Interoperability - EGovernment

EGovernment

Speaking from an eGovernment perspective, interoperability refers to the collaboration ability of cross-border services for citizens, businesses and public administrations. Exchanging data can be a challenge due to language barriers, different specifications of formats and varieties of categorisations. Many more hindrances can be identified.

If data is interpreted differently, collaboration is limited, takes longer and is not efficient. For instance if a citizen of country A wants to purchase land in country B, the person will be asked to submit the proper address data. Address data in both countries include: Full name details, street name and number as well as a post code. The order of the address details might vary. In the same language it is not an obstacle to order the provided address data; but across language barriers it becomes more and more difficult. If the language requires other characters it is almost impossible, if no translation tools are available.

Hence eGovernment applications need to exchange data in a semantically interoperable manner. This saves time and money and reduces sources of errors. Fields of practical use are found in every policy area, be it justice, trade or participation etc. Clear concepts of interpretation patterns are required.

Many organizations are dedicated to interoperability. All have in common that they want to push the development of the World Wide Web towards the semantic web. Some concentrate on eGovernment, eBusiness or data exchange in general. In Europe, for instance, the European Commission and its IDABC programme issue the European Interoperability Framework. They also initiated the Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe (SEMIC.EU). A European Land Information Service (EULIS) was established in 2006, as a consortium of European National Land Registers. The aim of the service is to establish a single portal through which customers are provided with access to information about individual properties, about land and property registration services, and about the associated legal environment. In the United States, the government's CORE.gov service provides a collaboration environment for component development, sharing, registration, and reuse and related to this is the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) work and component repository.