Service-oriented architecture can be difficult to understand and even more difficult to implement. But the technology experts who can cut through the technical jargon and intense market hype say SOA has the potential to play a major role in the future of systems development.

In short, SOA provides a framework for developing software components to manage data communications among different systems. Because those components are platform-independent, they make it possible to build services that work with multiple applications. Therefore, SOA has the potential to increase interoperability and save time and money in application development.

This new way of thinking is slow to take hold in the federal market. Similar ideas have emerged before with great fanfare, only to fade away with barely a whimper. But experts say SOA is different.

A group of federal and industry executives met in January to talk about SOA and its possible impact on the federal government. Judi Hasson, a Federal Computer Week editor at large, moderated the roundtable discussion. FCW and Thomas and Herbert Consulting, an Enterprise Architecture Center of Excellence, sponsored the roundtable, which met at the firm’s Arlington, Va., headquarters.

The participants were Michael Borden, senior practice manager for homeland security at Thomas and Herbert; Richard Burk, chief architect at the Office of Management and Budget; John Dodd, a principal consultant in Computer Sciences Corp.’s federal practice; Mark Forman, a partner in KPMG’s Risk Advisory Services; Roy Mabry, assistant to the director of the Defense Department’s Architecture and Interoperability Directorate; and John Sullivan, chief enterprise architect at the Environmental Protection Agency.

The following is an abridged version of that discussion.

Q: Where do you think service-oriented architecture fits in the federal government, particularly in an age of tight budgets?

BURK: Let’s define what we mean by service-oriented architecture. It comes in at multiple levels. It can either be at the business level, such as human resources, financial management, case management, grants management, customer management. Or it can be all the way down to something fairly discrete and precise, such as e-authentication, in which we want to be sure that the individual we are talking to or doing business with is in fact that individual.