This article is the first in a series of three, where we will analyze and evaluate governmental enterprise architecture policies and practices from an international perspective. This first article presents the overall findings from an international study, we have made about governmental EA, and introduces an evaluation and assessment methodology. In the forthcoming articles, we will present an evaluation of selected government’s EA maturity in a comparative perspective, and discuss the usage of maturity models in policy assessment. The third article will present the findings from a 2007 international benchmarking study of more than 20 governments around the world.