The Agility Principle

Approaches that increase agility ⁱ will be adopted.

This principle recognises the strategic importance of system agility, as it allows changes in policy, new legislation or restructuring of the public service to be undertaking quickly and efficiently. Agility permits the government to respond appropriately, quickly and efficiently, to emerging needs.

Rationale

• The State services operate in an environment of considerable change and complexity, with increasing expectations from citizens and the Government of the day for better performance and responsiveness. ⁱⁱ
• Services must meet or exceed Ministerial and public expectations for accessibility, timeliness, responsiveness and fairness. ⁱⁱⁱ

Implications

• Systems must be robust enough to be changed and extended over time - whether it is to change it or to operate it efficiently.^iv
• Agility is difficult under the traditional "hard coded" approach to automating rules (for example, expressing rules as programming logic, embedded in an application system).^v
• Creating flexible and adaptable systems maybe slower and more expensive than creating specific and rigid systems.^vi
• Agility involves designing and integrating applications and processes via a collection of shared business services, which are basically modular pieces of software that perform a discrete, well-defined business function.^vii
• Enterprise infrastructure that provides an enterprise architecture and security foundation to be able to run agile services consistently across your enterprise.^viii

Footnotes

[i.“The ability of an organization to sense environmental change and to respond efficiently and effectively to that change” – Gartner, “Achieving Agility”]

[ii. Treasury Report: Review of Central Agencies' Role in Promoting and Assuring State Sector Performance (September 2006)]

[iii. Central Agencies Review, September 2006]

[iv. Organisation of Agile Architect: Principle for the Agile Architect; http://www.agilearchitect.org/agile/principles.htm, 2007 October 4]

[v. Gartner, G00138218]

[vi. NZ Government Enterprise Architecture Forum Focus Group, September 2007]

[vii. Gartner, “Benefits and challenges of SOA in Business Terms”, G00130078]

[viii. Institute for Enterprise Developments: http://enterprise-architecture.info/EA_Services-Oriented-Enterprise.htm, 4th October 2007]