SOA an 'unnatural act' for government?

Last month, I blogged about a report out of the Center for Digital Governmentthat says it's high time government agencies at all levels start looking at service-oriented architecture to overcome stovepipe systems and "unnecessary duplication of infrastructure that could otherwise be shared."

Now, echoing this sentiment, Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens told attendees at the current FOSE trade show that government agencies need to shift mindsets and embrace SOA.

Stevens' speech reported in Washington Technology and captured by Richard Koman, author of ZDNet's government blog, was a call for changing government organizations and their cultures so that they support information sharing on an open, interoperable and secure systems architecture.

"With regard to information flow, particularly sensitive information, we need to add a new element to our familiar practices, expanding ‘the need to know’ to include ‘the need to share. For some, understandably, this is an unnatural act, the very concept being at odds with decades of doctrine."