Aligning business operations with IT architectures does not, in and of itself, guarantee success. Witness the failure of so many of the dot com enterprises.
Development and promotional costs are still too high. Additional standards, such as ebXML and UDDI, are required to bring those costs into better alignment with the actual values added by each entity in the supply chain. In particular, standards are needed to specify the actual values contributed by each supplier in terms of performance objectives established by customers, who in the realm of government are more appropriately called "citizens" (or in the context of GPRA, "stakeholders").
The theory of the firm holds that business organizations form when the cost of transactions becomes too high without them. The Internet has greatly reduced the cost of business transactions, notwithstanding the fact that many people occupying positions of power in business hierarchies have stronly vested interests in opposing such efficiencies.
Perhaps the dot com failures will have a chastening impact upon those who were so bold as to think they could downplay the true interests of their customers while imposing their own will upon the marketplace.
