction with the Public Administration, en-

hance user experience, promote an architecture based

on interoperability between public services.

2.2.3 Singapore CentEx for ICT

The Singapore Strategy commits to deliver intuitive

digital services that meet citizens’ needs, complete

government transactions in a paperless and presence

less way using any device (mobile, computer) at

any time (SmartNationSG, 2018). They internalized

knowledge and human resources with the specialized

technical skills in an in-house pool of resources, able

to take on innovative projects across the Government.

CentEx embraced areas of expertise, like IoT, Data

Science Application Design, Development and De-

ployment. In order to reduce costs and deliver IT

projects on time, the Singapore Government aims to

streamline platforms where possible and customize

where it is needed, meaning that they wish to en-

hance interoperability between systems and agencies.

They implemented the SGTS (Singapore Government

Technology Stack), a collection of digital services to

build their digital applications and reduce the time re-

quired to deploy new solutions. This allowed agen-

cies to focus on meeting citizens needs and deliver a

seamless, consistent and connected experience across

all government agencies. It adopted a “Once Only”

policy by providing the relevant data and requests

one time and sharing them with right public agencies

to address the situation. This means citizens must

feel conﬁdent and assured their data is secured by

the government. The MyInfo Initiative part of The

National Digital Identity, is a “once only” service,

meaning citizens ﬁlled their personal details automat-

ically in online forms one time. The Singapore Public

Administration had also developed internal services,

like WOGGA, a platform to monitor all government

digital services and identify gaps in service delivery.

Nectar, a PaaS, designed to host all government dig-

ital services. The APEX, a data sharing platform

that facilitates data-driven decision making and ser-

vice delivery for government agencies by exchanging

data securely through APIs. Enterprise Architecture

is present in Singapore’s CentEx, by having a clear

organizational structure and main business processes:

facilitate data-driven decision across the Public Ad-

ministration, to build shared platforms, integrate ser-

vices around citizens and business and run secure and

robust systems.

2.2.4 Comparative Analysis

The grounds for comparison focus on the objectives

these centers drew while they were operating, the

projects developed and how they were aligned with

the country’s digital strategy. While implemented in

governments with different structures they corrobo-

rate one another. In order to have clearer view of these

cases we summarized the most important information

in the following table.

Figure 1: Summary of the three cases observed (UK, Italy

and Singapore).

These digital centers of excellence are all collab-

orating with the public administration to help them

with their transformation. Acting as an in-house re-

serve of deep technical skills, in areas where inter-

nal capabilities are needed, they deal with highly

complex issues on short notice. They collaborate to

build platforms, standards guidelines and best prac-

tices and digital services Singapore, Italy and the UK

share capabilities such as Data Science, API oriented

ticAPP – Digital Transformation in the Portuguese Government

615

services development, Identity Management and Ap-

plication Development. However, Singapore is also

focusing on Artiﬁcial Intelligence, Sensors and IoT,

Cybersecurity, and ICT Infrastructure, and Geospa-

tial plans. The three approaches share two common

goals: On the one hand support the government in

digital transformation by investing on cross organiza-

tional communication and support by enforcing stan-

dards across public bodies; having reliable, fault tol-

erant, resilient and secure systems and motivating the

use of API’s for knowledge sharing across the Pub-

lic Administration. They organize themselves around

the stakeholders instead of the ministries and help

build common digital and data platforms thus increas-

ing the use of shared platforms, components and data

registers across government reducing redundant and

wrong information. All centers are attempting to

leverage data to support the public bodies in mak-

ing the best and most data-driven decisions, adopt-

ing big data and machine learning techniques. On

the other hand collaborate with public services to de-

liver seamless, simpler and secure services to citi-

zens, investing in once-only policies, to minimize the

frequency citizens are requested the same informa-

tion across public bodies, with the help identity ver-

iﬁcation platforms(Singapore’s MyInfo, Italy’s SPID

and UK’s gov.uk Verify). Italy goes one step further

by explicitly stating a mobile-ﬁrst thinking, meaning

government services are designed so citizens can ac-

cess them at any time at their mobile device. So, we

can observe that even with distributed locations (Sin-

gapore - Southeast Asia, Italy- Southern Europe and

the UK - Northern Europe) and different political set-

tings these centers of digital excellence share similar

milestones, such as identity management, once-only

policies common platforms and promote data sharing

across the public administration, by handling complex

projects with tight deadlines. They differ in some of

the departments of digital ﬁelds they house but have

Data Science and Analytics and Application Devel-

opment. The following ﬁgure represents a quadrant

summarizing the scope and domain of IT and its ap-

plication across the Public Administration or in each

sector:

ticAPP shares the same motivation as the other

centers - to support the digital transformation pro-

cess of government areas by incorporating internal

knowledge and competencies and the development

of cross-government projects (Portuguese Council of

Ministers, 2018). Based on the comparative analy-

sis Italy’s Team Digitale is the closest case. Both are

under a prorogation regime, with the possibility of

being extended for a given time period, which hap-

pened in Italy. They’re both southern Europe coun-

Figure 2: Transversal vs Sector Application of Digital

Transformation in the Public Administration.

tries, meaning they share close political systems and

views, which inﬂuence the operation of these cen-

ters. But because the UK GDS inspired Team Digi-

tale, it holds valuable information to be incorporated

at ticAPP.

2.3 Frameworks and Methodologies

2.3.1 TOGAF

The Open Group Architecture Framework is an enter-

prise architecture framework, aiming to provide high-

level design concerning four architecture domains:

Business, Data, Application and Technology. In the

Business layer, we focus deﬁning the business strat-

egy, governance, organization, and key business pro-

cesses of the organization The Architecture Develop-

ment Method, provides a way of working (a method)

for architects (Lankhorst, 2005). It is a cyclic and it-

erative process to build a holistic architecture of the

enterprise. ADM is a comprehensive method, mean-

ing it can be implemented in organizations of any

size and structure. It allows for integrating features

from other frameworks, like the Zachman’s Frame-

work (Schafrik, 2011). Zachman Framework pro-

vides a way to categorize them and TOGAF the means

to create the artifacts. TOGAF is closely related at

the strategic alignment, so it usually followes a Top-

Down Design approach.

2.4 Modelling Languages

2.4.1 Archimate

ArchiMate enables architects to describe, analyze,

and visualize the relationships among business do-

mains by using common language for describing the

design and ﬂow of business processes, organizational

structures, information ﬂows, systems, and infrastruc-

ture. It removes ambiguity brought by different stake-

ICEIS 2019 - 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

616

holders. Its hosted by The Open Group and fully

aligned with TOGAF. It helps stakeholders to assess

the impact of design choices and changes. Archimate

approach on architectural models is based on a lay-

ered, service-oriented perspective, meaning the top

layers consume services delivered by the lower layers.

The concepts are similar between layers at an abstract

level but become ﬁner grained as we reach deeper lay-

ers. Aside from a Motivational Layer, to help describe

the enterprise’s goals and drivers, Archimate distin-

guishes three main layers: Business, Application and

Technology. The Business layer offers products and

services to external customers, which are realized in

the organization by business processes performed by

business actors and roles.

3 PROPOSAL

Considering the comparative analysis 2 with the sum-

mary table 1 and the quadrant previously made 2, we

found that these centers of digital excellence share

similar objectives and knowledge areas. To answer

our problem, we aim to design ticAPP’s Business Ar-

chitecture. We will be adopting the TOGAF frame-

work and following a Top-Down Design approach.

The result will be a reference architecture, that may

also be considered when implementing other Centers

of Excellence. The solution is based on design sci-

ence research methodology, DSRM (Hevner et al.),

where an innovative solution (an artifact) is developed

in line with the problem domain, hence the artifact

we chose to develop is a Reference Enterprise Archi-

tecture for ticAPP, that can be used in future Digital

Centers of Excellence. This architecture encompasses

a collection of models, based on the ArchiMate to de-

scribe ticAPP in a holistic perspective. Because our

focus is on the Business domain, our target architec-

ture is about the people, processes, products and strat-

egy of ticAPP. We chose TOGAF framework to pro-

vide guidance on what viewpoints need to be mod-

eled. Based on ofﬁcial government documents, pre-

viously mentioned, and other information from Pedro

Viana, we were able to collect business statements for

ticAPP. This will enable us to create a baseline ar-

chitecture. The ﬁrst architecture element to model is

ticAPP context. We need to understand who are the

stakeholders and how they relate to ticAPP.

