Enterprise architecture in public ICT procurement in Finland

The use of Enterprise Architecture (EA) as a tool to achieve interoperable information systems and efficient public administration processes has advanced in several countries. In Finland the use of EA in public organizations has been made mandatory in recent years. While the outcomes of the Finnish national enterprise architecture (NEA) cannot be studied yet, we analyzed publicly available requests for proposals (RFP) in order to gain insight on the current state of NEA usage. Our aim was to find out, how the EA methodology is present in the procurement documents. By using a conceptual framework from software architectures we were able to show that while the EA methodology can be used in different roles in the course of public procurement, it is still rarely present.