A central management authority for a system, such as a power utility system, is disclosed. The central management authority communicates with a plurality of meter data management systems and with a plurality of headend systems, the meter data management systems generating commands and the headend systems communicating with one or more meters (such as one or more smart meters). The central management authority includes a gateway layer and a core layer. The gateway layer includes a plurality of input connector routines to communicate with each of the plurality of source systems and a plurality of output connector routines to communicate with each of the plurality of target systems.; The core layer includes a plurality of core adapters, with the core adapters performing a one-to-one translation of communications from the plurality of meter data management systems generating commands to the plurality of the head end systems.