To facilitate efforts to transform the Federal Government into one that is citizen-centered, results-oriented, and market-based, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is developing the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA), a business-based framework for Government-wide improvement. The FEA is being constructed through a collection of interrelated "reference models" designed to facilitate cross-agency analysis and the identification of duplicative investments, gaps, and opportunities for collaboration within and across Federal Agencies. These include:

Information Technology (IT), and its overarching capability to support Electronic Government (E-Gov) has rapidly evolved during the last few years and is a critical component to supporting transformation efforts. Whereas traditionally, COTS and GOTS applications were built using proprietary and vendor-specific technologies, the principles of E-Gov embrace technology reuse, component and service interoperability, access and delivery channels, E-Gov patterns, and component-based architectures. Moreover, forward-thinking principles which assist in the transformation and delivery of customer (or citizen) services that embrace cost reduction and operational efficiency. To support these principles, and to assist the Federal Agencies, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is releasing a set of Federal Reference Models that describe (and outline) technology service capabilities (i.e., Customer Relationship Management, Search, Portal, etc) as well as the technologies, industry-standards, platforms, and emerging technologies to support the delivery of these services.

While several technologies can assist in this "game-changing" transformation, only a few can be considered as the enabling cornerstones. Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Web Services provide a foundation to assist in Horizontal and Vertical Information Sharing, while providing an underlying framework to support the delivery of services. XML provides the Federal Government with a standard and consistent means to classify/describe information that may be shared, exchanged, or delivered to stakeholder in, and across, the business value-chain. Web Services, in the broadest context, provide stakeholders with the ability to leverage existing (and proven) business services, data warehouses, knowledge repositories, and intellectual capital - independent of technology platform and geographical boundary. Both XML and Web Service create a foundation to support the horizontal and vertical integration of federal, state, local, and municipal government services. This level of interoperability, an integrated U.S. Government, will provide citizens with an avenue of approach, to engage the services of an integrated U.S. Government.