Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA)

Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA) 7.0
Official Release – March 12, 2010

The Business Transformation Agency (BTA) annually delivers the Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA) for the Department of Defense (DoD) Business Mission Area (BMA) to help defense business system owners and program managers make informed decisions in support of the Department. The latest official release of the BEA – BEA 7.0 – was delivered on March 12, 2010.

The BEA is the enterprise architecture for the Department of Defense (DoD) Business Mission Area (BMA). The BEA defines the Department’s business transformation priorities; the business capabilities required to support those priorities; and the combinations of enterprise systems and initiatives that enable those capabilities. The purpose of the BEA is:

To provide a blueprint for DoD business transformation that helps ensure the right capabilities, resources and materiel are rapidly delivered to our warfighters: What they need, where they need it, when they need it, anywhere in the world. The BEA guides and constrains implementation of interoperable defense business system solutions as required by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and guides information technology (IT) investment management to align with strategic business capabilities as required by NDAA, Clinger-Cohen and supporting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Government Accountability Office (GAO) policy.

Background
The BEA was statutorily mandated by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2005. This same statute also established requirements for a DoD Enterprise Transition Plan (ETP), an annual March Congressional Report to Congress, and a senior governance body comprised of Investment Review Boards (IRBs) and the Defense Business Systems Management Committee (DBSMC) chaired by the Deputy Secretary of Defense. The IRBs and DBSMC provide effective business capability oversight and decision-making. They certify and approve business system modernizations over $1 million as compliant to the BEA.
BEA compliance is required before funds may be obligated. BEA compliance is also required for Major Automated Information Systems (MAIS) and Major Defense Acquisition Programs (MDAP) before milestone approval decisions. These programs utilize the acquisition and investment management process.

BEA Content
The transformation effort guiding BEA development continues to focus on providing tangible outcomes for a limited set of priorities and on developing architecture that is integrated, understandable and actionable. The main focus areas for use of the BEA are:

Investment Management – Support alignment of services, systems and solutions to the prioritized strategic capabilities of the Department
Interoperability - Permit approval authorities to demonstrate compliance with the BEA to achieve transformation objectives and implementation of interoperable business solutions

The BEA includes activities, processes, data, information exchanges, business rules, system functions, system data exchanges, terms, and linkages to laws, regulations and policies.
BEA 7.0 was developed using a set of integrated DoD Architecture Framework (DoDAF) 2.0 models which include the following viewpoints:

All Viewpoint (AV)
Capability Viewpoint (CV)
Operational Viewpoint (OV)
Data and Information Viewpoint (DIV)
Systems Viewpoint (SV)
Services Viewpoint (SvcV)
Standards Viewpoint (StdV)

Informational Releases
In July 2009, the BTA started introducing informational releases which reflect content updates made through the BEA 7.0 release cycle. This allows stakeholders to accelerate the implementation of requirements outside of the official release schedule, while obtaining insight into other ongoing BEA updates. Informational releases are published for informational purposes only and will not be used to assert compliance or update the DoD Information Technology Portfolio Repository (DITPR).

The following links are the published informational releases:

Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA 7.1)     Informational Release – Aug. 27, 2010
Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA 6.2)     Informational Release - October 28, 2009
Business Enterprise Architecture (BEA 6.1)      Informational Release – July 29, 2009

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