The OMB and its architecture program-management office will in some cases dictate that specific technologies be used within a business process -- XML, for instance, as the basis for certain Web transactions -- but Lorentz says the government will remain "vendor agnostic." "The government isn't in the business of keeping any one vendor in business," Lorentz says.

Surprisingly, partisan politics doesn't look like a major threat to the architecture effort. Though it's part of a big push by a Republican administration, Democrats have widely blessed the initiatives. "This is a good government and good management kind of thing," says Randy Hite, director of IT architecture and systems for the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress that has reviewed federal enterprise architecture efforts.

What's more surprising in this time of corporate downsizing is that some agencies complain about a lack of available expertise. Defense staffers with architecture experience recently spent more than one day a week for six months helping the Treasury Department lay out its architecture. Many government agencies turn to private consultants to advise on enterprise architecture. "The gene pool is kind of shallow," says the Defense Department's Parmale.

But Homeland Security's Cooper believes it's important to look outside government for answers. For instance, he points to the financial-services industry's well-developed business processes and technology to exploit data it collects on individual customers as expertise the government could learn from. "There's far more information outside the federal government about us, as individuals, than anybody inside has a clue about," Cooper says. "Why not build upon their assembled expertise?" The feds also want state cooperation. The federal government will incorporate an architecture toolkit created by the National Association of State CIOs in its program, and Cooper and Forman are frequent visitors at state CIO gatherings such as last month's St. Louis conference. And they're even offering money: up to $1 million for quick-turnaround pilot projects that test interagency and interstate IT collaboration and that employ a common architecture.

Will it all work? The payoff from something as broad as unifying architecture may be hard to measure, and it could take a long time. "It's like a marathon, and we're only somewhere in the first mile and a half," says GAO's Hite. True, but at least they have a clearer picture of the race ahead.

Illustration by John Craig.
Photo of Cooper by Walter Smith.