In this congressionally mandated report, the authors assess the effectiveness of the defense business enterprise architecture (DBEA) as a framework for planning, managing, and integrating defense business systems and its adequacy in informing business process reengineering. They also compare the DBEA with similar models from other U.S. government agencies, foreign governments, and major commercial entities.

Independent Assessment of the Defense Business Enterprise Architecture

Ryan Consaul, Sarah Zabel, Vanya Barrer, Christian Kim, Adrian Salas, Joshua Simulcik, Drake Warren

ResearchPublished May 13, 2026

In this congressionally mandated report, the authors assess the effectiveness of the defense business enterprise architecture (DBEA) as a framework for planning, managing, and integrating defense business systems and its adequacy in informing business process reengineering. They also compare the DBEA with similar models from other U.S. government agencies, foreign governments, and major commercial entities to identify lessons that could be applied to the DBEA.

The authors reviewed statutory requirements, U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and service implementation guidance, and historical documents and guidebooks. They also interviewed stakeholders and conducted coding analysis of the interviews to identify key issues. The authors identified the enterprise architectures and logic frameworks most relevant to the DBEA from international partners and allies. Private-sector analysis focused on identifying industry enterprise architectures and frameworks most relevant to the DBEA’s mission for a baseline understanding of components and lessons learned that could be applicable to DoD.

Key Takeaways

  • The DoD Chief Information Officer’s (CIO’s) new federated architecture framework is a promising approach, but institutional inertia and a lack of compelling use cases have the potential to stall its momentum.
  • The DBEA requires greater flexibility and stakeholder engagement to fulfill its purposes with respect to defense business systems and business process reengineering.
  • Some of the legal specifications for the DBEA are overbroad and unhelpful.
  • The DBEA needs to mature through practical application before it will provide an adequate and useful framework for planning, managing, and integrating business systems of the department.
  • The DBEA is not realizing its potential to inform business process reengineering, primarily due to an incentive structure focused on funding for information systems.

Recommendations

  • The DBEA needs relevant use cases to prove its value and inform its continued development. The approaching deadline for financial statement audit—and the wealth of business process and business system–related challenges to success—make auditability an opportunity-rich area within which to pursue bounded use cases for the DBEA. The Defense Business Council should define initial use cases to address bounded problems necessary to prepare for financial statement audit.
  • Because the DBEA lacks analytic, visualization, and other tools necessary to inform decisionmaking, DoD CIO should form a partnership with the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office to better enlist the Advana enterprise data and analytics environment in realizing the DBEA’s full potential.
  • DoD CIO should provide an experimentation space—a “sandbox”—to support flexibility for functional and mission alignment.
  • DoD CIO should use the experimentation space to explore potential contributions from alternative models and frameworks.
  • DoD CIO should partner with DoD organizations, including the Defense Digital Service and Defense Innovation Unit, for active outreach to industry.
  • The Defense Business Council should redesign the annual certification process to be meaningful and publish clear guidance for its execution.
  • DoD CIO should improve outreach, automation, and modernization of the DBEA.
  • DoD CIO and the services should strengthen the ability of the DBEA to support business process reengineering efforts.

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Consaul, Ryan, Sarah Zabel, Vanya Barrer, Christian Kim, Adrian Salas, Joshua Simulcik, and Drake Warren, Independent Assessment of the Defense Business Enterprise Architecture. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2026. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3535-1.html.
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This research was sponsored by DoD CIO and conducted within the Acquisition and Technology Policy Program of the RAND National Security Research Division.

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