EXPERT RESPONSE
Historically, information architects were responsible for the design and usability of Web sites and other software applications. More recently, we are beginning to think of information architects as the coordinators of information flow through the enterprise. This view encompasses much more than the user experience of a particular application. This information architect is responsible for modeling all applications across the enterprise and the logical data flows between them. In this sense, the information architect is an integral part of the business intelligence (BI) team, but their focus includes more than the BI and data warehouse components alone. I agree that this person should have insight into the IT strategy. In fact, the information architect should be partly, if not entirely, responsible for it. Information architecture, these days, spans disciplines of data warehousing, business intelligence, master data management, enterprise information integration (EII) and others.
I would list the following as the high level responsibilities for the information architect:
- Responsible for expressing the enterprise vision for the applications and the data flows between them
- Responsible for modeling and maintaining the enterprise data models
- Responsible for extending the data models to the application architecture
- Responsible for coordinating the integration and service-oriented architecture (SOA) between applications
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