Architecting Estonia:A System Architecture Perspective on Digital Government

Andres KüttInformation System Authority, architect

21.10.2015

Agenda today

1. Motivation

2. Some thoughts on system architecture

3. Architecture of a country

4. Application of the model in Estonian case

How to architect a country?

And not mess up doing it

The challenge

• There are many architects in public sector but few (if any) with asimilar scope

• No literature to go back to• Enterprise architecture does not help much

• Although Estonia is comparable to a large enterprise• Regardless of what they say, EA is usually focused on informationsystems, rather than the enterprise per se

• Value generation in public sector is much different• No real way to tie in legal structures important in public setting

That one can’t influence something does notmean one does not need to understand it

While I can’t change Estonian constitution or organisational structure, I need tounderstand it so the things I can change fit

Some thoughts on systemarchitecture

System architecture context

Systems thinking

System dynamics

Gave rise toCybernetics

Tackles similar problems to

System Architecture

Provides foundations for

Dynamic Project Management

Provides foundations for

Provides foundations for

System safetyProvides

foundations for

Systems thinking is thinking about aquestion, circumstance, or problem

explicitly as a system

System is a set of interrelated entities whose functionality is greater than thesum of the individual entities. Crawley et al 2015.

Architecture is an abstract depiction of theentities of a system and the relationships

between those entities

A man-made system can also be seen as a set of decisions

Main aspects of a system

• Function is what the system does

• Form is what the system is

• Concept is how to think of the system

• Concept maps a set of functions to acorresponding set of form elements Function

Form

Concept

Form drives cost, function drives value.The difference determinesmaximum possible profit

You can’t make more than this, but you can certainly make less. In publicsector, we are interested in ratio - bang per buck - rather than difference

The concept is the part that makes the silverbullet so elusive

Brooks 1995. Form and function we have robust mechanisms to deal with,but not concept

Form, concept and function are a logicalentity. Change in one drives change in other

Change the culture sufficiently and the office layout changes

Architecture of a country

What if we applied systems thinkingto a country?

“Let’s think of Estonia as a system and see what happens“

Concept of a country

How to think about a country?

• Many equally feasible approaches• “It is a way to organise us living together“• “It is a hostile entity that is not to be trusted“• “It is a conduct of Gods will“

• The domain of legal and philosophical thinkers

• Embodied, to an extent, in constitution

• Thus very hard (if at all possible) to influence

• Has a massive influence on acceptable ways the functions of astate can be executed

Function of a country

What does a country do anyway?

• Function of a system is emergent by definition• Remember the “…greater than the sum of its parts“ thing• Not all emergence can be predicted• Not all emergence is desirable

• Function is fundamentally driven by whoever has the highest powerin the current setting

• The people, in Estonian case• Partly captured in legislation

• There are many ways to think of the function• Business process analysis, use case analysis etc.

Form of a country

What is a country?

• Three main categories of form• Peopleware

• How are the people embodying the country organised?• Administrative setup, business processes• Organisational entities and their roles

• Software• The obvious bureaucracy automation• But also e-mail servers, sensor networks etc.

• Hardware• The physical artefacts supporting the first two• Cold rooms, cables and servers• But also physical office buildings and their layout

Architectural model of a country

Constitution

Functions

Peopleware

Software

Infrastructure

The model explained

• Simply the elements seen previously stacked in order of abstraction• Each layer can be seen as a system in itself

• Apply the same principles recursively• The model can be seen as a stack of different architectures• Methods for structuring each layer differ, of course

Main idea: A holistic model of a country allowing to explore complexrelationships spanning disciplines

Application of the model

The data embassies

• Digital continuity is important for a digital-heavy country• Estonia is too small to physically host two server rooms providingadequate risk mitigation

• Recommended distance is about 250 km• Which, while geographically possible, is not sensible in Estonia

• What if we hosted some services abroad?• Rent server rooms from friendly countries• Or use Estonian embassies

• Both running the services and maintaining contingency backupscan be considered

This is a problem of the “Hardware“ layer

Applying the model

• Software: Is the software built to survive loss of access to otherservices?

• Peopleware: How can responsibility for data be executed acrossborders and physical distance?

• Functions: Does the function make sense in isolation (peopleregistry without document registry)?

• Constitution: To what extent can a country exist in exile?

Conclusion

Common EA frameworks are lacking

Usually, the “concept“ part is especially difficult to reflect.All models are wrong, some models are useful

Using systems thinking, a more useful modelcan be derived

There are probably other models but this one is abstract enough to cover a lotof ground

The model is useful in dissecting a problemlooking trivial in common EA context

A lot of cloud-oriented problems are very similar in nature. Cloud, as a technicalconstruct, has profound implications for organisations.

Thank you!Andres Küttandres.kutt@ria.ee