Government

For many years, government information technology has been managed by individual agencies to the specific goals of federal funding streams, and agencies' desires for autonomy, flexibility and security. These goals have led agencies to develop their own systems, using different architectures, platforms and data formats.

Today, the costs of the system incompatibilities across organizations, and the efforts required to make these stovepiped systems work together are becoming apparent:

• Critical homeland security initiatives are difficult to implement. There is no way to share information across agencies or even departments without compromising flexibility or endangering privacy.
  
  
• Agencies would like to provide low-cost and easy-to-use portal services for constituents, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to automate their end-to-end processes across disparate systems.
  
  
• Agencies' IT systems and the needs of their constituents are not aligned, leading to higher costs and inefficient government services.

For agencies which need a way to share critical information without compromising the security, privacy and autonomy of their independent operations, service-oriented architecture (SOA) brings a new order of interoperability and flexibility.

Progress Software, a leader in standards-based SOA infrastructure software, is working closely with agencies across the country and around the world to bring the benefits of SOA to government.

For more information, read Sonic Software for Government and find out how the District of Columbia, Tarrant County and others rely on Sonic for their SOA infrastucture.