Enterprise Architecture Adoption Challenges: An exploratory Case Study of the Norwegian Higher Education Sector

Abstract

IT is a challenge to implement Enterprise Architecture (EA) in an organisation. This is also the case in the public sector, like public universities and colleges. There is a very limited research on such issues. It is therefore important to investigate how AE is implemented in various sectors, which benefits are realised and which challenges are most prominent. This interpretive case study investigates the efforts taken towards a common EA in the Norwegian higher education sector. We find that the progress was severely impeded by the lack of top level directions from the ministry, the lack of an overarching architecture council, and the lack of EA competence at the top management level at the individual institutions. The perceived most important benefits were business agility, economies of scale and better decision making.