I was invited to speak at a government SOA conference. I was asked to speak because of our team’s best selling book on the topic called Service Oriented Architecture for Dummies (published by Wiley last November). I wasn’t sure what to expect. Does the government love Service Oriented Architectures (SOA)? So, here is what I found. There is tons of interest in the U.S. government. There were more than 300 people who attended my talk. What I found interesting is the difference between how a commercial user thinks about the Return on Investment from SOA and how someone in government thinks about this. It is quite different. A government agency not only has to get approval from the departments heads but from the congress as well! How do you prove to a bunch of legislators what a service oriented architecture is and how it will benefit the way services are offered to their constituents! No wonder we still have a vacuum tube based air traffic control system!