OPEN ISSUES ON INFORMATION SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE RESEARCH DOMAIN: THE VISION

André Vasconcelos CEO - Centro de Engenharia Organizacional, INESC, Lisboa, Portugal Email: [email protected]

Carla Marques Pereira EST-IPCB, Av. do Empresário, Castelo Branco, Portugal Email: [email protected]

Pedro Sousa, José Tribolet CEO - Centro de Engenharia Organizacional, INESC, Lisboa, Portugal Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Keywords: Information System Architecture (ISA), ISA Evaluation, Business/System Alignment, Enterprise Information System, CEO Framework.

Abstract: Currently organizations, pushed by several business and technological changes, are more concern about Information systems (IS) than ever. Though organizations usually still face each IS as a separately technological issue with slight relations with business domain. This paper discusses the importance of the Information System Architecture (ISA) as the tool for ensuring a global view on IS and for explicitly assessing alignment between technology and business processes and strategies. In this paper, considering the numerous topics, technologies and buzzwords surrounding ISA domain, we identify the major ISA open issues, namely: ISA Modelling, ISA Methodology, ISA Evaluation, IS Architectural Styles and Patterns, and IS/Business Alignment. We also present our advances in addressing some of these issues, by proposing an approach for ISA evaluation and IS/Business Alignment measure. This approach is supported on an ISA modelling framework and provides several indicators and measures for ISA evaluation. This approach is applied to an IS health care project evaluation.

1 INTRODUCTION enterprise knowledge handling. These new business needs have being forcing organizations to redesign their strategies, reengineering their business During the last decade several important processes and positioned efficient information technological progresses have been accomplished in handling in every organization agenda. (Davenport the computer science, as component-of-the-shelf and Beers, 1995). (COTS) software have raised and established In spite of significant efforts and investments at (namely ERP, CRM, B2B and Intranet systems), the business and software levels, currently organizations mobile and communication technologies have do not get the expected returns by just using the emerged, and the integration technologies has been “best” or the latest IT in the market (Boar 1999). raised and reinvented (where webServices stands for This paper discusses the preponderant role of the integration current hot buzzword) (W3C, 2001). Information System Architecture (ISA) in ensuring Organizations, on the other hand, were faced Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) fully aligned with new business challenges in a changing business with organization strategy and business needs. environment – as the market globalization, the The ISA topic is a quite new issue since only in costumer process reorientation, the need for product last decade the need for handling concepts that innovation, the product life cycle reduction, and the overwhelm the description of how a system is raising importance of efficient information and internally built emerged (Zachman 1987). Currently,

the ISA research field is quite confuse – considering processes, besides Information System (IS) models its immaturity and its different influences – being that support them. Usually, at enterprise architecture quite difficult to agree in a common definition for level, IS are consider “simple” resources used in ISA, to set ISA major concepts, or define ISA business (as people, equipment and material, etc.) – relations to Enterprise Architecture and Software e.g., (Eriksson, 2000) and (Marshall, 2000). Architecture, among many others issues, as Information System Architecture (ISA) explained in section 2. addresses the representation of the IS components This paper pretends to review and present ISA structure, its relationships, principles and directives major research issues namely ISA modelling, ISA (Garlan et. al. 1995), with the main propose of methodologies, ISA evaluation, IS architectural supporting business (Maes et. al. 2000). styles and patterns, and IS/business alignment Spewak in (Spewak, 1992), argues that the ISA assessment (see section 3). description is a key step in ensuring that IT provides In section 4, we present our research in the ISA access to data when, where and how is required at field and we propose an approach for ISA quality business level. ISA is also important in ensuring IS evaluation, namely IS/business alignment, flexible, durable and business oriented (Zijden et. al. informational entities accuracy, technological 2000), in providing the means for business, IS and choices, etc. This approach is further explored in our IT components alignment, and ensuring greater first field experience in the Portuguese public health efficiency using IT (Open 2001). care system (see section 5). Quoting IEEE (IEEE 1998), the ISA level should be high. Thus, ISA is distinguished from software engineering topics – as representation and analysis 2 INFORMATION SYSTEM methods (e.g., E-R diagrams, DFD) – presenting an ARCHITECTURE CONCEPTS abstraction of internal system details and supporting organization business processes (Zijden et. al. 2000). ISA usually distinguish three aspects, defining The research described in this paper is enclosed three “sub architectures” (Spewak, 1992): in the organizational engineering research domain • Informational Architecture, or Data Architecture. (also known as enterprise engineering) (Liles et. al This level represents main data types that support 2003). Organizational engineering’s main focus is business. on the organization, namely its internal and external • Application Architecture. Application architecture business environment and the information system defines applications needed for data management and that supports business needs. The authors share the business support. CEO (Center for Organizational Engineering) vision on organizational engineering research domain • Technological Architecture. This architecture described in Figure 1. represents the main technologies used in application implementation and the infrastructures that provide an environment for IS deployment. Informational Architecture’s major propose is the identification and definition of the major data types that support business development (Spewak, 1992), (DeBoever, 1997). Inmon (Inmon, 1997) characterizes data (the support of the information architecture) through different dimensions: primitive vs. derived, private vs. publics and historical vs. operational vs. provisional data. He argues that the Figure 1. CEO vision on Organizational Engineering ISA should be influence by the data characteristics. (Vasconcelos et. al. 2001) The second architecture level, defined by DeBoever (DeBoever, 1997), is the application (or As described in Figure 1, Enterprise Architecture system) architecture. This architecture defines the (EA) considers all the issues relevant for getting a main applications needed for data management and coherent and comprehensible picture of enterprise business support. This architecture should not be a (as people, business, strategy definition, systems, definition of the software used to implement governance principles, etc.). EA is a group of systems. The functional definition of the models defined for getting a coherent and applications that should ensure access to data in comprehensible picture of the enterprise (Tissot et. acceptable time, format and cost is this architecture al. 1998). EA is considered a vaster concept than main focus (Spewak, 1992). Application architecture ISA, which includes business strategies and

defines the major functional components of the concern on the conceptual definition of ISA major architecture. notions and its representation in a graphical way. The Technological architecture defines the major EAB (Enterprise IT Architecture Blueprints) is a technologies that provide an environment for reference research in this topic. Boar verified that IT application building and deployment. At this level, architectures do not have a repeatable, coherent, the major technological concepts relevant for the IS non-ambiguous and easily perceptible are identified – as network, communication, representation. He proposed a set of blueprints for IT distributed computation, etc. (Spewak, 1992). Architecture drawing in a systematic, coherent and rigorous way (Boar 1999). However, introducing 61 new notions and icons, not supported in any norm, 3 A VISION ON INFORMATION or standard language, organizations, in order to use SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE OPEN EAB, are forced to have an high knowledge and experience on EAB (turning out its acceptance and ISSUES adoption difficult). In the 90’s, software architecture had similar As stated before, ISA is a quite new research concerns, namely there was not a consensus in area. In the past (until de 90’s) modelling the software architecture concepts. IEEE formed a task relations between different information systems and force that defined IEEE 1471 norm: “Recommended business was not an issue, since each system existed Practice for Architectural Description of Software- in its standalone world. Thus, ISA was not a Intensive Systems”, that provides a conceptual concern, since software engineering approaches framework for software architecture (IEEE 1998). managed to address most of individually information Based on IEEE 1471, Open Group proposed a system issues. framework for ISA design and evaluation: TOGAF – With network and communication evolutions, The Open Group Architectural Framework. This complex systems interfaces were implemented in framework, among other things, proposes a technical order to ensure data synchronization. The reference model that defines a taxonomy for maintenance costs raised, the problems derived from coherent, consistent and hierarchical description of redundant data became a major issue (and cost) for the services provided by the application platform. organizations. TOGAF framework focus is mainly technological, In the 90’s, the information systems growed-up, not addressing ISA at informational and application and became part of each enterprise’s department levels. Moreover, TOGAF framework does not business. The database management systems introduce any modelling blueprints, but a set of IT transformed file replication in database replication notions and principles. (Inmon, 1997). The traditional software engineering The clarification of the major concepts that are approaches failed to answer these new needs and relevant for ISA modelling is a fundamental step in several ISA research topics emerged. order to have a formal and simultaneously In this section we present an overview on comprehensible and useful (conceptual and currently ISA major open research topics. The ISA technological) tool for ISA representation, namely at research topics list described next was not developed informational, application and technological levels. through a statistical literature review, since these However, currently, there is not any language, topics are open issues and some of them are not yet mechanism or tool that addresses all ISA concepts. addressed in literature. The topics presented were The identification of such concepts and base notions driven not only from literature review but mostly for ISA representation, are a vital step in ISA from our field experience on the area, namely semantic manipulation and for all the research in the considering several real organizations ISA problems. area. Our goal is to establish a common research The relation between the different concepts in ground for this area in order to develop our ISA sub-architectures (informational, application investigation and cooperate with other researchers in and technological) and business is also an open the field. issue. In IS/business alignment assessment is crucial to navigate between these abstractions levels – for 3.1 ISA Modelling example, if a business process is changed for some reason (e.g., business process reengineering) it is important to navigate to the systems and infer which The representation and graphical manipulation of informational entities, applications and technological a model on some thing or concept is a critical tool components may need changes. for discussion and abstraction. ISA modelling is

3.2 ISA Methodology point in IS evaluation is IS/Business alignment assessment, present in section 3.5. A major research topic in ISA is focused on the definition of methodologies for Information System 3.4 IS Architectural Styles and Planning. Spewak proposes a methodology – Enterprise Patterns Architecture Planning (EAP) – able to define application architecture from informational and The identification of design patterns and best business requirements (Spewak, 1992). Using practices in ISA is an important topic in order to aid Spewak methodology and Zachman framework the information system architect in the creation of an several institutions have been proposing adaptations ISA. that best answer to its needs – interesting case In software engineering research field software studies are Information System Architectures in the engineers when defining a software system use American Federal Government (FEAF 1999), DoD software architecture best practices (Gamma, 1995). Technical Reference Model (DoD, 2002), Treasury The definition of architectural styles and patterns Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAPMO, transform software architecture from an art into 2002), among others. Though Spewak methodology standard engineering practices. is the most known information system planning In traditional architecture (as building approach, it has several problems that make it quite architecture) the use of patterns is the natural way to difficult to use in real problems. Namely, Spewak define new architectures (Jacobson 2002). approach defines applications based only in relations Currently in ISA there are no patterns or between data and business activities, not considering architecture styles for all sub-architectures current technologies or existing solutions, which (informational, application, and technological). turn out his approach quite inapplicable in most However there are some best practices that are situations. becoming patterns. For example, at technological Other approaches for IS planning have been level the three tier architecture is a quite used pattern proposed by several consultant firms as IBM (Hein, (where data, business logic and presentation are 1985), SAP (Miller, 1998), Microsoft (Lory 2003). separated in different components) (OOPSLA, However most of these approaches are technological 2001). dependant on the technology that the firm is selling. Though ISA is still much of art instead of an Approaches as CIMOSA (AMICE 1993) and engineering effort and therefore this research area is RM-ODP (International 1995) try to address the still in its infancy. enterprise architecture and the system architecture simultaneously. 3.5 IS/Business Alignment

3.3 ISA Evaluation In the Critical Issues of Information Systems Management (CIISM, 2001) report, the alignment of The quality measure of the ISA is another Information Systems (IS) with Business represents research topic in this area. The quality measure is 54.2% of the Information Systems Managers’ concern on inferring the ISA accurateness to a concerns and in the same study, the IS Alignment business model, existing technologies, and corporate takes second place as the factor that most contributes strategy. to the IS’ success in the organization. ISA evaluation is an important research topic Taking this into consideration, we define since currently there are only adhoc and non Alignment among Business, Systems and methodological ways to evaluate if an ISA fits Information as a way to quantify the coherency level enterprise business and enterprise strategy. The ISA in relation to the business necessity, the systems evaluation is also an important topic for assess if offer and information management (Pereira, 2003). new information systems are align with current ISA However, in order to evaluate the coherency level at informational, application and technological among these components two important points must levels. be attended: (i) the architecture must be correctly Traditionally ISA evaluation is accomplished defined and contemplate all the relevant situations using common financial ratios (Wagner, 2003). for the organization (see section 2) and; (ii) to this However these approaches proved to be very architecture the rules that guarantee the alignment difficult to use, since IS benefits quantification is a must be applied (see section 4). not a simple task. Giaglis presents an approach for Attending to the previous paragraph, the quantifying IS benefits (Giaglis, 1999). A central interdependency between Enterprise Architecture

«process» and Alignment is unquestionable, since the first one < CRUD process is the mean to the second one and to achieve the

«Business Service» Business wish of having an “aligned organization”, is supported «IS Service» Service definitively, the architecture definition and ensuring IS S e rv ic e re lates «Information Entity» «IS Block» its alignment might not be a necessary or sufficient «operation» has > operation In fo rm a tio n is u s e d > IS B lo c k condition, but is surely the best way to guarantee it. E n tity

Other important point, it is ISA evaluation part of presented in section 3.3. Understanding how is implemented IS/Business is aligned/misaligned contributes to the rela tes architecture assessment as a component of that «IT Block» exists IT B lo c k «IT Service» evaluation. IT S e rv ic e

In next section we describe our approach to Figure 2. CEO UML Meta-model Extensions for ISA some of these research topics. (Vasconcelos et. al., 2003) The core concepts in the CEO framework profile are: 4 OUR APPROACH • Business Process – a collection of activities that produces value to a customer; In this section we describe how we are • Information Entity – any person, place, physical thing addressing some of the open issues described in or concept that is relevant in the business context and section 3, specifically ISA Modelling (3.1), ISA about which is possible and relevant (for the evaluation (3.3), and IS/Business align assessment organization) to keep information; (3.5). • IS Block – a collection of mechanisms and operations organized in order to manipulate data; 4.1 ISA Modelling • IT Block –infrastructure, application platform and technological/software component that realizes (or In order to model the enterprise the implements) an (or several) IS Block(s). Organizational Engineering Center (or CEO, for These blocks can be further specialized; for short, in Portuguese) proposed the CEO framework instance at technological level CEO defines IT (Vasconcelos et. al. 2001) for modelling enterprises Infrastructure Block (representing the physical and using a restricted set of business objects. The CEO infra-structural concepts), IT Platform Block framework was defined as an UML profile (UML (representing the collection of services needed for 1997). implementing and IT deploying applications), and IT Although the CEO framework could not be used Application Block (representing the technological to define a complete ISA, it presented some implementation of an IS Block). Please see interesting extensions to represent dependencies (Vasconcelos et. al., 2003) for further detail. between businesses and systems. The business objects defined in the framework are goals for strategy modelling; processes for business process 4.2 IS/Business Alignment Assessment modelling, resources for business resource modelling, and blocks for IS modelling. The CEO The IS/Business Alignment Assessment is based framework also ensures consistency, easy of use and on three dimensions deriving from the Enterprise provides mechanisms to maintain integrity with the Architecture’s components: Business Architecture, ultimate goal of reducing the “impedance mismatch” Information Architecture and Application between business and IT architectures. Architecture. Recently, CEO framework founding concepts at In this approach, understanding the relationships Information System level where investigated and an that exist among the architectural components and UML profile for ISA modelling at informational, the possibility of measuring the alignment as the application and technological levels was proposed result of three possible misalignments, is the key that (Vasconcelos et. al., 2003). Figure 2 presents the enables us to evaluate the IS/Business Alignment as current core concepts of the CEO framework (at ISA the misalignment: level). • between Business Process (BP) (part of Business Architecture) and Information (part of Information Architecture);

• between BP (part of Business Architecture) • ntP, number of total processes and Applications (part of Application Relative to the Alignment between Application Architecture); • Architecture and Information Architecture we have, between Applications (part of Application  nEMA  nGM  ,where: AlinAA_ AI = 1−  + 1−  / 2 Architecture) and Information (part of  ntE   nGM + nGA Information Architecture). • nEMA represents the number of entities managed by In Figure 3, we present the rules that allow us to more than one application system (Rule 3.1 negation) quantify the alignment. As mentioned, the • nGM represents the number of cases managed Alignment is based on three dimensions, and these manually (Rule 3.2 negation) individually quantified allow us to quantify the alignment as one (Pereira, 2003). • nGA represents the number of cases managed automatically among application systems • ntE, number of total entities Business -Rule 1.1 - All entities are created (C) only Architecture With the formulas presented it is possible to by one process - Rule 2.1 - Each business process should be - Rule 1.2 - All processes create, update supported by at least one application system quantify separately each one of the dimensions and/or delete (CUD) at least one entity - Rule 2.2 - All application systems must be - Rule 1.3 - All entities are read (R) at least associated with at least one business process presented in the alignment, being the level of by one process alignment obtained by the average of the obtained values for each one of those dimensions. Information Application Architecture Architecture - Rule 3.1 - An entity is managed by only one application system - Rule 3.2 - The data management 4.3 Assessing ISA quality indicators should be automatic among the application systems Figure 3: IS/Business Alignment’s Rules Aiming the identification of ISA quality attributes and the identification of a methodology for

Following are presented the formulas that allow inference on the ISA suitability for a business model us to quantify the alignment; these formulas are and other restrictions, several prototype studies are based on the rules presented in the Figure 3. As being accomplished. mentioned, the Alignment is based on three We are using the UML profile for ISA, described dimensions that individually quantified allow us to in section 4.1, in order to model the AS-IS ISA, quantify the alignment as one. representing the current architecture. For the Alignment between Business We also defined several indicators and metrics at Architecture and Information Architecture the business and system level for evaluation of IS/IT formula defined is, projects. In order to infer the ISA Suitability for the  nEcP nPE nErP  AlinAN _ AI =  + +  / 3 where: organization some indicators were defined:  ntE ntP ntE  • Functional Overlapping indicator, defined as: • nEcP represents the number of entities created by , where: only one business process (Rule 1.1) ∑ Fold ∑ Fnew • nPE represents the number of processes that create, Fnew – function implemented by the propose project update and/or delete (CUD) at least one entity (Rule 1.2) Fold – function implemented by the propose project that already exist in other systems in the organization • nErP represents the number of entities that are read • Integration indicator defined as: (R) by at least one process (Rule 1.3)

• ntE, number of total entities Integration Cost Pr oject Costs • • ntP, number of total processes Technology change indicator defined as: For the Alignment between Business ∑ NewIT ∑ IT , where: Architecture and Application Architecture the NewIT – new technology introduced by the project formula is, that is not used in other existing IS of the organization  nASwBP  nBPwAS  , where: AlinAN _ AA = 1−  + 1− / 2 IT – technology proposed by the project  ntS   ntP  • nASwBP represents the number of application • Informational Entity Overlapping indicator, defined as: systems without any business process associated (Rule 2.2 ∑ IEexist ∑ IEnew , where negation) CUD CUD • nBPwAS represents the number of business process IEexistCUD – informational entity Created, Updated or without any support by an application system (Rule 2.1 Deleted by the systems proposed but already exist in other organization systems negation) IEnew –informational entity Created, Updated or Deleted • ntS, number of total application systems by the systems proposed.

• Informational entity model compatibility indicator, section 4.4 in evaluating a project in the Portuguese defined as: Health Care System. The project proponent is a large Portuguese ∑ IE ∑ IE , where ≠ Re f . Model new hospital with about 5000 employees (1000 medical – Informational entity, which attributes doctors). In the past, the hospital information IE≠Re f . Model differed from Information entity reference model. systems’ (IS) grown as independent information islands (according to hospital health care units). The IEnew – informational entity Created, Updated or Deleted by the systems proposed. project proposal described here focus on a particular business process: the drug management process, see We have defined several other ISA evaluation Figure 4. indicators considering financial, project, business «resource» «resource» «resource» processes, systems interfaces, among other specific Physician Pharmacist nurse topics – for further detail please refer to

«Clinical process» «Clinical process» «Clinical process» «resource» «resource» «resource» (Vasconcelos et. al., 2004). Prescribe Drug Drug Drug Patient Treatment Drug Therapy Preparation Drug Administration The approach described in (Vasconcelos et. al., «resource» «resource» 2004) revealed to be useful when evaluating new IS «resource» Drug Drug Therapy projects that should be part of a previously defined «Administrative process» Patient Drug Warehouse ISA. However the approach was not very accurate Management when measuring IS/business alignment. We address Figure 4. Drug Management Business Process this issue in next section. This business process consumes and produces several informational entities as drug, patient, drug 4.4 An integrated ISA evaluation prescription, health care professional, approach administrative/management personnel and drug supplier. The drug and drug prescription In order to measure the ISA quality, we realized informational entities add additional attributes and that in the approach described in previous section alter the format of existing ones. Figure 5 presents the business/system alignment measure was poorly the Drug informational entity. accomplished (for example the approach does not E ntity N am e Drug Inform ational E ntity n. º 11.1 Identifier name shows if an entity is created by multiple business Type Thing D escription Substance used for m edical purposes sold on pharm acies, processes). Thus, in this paper, we will present an prod uce in lab oratories o r in th e pharm acy. Relations is prescribe by an physician (12.1) approach to integrate the concepts beyond the is u sed in a patien t (1 ) is prepared by a pharm acist (12.3) IS/Business formulas described in section 4.2 in the nurse (12.2) may ensure patient is having correctly the drug approach described in 4.3, in order to have a global ISA evaluation approach. Thus, in addition to the quality indicators Figure 5. Drug Informational Entity described in section 4.3, we propose to integrate the Currently this business process is badly concepts presents on the alignment formulas as a supported throw the Hospital Drug System (HDS) detail view of the Functional Overlapping and that only supports the pharmaceutical activities and Informational Entity Overlapping indicators. poorly supports physicians and nurses’ activities. By this we are trying to improve the ISA This project is expected to deliver an IS that evaluation as set of several dimensions and one of supports the full business process and thus reducing those dimensions is the alignment among business, prescription mistakes (mostly cause by paper based systems and information. physician prescription), minimizing nurses wasted Applying the alignment formulas to the ISA time in “copying” drug prescription from paper to evaluation can help us to understand it not only as a the system and reducing process time by 30% to horizontal and global assessment but also as a 60%. The proposed integrated drug management composition of some restricted and vertical views. system (IDMS) application architecture is described In the following section, we show the first in Figure 6. experience’s results using the alignment formulas «IS Block» onto a Portuguese project. ID M S

«IS B lock» «IS Block» «IS Block»

Drug Drug Patient Drug 5 FIRST EXPERIENCE Prescription Administration Preparation

This section presents our first attempt to apply Figure 6. Proposed integrated drug management system the integrated ISA evaluation approach described in (IDMS) application hierarchical view

Considering the evaluation indicators, integrated to re-evaluate the project proposal. Currently we are with the IS/Business formulas, we developed the waiting for the “new” proposal. project evaluation. In this section, only some of the ISA quality indicators are described. In terms of ISA, the IDMS presents some 6 CONCLUSIONS functional overlapping with the HDS, once it will implement some operations that already exist in the This paper describes our vision on major HDS such as drug creation, search, update and information system architecture open issues. We delete as well as drug prescription functions. Thus, started by presenting ISA concepts and ISA relations the functional overlapping indicator with other edging research areas (as software (∑Fold ∑Fnew) presents a value near 0.4 (meaning architecture and enterprise architecture). Consi- that about 40% of functions already exist in current dering the technological and conceptual mess on systems). ISA area this paper establishes a common referential Project Integration costs are very high (40% of for ISA hot research topics, namely: ISA Modelling, project cost), 70% of which are related with the ISA Methodology, ISA Evaluation, IS Architectural integration between HDS and IDMS. Styles and Patterns, and IS/Business Alignment. At technological level, IDMS is based on Besides setting a vision on ISA domain, we different technologies than the reference model ones describe our current approach to ISA evaluation. (namely the IT platform and server hardware), This approach is based on our previous work and, in presenting a technology change indicator of 0.5 this paper, we combine it with IS/business alignment (meaning that about half of project technologies are measures. The proposed approach was used for new technologies for the organization). evaluating an IS health care project. The IDMS presents an informational entity This first experience confirmed that the approach overlapping indicator ( ) provides the tools (namely measures) for evaluating ∑ IEexist CUD ∑ IEnew of 1, meaning that all the informational entitiesCUD and ISA considering existing IS and business create, updated or deleted in the proposed system processes. However, in this first evaluation, we already exist in other organization systems, which notice some difficulties in putting together all the justifies the project high integration costs. different measures in order to have a final evaluation Considering the global ISA, the IDMS presents a grade. Thus, we are now working on combining all interface disregarding indicator near 1, meaning that the measures in a fully integrated approach. almost all interfaces provided by the IDMS do not Currently we are planning to build an ISA best respect at technological level the standard defined in practices database and integrate this knowledge in an the hospital ISA plan. ISA Computer Aided Evaluation methodology and We also realized that 31% of entities are created tool. by more than one process (Rule 1.1, Figure 3) and this happens because the same entity is partial used by several processes. Some processes (9%) never 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS created/updated/deleted at least one entity, being against Rule 1.2, but this result is justified because The research presented in this paper was possible these are the processes that elaborate the statistics thanks to the support of Saúde XXI and several reports. In the alignment between business processes Portuguese health care organizations. and information, Rule 1.3 was fully satisfied, all entities are read at least by one process. As final comment about this type of alignment we have a REFERENCES level 80% of alignment and if we consider the Functional Overlapping and Informational Entity AMICE, 1993. CIM-OSA Open System Architecture for Overlapping indicators, the alignment result sustain CIM, 2nd Revised and Extended Edition, Springer- the indicators previously presented as a way of Verlag. identify where the problem is. Boar, Bernard, 1999, Constructing Blueprints for We do not present here the analysis for the other Enterprise IT Architecture, John Wiley & Sons. two types of alignment, for page limitation reasons. Computer Sciences Corporation, 2001. Critical Issues of Considering the previous indicators the project Information Systems Management, proposal (as presented before) was rejected. http://www.csc.com/aboutus/uploads/CI_Report.pdf However, considering the possible incomes of having the drug management business process fully Davenport, T.H. and Beers, M.C. 1995. Managing supported, some suggestions were required in order Information About Processes, Journal of Management Information Systems, 12(1), pp. 57-80.

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