In order to respond more quickly to ever-changing business needs, share information more efficiently and securely, deliver services to citizens more effectively and strengthen intergovernmental interoperability, governments need to redefine their architecture strategies and build an enterprise architecture that refashions applications as services. In addition, organizations with legacy technologies like mainframes need a way to extend the value of existing assets. Enter service-oriented architecture (SOA).

This issue brief, underwritten by Red Hat, discusses the challenges governments face when trying to build scalable systems that integrate across multiple agencies to provide easily accessible services to constituents. It also examines how service-oriented architecture and open source components promote using information technology to automate the consumption and provision of service over the Web.