Federal Enterprise Architecture

Harvey Newstrom was hired by SAIC to develop an agency architecture following FEA standards for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The architecture had to comply with both classified and unclassified requirements as well as individual requirements for every agency and type of data records archived by NARA. SAIC later won contracts to implement similar agency architectures for US Forest Service and then other agencies.

• He authored the first federal security architecture that combined INFOSEC, TCSEC, DCID, ISO, and NIST criteria into a single unified security framework to protect both classified and unclassified data.
• His security architecture was cited by OMB auditors as “the best” of any agency.
• His work was requisitioned by Dr. Ron Ross for inclusion into NIST SP 800-53, NIST SP 800-53A, and NIST SP 800-53B standards to protect all unclassified federal data.
• These standards were later approved by the Joint Task Force to protect all DoD, Intelligence Community, and National Security classified data as well.
• These standards are now required for civilian cloud services, telecommunications, and critical infrastructure.

Each federal architecture implementation was tailored for each agency’s unique needs. However, they all complied with Federal Enterprise Architecture standards and NIST requirements, producing a similar hierarchical structure including the following volumes.