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National Wildland Fire Enterprise Architecture

NWFEA Blueprint

Executive Summary

Version 2.9

This document is produced and maintained by the NWCG Program Management Office.

Question or comments regarding this document should be directed to:
Judy Crosby, Manager, NWCG Program Management Office
National Interagency Fire Center
3833 S Development Avenue
Boise, ID 83705-5254
(208) 387-5265
jcrosby@nifc.blm.gov

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of the National Wildland Fire Enterprise Architecture (NWFEA) Blueprint is to support the wildland fire community’s need to function as a Virtual Single Agency (VSA). The wildland fire community is striving to expand its use of an interagency management structure that allows the disparate members of the wildland fire community both to maintain their independent strong ties to their governing agencies and at the same time take advantage of both the organizational and economic efficiencies of a single agency.

Note: This is NOT a suggestion that Wildland Fire become an agency, only that it organizes its interagency business process AS IF it were a single agency to enable consolidated planning and decision-making to take place in a more coordinated fashion.

The goals of creating the NWFEA Blueprint are to improve the execution of the interagency National Wildland Fire Programs by:

1. Identifying the similarities and differences between wildland fire business processes among the various wildland fire organizations in order to identify potential examples of effective interagency implementation vs. challenges to operating as a virtual single agency,
2. Recommending improvements that will lead to common strategic and business-level management processes that will ultimately lead to safer operations and better service to citizens by providing common business practices, and faster and more accurate information exchanges, and
3. To examine the current and projected technology investments and document findings and to determine their alignment with the NWFEA goals defined herein.

Within this document the term “Wildland Fire”, in capital letters, refers to the wildland fire enterprise which encompasses the organizations (both agency and interagency), policies, standards, processes, data, and technology of the national interagency wildland fire community

Scope

The scope of the NWFEA blueprint includes the entire national wildland fire enterprise from a birds-eye perspective. As the NWFEA Program and Blueprint processes mature, more in-depth details will be included in subsequent blueprints.

Mission

The NWFEA Blueprint supports Wildland Fire’s mission to provide national leadership and establish, implement, maintain and communicate policy, standards, and guidelines for wildland fire program management. The three largest program activities are preparedness, suppression, and hazardous fuel reduction.

Vision

The NWFEA Blueprint supports Wildland Fire’s vision that the Nation’s resources and communities are protected and enhanced through safe, comprehensive, and cohesive interagency wildland fire management.

Purpose

The goal of the NWFEA Blueprint is to recommend changes to the wildland fire community that will result in continually improving interagency cooperation, management efficiencies, and support to field operations. The Blueprint enables these improvements by providing focused attention to the four main enterprise architecture components: business, data, applications, and technology.

Background

The NWFEA Blueprint is the result of several reports that promoted the need for an overarching interagency approach to managing wildland fire operations and investments. As a result, in 2002, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) chartered the NWFEA Steering Group to guide the development of the NWFEA Blueprint and supporting program.

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SUMMARY OF NWFEA GOALS, RECOMMENDATIONS, AND ACTION ITEMS

The future vision for Wildland Fire includes achievement of the following goals:

1. Common Governance and Business Activities
2. An Integrated Data Environment
3. Common Technology Infrastructure and Configuration Standards
4. Systems that Increase Efficiencies and Manage Costs and Redundancies

The achievement of these goals is not a short-term prospect and may take many years. As a first step, the NWFEA Blueprint has identified the following recommendations for each goal:

Alignment of NWFEA Goals with Mission Objectives and OMB Performance Measurement Categories

The NWFEA Blueprint will be used as a management tool to provide a roadmap to achieve the national interagency wildland fire goals as represented in the Wildland Fire Leadership Council’s (WFLC) 10-Year Implementation Strategy, as well as mapping to performance measurement categories established by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Wildland Fire leadership sees enterprise architecture as a way to improve its management and business operations through optimization of common services while still maintaining the ability to respond to the individual agencies’ land management mission and objectives. The following figure shows that the NWFEA Goals support the OMB Performance Measurement Categories and the WFLC Goals.

Figure 1 - Relationship of NWFEA Goals to WFLC Goals and OMB Performance Measurement Categories

The first three recommendations NWFEA Goal 1 (in Table 1 - Summary of NWFEA Goals and Recommendations) identify the organizational management, governance, and interagency practices that must first be instituted in order to accomplish the WFLC Goals. The last three recommendations in Goal 1 identify business activities related to the WFLC Goals.

NWFEA Goals 2 through 4 identifies the over-arching data, technology, and application practices that must be implemented in order to implement WFLC Goals effectively and efficiently.

The following table maps the NWFEA Action Items (associated with the Goals and Recommendations identified above) to the WFLC Goals and OMB Performance Measurement Categories:

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