CommBridge-an enterprise application architecture for electronic government

Driven largely by the re-engineering of Health and Human Services Information Systems for Welfare Reform and Y2K, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is implementing an enterprise-wide infrastructure named CommBridge to meet application data and functional integration requirements mandated by law. The architecture uses a standards based infrastructure (TCP/IP, LDAP, X.500, and X.509) and 80% of the inter-application transaction requirements can be met with a few easy to use API primitives. The project's pilot phase demonstrated the feasibility of the architecture, and a broader implementation was planned Several interagency application interfaces for a new HS case management system are now in production. The architecture implements robust communication between applications using Message Oriented Middleware (MOM), a PKI security mechanism, a centralized directory for addressing and configuration information, incremental deployment, and centralized infrastructure management. Current development will incorporate enterprise level information management capabilities based on the common interchange mechanism and access to enterprise data via the WWW.