Cynthia Mendoza, chief architect at the intelligence community, said the reference architecture framework (RAF) seeks to be a “cradle to grave” model that could enable IC to implement information technology programs through standard integration and business approaches, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

“Today, the RAF has advanced interoperability and safeguarding in three foundational areas. I like to call these the bedrock: Collaboration services, identity, credential and access management and the data reference architecture,” Mendoza said on the network’s Ask the CIO. 

“These foundational architectures provide collaboration capabilities and tools across our community shared space. The RAF success in the IC has been promulgated globally to the Five Eyes enterprise with our international partners as well.”

She cited the importance of building trust across the community’s IT enterprise and described RAF as a people process.

“It begins with developing a stakeholder engagement strategy that is inclusive of all the key enterprise stakeholders and together we focus on a gap,” she said of the framework.