Information technology architecture is an IT practice to align DPW’s information resources to enable the department to reach its goals and accomplish its mission. This is done through business architectures, system architectures, and technical architectures. It has been very useful in DPW in process alignment for new systems, in the IT capital planning and acquisition process. These architectures provided by DPW/OITS are being used in various operations in the department (Safety for Solid Waste Collections, Abandoned Vehicle Operations, SWEEP, Recycling, OITS), and by the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) in citywide IT capital planning.

All new IT investments have accompanying enterprise architectures (EA) for PIFs, including business, information, application, and network architectures. Below are the department's high-level enterprise architectures.