Now that the government is firmly entrenched in Wall Street's activities there is a high likelihood of the pot calling the kettle black. 

Think about it.

There are tremendous issues on the table right now where government is leading the charge and businesses and consumers will either benefit or face the fallout. Of course there's the financial industry along with healthcare reform and the debates about whether or not the bailouts will prove to be a smart decision. 

When you look more closely at these issues, you know that they all require Herculean IT efforts to make them successful. Whether the federal agencies focusing on enterprise architecture have teams of 10 or 10 million, with each dollar assigned to the tasks at hand comes the increased risk of failure. 

Here's why: the more people that are involved in an IT effort - from architectural strategy and design to software coding, development and deployment – the greater the risk of an error or policy violation slipping through the cracks and landing on the laps of our citizens.

For example, 3,000 Santa Clara, California residents were recently informed that they underpaid on their property taxes due to a computing error. Not to mention the Cash for Clunkers computer glitchesthat held up rebates and dealer claims

While no system is perfect, these seemingly minor glitches have a ripple effect that reaches deep into taxpayers' pockets. 

Moving forward, you can expect - and should demand -- even greater scrutiny on government IT processes, especially as they take on more public issues. While I don't claim to have all the answers, I will recommend that federal agencies take a closer look at their current IT infrastructure and their approaches to enforcing policies. 

I’m going to keep following the government's impact on our day-to-day lives in this blog and would appreciate any feedback and comments you have on the topic. 

Meanwhile, WebLayers is hosting a webinar on the very topic of governance and the enterprise architecture on October 21 with industry analyst and federal enterprise architecture experts fromZapThink. You can register for it on our Resources page

With this in mind, WebLayers is hosting a series of free educational webinars designed to further enlighten architects, developers and IT managers about the importance of governance. 

In fact, there's quite an impressive line up of guest speakers for the fall series that includesZapThink's Ron Schmelzer, Interarbor Solutions's Dana Gardner, Joe McKendrick from eBizQ andEvans Data Research, and Software AG's Miko Matsumura. 

Here's a quick rundown of the schedule:

"Mitigating Business Risks and Accelerating I.T. Initiatives through Automated Governance." 
Date/Time: Wednesday, September 16, 2:00 p.m. ET/Registration

"Boosting the Effectiveness of Federal Enterprise Architecture through Automated Governance" led by ZapThink industry analyst Ronald Schmelzer. 
Date/Time: Wednesday, September 23, 1:00 p.m. ET/Registration 

"Governance Across the Cloud: From the Desktop to the Mainframe and Beyond" Date/Time: Wednesday, October 14, 2:00 p.m. ET - Registration

eBizQ's SOA in Action roundtable, "SOA Value is Unreachable Without Governance" with industry analyst, blogger and pundit Joe McKendrick, Software AG's vice president and deputy chief technology officer Miko Matsumura, and John Favazza, vice president of research and development, WebLayers. 
Date/Time: Wednesday, October 28, 12:00 p.m. ET/Registration

"How Governance Gets You More Mileage from Your Hybrid Computing Environment" led by Interarbor Solutions principal analyst, blogger and industry pundit Dana Gardner. 
Date/Time: Tuesday, November 10, 2:00 p.m. ET - Registration

If there's a particular topic you'd like us to cover, please drop me a line at jeff@weblayers.com and let me know.



Jeff