Domain teams and working groups are established to develop enterprise architecture artifacts. Working groups can be convened by anyone at the NIH, while domain teams are convened by the Chief IT Architect.
Domain teams are temporary working groups established to develop enterprise architecture artifacts within a specific domain of the NIH Enterprise Architecture. For example, a domain team may be assembled to validate a data model, which is a specific model of the Information Architecture. Or, a domain team may be assembled to develop an architecture brick that lists NIH’s approved standards for a specific technology such as enterprise level database management systems or web-server operating systems.
Another method for documenting architecture standards and best community practices (BCP) is the NIH Request for Comments (NIHRFC) series. Any NIH stakeholder or working group can propose a new standard or BCP using this document series.
The process by which domain teams and working groups develop enterprise architecture artifacts is one based on consensus. As illustrated in the figure below, domain teams and working groups follow a structured process for reaching consensus.
Figure 1: The Domain Team And Working Group Process
This process ensures cross-NIH representation, consensus, and alignment with Federal acquisition and procurement requirements, such as the Federal Acquisitions Regulations (FAR). At a high-level the process is as follows: