The State of Oregon, Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) contracted RNR Consulting to document the Agency’s core data/information within the operational programs and to architect that information into conceptual architectures. ODF is a large agency with several program areas and sub-units. Within each unit there are a large number of Access Databases and Excel Spreadsheets that are utilized to create and manage information. This information is not centralized and users are creating duplicated data in various databases and systems. ODF has a number of projects lined up for implementation. However, there are a number of dependencies and priorities that should be considered before they begin any IT projects. Thus ODF seeks to understand the flow of data and data dependencies in order to properly align IT systems and implement the appropriately.

RNR Consulting’s approach for performing the Enterprise Architecture Planning initiative includes development of the Business Model, Data Architecture, and Application Architecture. During the beginning stages of the project, RNR Consulting conducted interviews with the various program areas of ODF to understand responsibilities, job functions, systems used, and data managed. We documented all the information and developed a validation spreadsheet to send to all program areas to allow them review and validate that the information we compiled is accurate and complete. Additionally, the project team analyzed all collected documentation and notes to identify job functions and extract the data that is used within each business function and identify how data the data is created and used.

The various tasks RNR Consulting performed in order to execute the project include the following:

• Business Model
  • Functional Decomposition Diagram
  • Functional Definitions
  • Business Unit to Function Matrix
• Data Architecture
  • Data Entity to Function Matrix
  • Entity-Relationship Diagram
  • Data Definitions
• Application Architecture
  • Application Architecture Diagram
  • Application Descriptions

Upon completion of the project, the project team will develop roadmap that identifies dependencies and priorities the projects that should be implemented.