Great Audience at Syracuse University

Because of a very active audience, my guest lecture today at the School of Information Studies Syracuse University went very well. I talked about the Danish approach to e-government and enterprise architecture. Denmark has been very successful when it comes to e-government the last couple of years, but our approach (especially to enterprise architecture) is very different form the business-driven American approach, and the students had a lot of good questions.
A particularly interesting discussion concerned the cultural and institutional environment that different governments work in and how that affects our approach to enterprise architecture. Having participated in the international ICA study group last year, I shared some of my experiences with EA initiatives in other countries like Canada, Korea and Sweden. And, as many of the Syracuse students also noted, the cultural and institutional environment in many ways determines the way we do enterprise architecture. E.g. the Danish consensus culture in a multiparty system is very different from the top-down management style necessary in the federal government of America, and I think we must acknowledge that when we build our national architecture programs. All in all, a great day with good input from the Syracuse master students!