Biography Mr. Hite is the Director of IT Architecture and Systems Issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), where he is responsible for GAO’s audits across the federal government concerning architecture and systems issues, as well as IT audits at the Department’s of Defense, Homeland Security, Treasury, State, and Justice. During his 25-year career with GAO, he has directed audits of major federal investments in IT, such as the tax systems modernization, the air traffic control modernization, the weather systems modernization, and border security system modernization programs, as well as other system areas, such as electronic voting systems. Mr. Hite is a principal author of several IT management guides on such topics as system testing and enterprise architecture. He frequently testifies before Congress on these and other topics. Mr. Hite has received many GAO and government-wide awards throughout his career, including the eGov Institute Excellence in Enterprise Architecture Award.

Presentation
The State of Enterprise Architecture Maturity in the US Federal Government
To support the U. S. Congress in its oversight of federal executive branch agencies, and to advance and promote the use of architectures as an integral tool in optimizing these agencies’ operational and technological environments, the U.S. Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) has published an Enterprise Architecture Management Maturity Framework to be used in benchmarking the state of organizational architecture development, maintenance, and implementation and in guiding organizational architecture management improvement efforts. GAO first surveyed the state of the U.S. federal government’s architecture efforts in February 2001 and then again in November 2003 to determine progress. This session will provide an overview of GAO’s architecture benchmarking and improvement framework, including the results of its application in the U.S. federal government, thus providing attendees with the means for better understanding and strengthening their respective organizational architecture efforts.