Case USA55: How a City Infrastructure Program Substituted IoT Sensor Rollouts for Enterprise Architecture Design
- Sunil Dutt Jha
- Jul 30
- 1 min read
Overview:
This case is part of a 100-diagnostic series revealing how US infrastructure initiatives have mislabeled technology deployments as “Enterprise Architecture progress.”
In urban infrastructure, a recurring pattern is treating the installation of IoT sensors as evidence of enterprise design.
Smart poles, traffic monitors, and environmental sensors were installed citywide, producing streams of data — yet the enterprise structure linking asset maintenance, emergency response, urban planning, and regulatory compliance was never modeled.
P1–P6 Insight Preview:
P1 (Strategy): IoT was justified as a “smart city” transformation, but there was no architectural roadmap tying sensor data to cross-departmental decision-making or citizen outcomes.
P2 (Process): Local monitoring processes were defined, but citywide workflows for acting on data were fragmented or nonexistent.
P3 (System): Sensor systems fed multiple dashboards, but no unified behavior model governed data flows across public works, traffic, and emergency services.
P4 (Component): Devices, gateways, and analytics modules were procured and deployed with inconsistent standards.
P5 (Implementation): Rollouts were completed on time, but feature updates and integrations were ad hoc based on vendor roadmaps.
P6 (Operations): Business ops could view conditions in real time, but tech ops juggled multiple proprietary systems; both relied on manual intervention to coordinate cross-agency responses.
Role Disconnects:
CEO/Mayor: “Our city is now data-driven” — but data rarely translates into coordinated action.
CIO: “Sensors cover every district” — yet systems can’t talk to each other without human mediation.
Sales Head (Public-Private Partnerships): “Smart city branding attracts investment” — but operational results lag.
Chief EA: “We digitized endpoints, not the city’s enterprise model”
Head of Urban Operations: “I see the problem instantly, but still have to call five departments to solve it”
Want to read more?
Subscribe to architecturerating.com to keep reading this exclusive post.