Business Reference Architecture for US State Governments

You need to improve your state government agency’s organizational understanding of business capabilities and how IT can support the delivery and accessibility of essential services.
Your agency wants to sharpen its alignment and focus on organizational outcomes and value by using architecture to better inform innovation, stakeholder engagement, management, and IT strategy capabilities. This starts with a solid business reference architecture.
You don’t have a clear path for capturing the right information, modeling the agency across functional areas, engaging the right people, linking with the needs of the organization, and aligning with IT.
The agency and IT often speak in their own languages without a wholistic and integrated view of mission, strategy, goals, objectives, organizational functional processes, projects, and measures of success.
The agency and IT often focus their attention within silos and miss the holistic value of an overarching value stream and capability view.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Using an industry-specific reference architecture is central to, and has many benefits for, a state government agency’s priorities. It is critical for understanding, modeling, and communicating the operating environment and the direction of the agency and, more significantly, for enabling measurable top-line organizational outcomes and unlocking direct value.

Impact and Result

Build your state government agency’s capability map by defining the organization's value streams, which describe high-level functions of the operational environment.
Define your agency’s key capabilities and develop a prioritized strategy map.
Assess potential gaps in key capabilities for planning priorities through a review of state government processes, information, applications, and technology support of key capabilities.
Adopt capability-based strategy planning by ongoing identification and road-mapping of capability gaps.

Business Reference Architecture for US State Governments Research & Tools

1. US State Government Business Reference Architecture Guide – Accelerate the strategy design process.

Leverage a validated view of US state government organizational capabilities to realize measurable top-line business outcomes and unlock direct value.

2. US State Government Business Reference Architecture Template – Customize and build your organization’s value and strategic capability.

Use this template in conjunction with the US State Government Business Reference Architecture Guide to document your final strategy outputs, including organization-defining core and support business capabilities, value streams, and strategy maps connecting business goals to your state government organization’s core functions and essential services.

3. US State Governments Business Reference Architecture Library Tool ‒ Drive innovative solutions in state government with curated value streams and capabilities.

Use this centralized library of key definitions, value streams, and organizational business capabilities as a reference resource in conjunction with the US State Government Business Reference Architecture Guide.

4. Shared vs. Enabling Services in Business Reference Architecture for US State Governments ‒ Supplemental learning on the distinct roles and benefits of shared versus enabling services in US state government.

Use this supplement to understand how shared and enabling services each play unique, vital roles in supporting state agency core capabilities underscoring the importance of recognizing their differences and similarities for designing effective support capabilities in public sector service delivery.

Drive innovation solutions by accelerating the building of your agency’s organizational business capability map, defining strategic focus, and prioritizing key capabilities and capability gaps.

About Info-Tech

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We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Need Extra Help?
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Get the help you need in this 4-phase advisory process. You'll receive 9 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Build Your State Government Agency’s Capability Map

Call 1: Introduce Info-Tech’s industry reference architecture methodology.

Guided Implementation 2: Use State Government Agency Organizational Business Capabilities to Define Strategic Focus

Call 1: Define and create value streams.
Call 2: Model Level 1 business capability maps.
Call 3: Map value streams to business capabilities.
Call 4: Model Level 2 business capability maps.

Guided Implementation 3: Assess Key Capabilities For Planning Priorities

Call 1: Create a strategy map.
Call 2: Introduce Info-Tech's capability assessment framework.

Guided Implementation 4: Adopt Capability-Based Strategy Planning

Call 1: Review capability assessment map(s).
Call 2: Discuss and review prioritization of key capability gaps and plan next steps.

Author

Neal Rosenblatt

Contributors

Craig Brooks, Senior Technical Advisor, OMES, State of Oklahoma
Kathy Costello, Enterprise Business Architect, Architecture & Innovation, Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech)
Kimberly Crabtree, Agency Chief Enterprise Architect, California Health and Human Services Agency, State of California
Madhu Gottumukkala, Commissioner, Bureau of Information & Telecommunication, State of South Dakota
Nick Stow, Chief Technology Officer, Architecture and Innovation Division, Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech)

Search Code: 108732
Last Revised: October 29, 2025

TAGS:

Reference Architecture, State Government, strategy, capability, value, value stream, solution architecture, business architecture, data architecture, application architecture, technology architecture, enterprise architecture, data governance in state government, enterprise architecture for state government