Next we modeled an organizational view, depict-

ing an in-depth viewpoint of ticAPP’s internal struc-

ture. TicAPP will house 20 IT specialists, with one

appointed as coordinator/ director, depicted in the fol-

lowing image as the actor “Director X” with the role

of “ticAPP Director”. Resorting to additional infor-

Figure 3: Stakeholders and their relation to ticAPP.

mation, ticAPP should be divided in three depart-

ments: Architecture, Transformation and Data Sci-

ence, each with a team leader directly to the direc-

tor along with a project manager (Actor- “John Doe”

Role - “PMO”).

Figure 4: ticAPP’s Organizational Viewpoint Model.

From the previous diploma (Portuguese Council

of Ministers, 2018), we also collected information

about what activities ticAPP will perform. These are

performed by three departments. We identiﬁed ﬁve

services ticAPP delivers: Mantaining Information

Systems, Managing Digital Services, Project Man-

agement, Assisting the Public Administration with IT

Soltution (e.g Acquiring software/hardware) and Sup-

porting Data-Driven Decision through Data Science.

To understand what products ticAPP offers, we devel-

oped a Product viewpoint. It groups the services de-

livered by ticAPP by the value they offer to the stake-

holders. Each product must have a contract associ-

ated. Since Data Science deals with potentially sen-

ticAPP – Digital Transformation in the Portuguese Government

617

sitive data, we ﬁnd it relevant to have contract, com-

mitting to GDPR compliance. As for architecture or

transformation projects, a Service Level Agreement

(SLA) should be drawn.

Figure 5: ticAPP’s Products.

Next we developed a model, showing how busi-

ness functions should be distributed across ticAPP.

The Architecture Department, speciﬁes Information

Systems and manages their Architecture. The Trans-

formation department is responsible for publishing

guidelines and reference guides, to be adopted across

public administration, to increase coherence among

government portals and enhance user experience.

It also implements project management initiatives

across the Public Administration, supporting their

transformation by process modelling and optimiza-

tion. These means introducing techniques, such as

Agile development. They’re also in charge of testing

and auditing IT solutions across the Public Admin-

istration. From these activities we identiﬁed 3 ser-

vices. Lastly, the Data Science Department, in charge

of producing predictive models, for fraud detection

for example, that realize the service of contributing to

better data-driven decision.

TicAPP’s mission, i.e its role, is to provide digi-

tal services to the Portuguese Public Administration.

We considered relevant to link the business functions

of ticAPP to the services it delivers. This enables us

to observe what every department is in charge of de-

livering. From the services identiﬁed in Figure 5, we

developed a model depicting those relations.

4 EVALUATION

We propose a twofold evaluation model. First, we

need to assess its external quality, i.e the ﬁtness for

Figure 6: Business Functions distributed by ticAPP’s struc-

ture.

Figure 7: Business Functions link to Business Services.

use of the architecture. These is necessary to under-

stand whether the architecture is a correct and com-

plete representation of ticAPP. The degree to which

the external quality is high or low is determined by the

stakeholders. Next, we will evaluate ticAPP’s matu-

rity using the ACCM (Architecture Capability Matu-

rity Model) framework, which is included in TOGAF.

ACCM solves the problem of managing change effec-

tively, by structuring the various practices into levels.

Each level represents an increased ability to control

and manage the development environment. The goal

of ACCM assessments is to enhance enterprise ar-

chitectures, identifying quantitatively weak areas and

to follow an improvement path for speciﬁc identiﬁed

gaps of the assessed architecture (TOGAF, 2018). We

Figure 8: ACCM Maturity Levels - (TOGAF, 2018).

will ﬁrst calculate the maturity rating by obtaining a

ICEIS 2019 - 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

618

weighted mean IT architecture maturity level. Next

we will calculate the percentage achieved at each ma-

turity level for the nine architecture characteristics

(TOGAF, 2018).

