Few CIOs or CTO blog about IT. Andy Blumenthal, on the other hand, has plenty to say about enterprise architecture and what he calls the TotalCIO. Blumenthal works as CTO for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). His user-centric enterprise architecture blog promotes the adoption of sound business and technology planning and governance. That goes for both private and public sectors. His TotalCIO blog promotes a customer-centric focus on IT leadership. It can lead to mission excellence, not mission impossible.
 
As the protector of our nation, the ATF works to reduce violent crimes and to prevent terrorism. Blumenthal, working in conjunction with the CIO, plans and carries out strategic technology solutions to help ATF's special agents and investigators to do their jobs better. His responsibilities including developing technology solutions and improvements, incorporating new emerging technology solutions and best practices, and guiding the enterprise architecture planning and governance process.  He also reaches out both internally and externally to communicate and to collaborate about shared IT interests, especially around enterprise architecture, governance, emerging technology, and IT leadership.
 
Blumenthal says he has developed a special methodology for enterprise architecture called user-centric enterprise architecture. "It focuses on first defining the users and their requirements and then building the appropriate solutions for them. It also includes having central IT governance to ensure that money gets well spent on the best solutions possible."

In this podcast, Blumenthal talks about the following:

• what CIOs and CTOs must do to make the enterprise architecture conform to the organization's business architecture
• what business impact of IT that organizations have achieved from some of the enterprise architecture projects he worked on,
• how service-oriented architecture will change the way organizations design their enterprise architecture,
• and how a CIO can become a TotalCIO Blumenthal style.

Bio
Before becoming CTO of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, Andy Blumenthal served as director of enterprise architecture and IT governance at the U.S. Coast Guard. He also was the chief enterprise architecture for the U.S. Secret Service. He lectures at Carnegie Mellon University and the National Defense University, and serves as associate editor of the Journal of Enterprise Architecture. He belongs to the Society for Information Management, the Government Technology Research Alliance, and the Government Advisory Panel of the American Council for Technology/Industry Advisory Council.

Resources
ResourcesAndy Blumenthal's User-Centric Enterprise Architecture Blog
Andy Blumenthal's TotalCIO Blog
Andy Blumenthal in Government Computer News

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis