SOA succes in public sector
Before talking about success in the public sector it is necessary to take a brief look at what success is within the public sector – a question with different answers depending on who you ask.
A manager within the public sector success is typically based on the size of his/hers budget and/or number of staff. As SOA and EA potentially promises to reduce both of these, SOA is really not that appealing to public manager. As it will only reduce next years budget and number of personal it is not an appealing career move.
However what is happening in many governments is that the public tasks are not protected by the traditional organizational boundaries – as might have been. This means that different agencies potentially can take over tasks from other agencies if they can perform the same task cheaper – which for a manager in the public sector is a god career move! And where does SOA then fit into all this? As SOA is an architecture with a high reuse potential, SOA is the perfect to create a competitive edge in order to acquire task from other agencies.
In Denmark this is not commonly seen – yet! But it is my prediction that with the strong focus the Danish government has on EA and SOA it is only a matter of time before we see Danish public agencies “snatching” tasks from each other. The winner is going to bee the one who is best prepared – bear in mind that Denmark is a very small country, and from a IT perspective it makes little sense having multiple agencies solve tasks which are similar..