Public sector organisations and governments in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) currently face a significant change to their services and infrastructure as they are forced to align their services with their countries’ economic visions. Moreover, combined with the continuous pressures from the Vision Realization Offices (VROs), they lack knowledge of enterprise architecture (EA) as a key driver for digital transformation (DT). The need was clear for a more adaptive and Agile EA framework that is designed specifically for the public sector agencies. This dissertation aims to investigate the role of EA and Agile in supporting the DT of the GCC public sector by examining the current state of DT in the GCC and how it is affected by EA and Agile. Building on existing work on the GCC public sector, it asks the following questions: what is the current state of the digital transformation of the public sector in the GCC; what is the history of the EA frameworks in the public sector; and how they are supporting GCC digital transformation? Furthermore, how are Agile methodology and the EA governance model essential components in driving digital transformation in the public sector? The research used qualitative data by reviewing and analysing existing literature and case studies in the GCC states in addition to previous researcher experience in this field. While it focuses on the GCC, there a few examples from other countries. Furthermore, analysis of the results and the gap analysis showed business/IT misalignment, lack of proper EA, and EA and Agile conflicts in the organisations. Thus, an Agile EA framework was developed. However, further research is needed to determine the impact of the developed framework on the public sector organisations as it still in the early stages and requires further development.

Keywords: Enterprise Architecture (EA), Digital Transformation (DT), Agile, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Public Sector Enterprise Architecture, EA Governance, TOGAF