5 CONCLUSIONS

We have seen there is a great investment in dig-

ital transformation, to steer Public Administrations

from its silo-based structure to a more citizen ori-

ented one. Enterprise Architecture aims towards bet-

ter resource sharing, to enable efﬁcient information

exchange across departments and to adopt ﬂexible

frameworks. Successful EA programs are generally

strongly backed by the highest level of government.

We have presented Centers of Excellence in Public

Administrations from UK, Italy and Singapore. These

had great political backing and made use of shared

platforms. These house formerly scattered resources,

into single access points. Italy, UK and Singapore,

implemented Digital Centers of Excellence specializ-

ing in recent ﬁelds of IT, such as Data Science and

Application Design and Development. They lever-

age digital technologies, are share many similarities.

From the literature reviewed about other Digital Cen-

ters of Excellence, they share similar strategic goals

and perform the same activities. However, we found

no model or reference guide on how to set up one of

these centers. So, we designed ticAPP business archi-

tecture, as a possible reference architecture for other

Centers of Excellence in Public Administrations. Our

goal was to to develop an artifact, i.e a business ar-

chitecture model, for a consistent approach on how to

implement a Digital Center of Excellence. We fol-

lowed a Top-Down Design approach, based on TO-

GAF ADM methodology. We modelled viewpoints,

concerning the structure and core processes that sup-

port the services ticAPP provides. Our models, cover

a great scope and detail of the structure and operation

of ticAPP. Feedback from stakeholders, regarding the

quality of the models was positive and continuous im-

provements to the models will be made. This means

the models are ﬁt for purpose, in a way that they repre-

sent a correct and complete representation of ticAPP.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was supported by national funds through

Fundac¸

ao para a Ci

encia e a Tecnologia (FCT) with

reference UID/CEC/50021/2019 and by the European

Commission program H2020 under the grant agree-

ment 822404 (project QualiChain).

REFERENCES

Accenture (2013). Banking on digital: Enabling a dig-

ital ﬁrst mindset. https://www.accenture.com/ae-

en/

∼

/media/Accenture/Conversion-Assets/DotCom/

Documents/Global/PDF/Technology\

7/Accenture-

Interactive-Banking-Enabler-Digital-Operating-

Model.pdf.

Alonso, I. A. (2010). Enterprise architecture responsibilities

and people roles.

CTIC (2017). ICT Strategy 2020. https://www.tic.gov.pt/

documents/2018/CTIC\ TIC2020\ Estrategia\ TIC\

EN.pdf.

GOV.UK (2018a). About the government digital service.

https://gds.blog.gov.uk/about/.

GOV.UK (2018b). Our governance. https://www.gov.

uk/government/organisations/government-digital-

service/about/our-governance.

Lankhorst, M. (2005). Enterprise Architecture at Work:

Modelling, Communication and Analysis. Springer.

McSweeney, A. (2016). Digital transformation and

enterprise architecture. https://pt.slideshare.

net/alanmcsweeney/digital-transformation-and-

enterprise-architecture.

Portuguese Council of Ministers (2018). Resoluc¸

ao do con-

selho de ministros n.

22/2018. Di

ario da Rep

ublica

47/2018, S

erie I de 2018-03-07, (22/2018):1185 –

1186.

Schafrik, F. (2011). A practical guide to develop-

ing enterprise architecture. https://www.ibm.

com/developerworks/rational/library/enterprise-

architecture-maximum-value/index.html.

SmartNationSG (2018). https://www.smartnation.

sg/docs/default-source/default-document-

library/dgb\ booklet\ june2018.pdf.

TeamDigitale (2018). Report digital transformation team.

https://teamdigitale.governo.it/assets/pdf/Report\

DigitalTransformationTeam\ 09\ 30\ 2018.pdf.

TOGAF (Retrieved December 2018). Architecture maturity

models.

ticAPP – Digital Transformation in the Portuguese Government

619