Interoperability
Encyclopedia
Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of diverse system
s and organizations to work together (inter-operate). The term is often used in a technical systems engineering
sense, or alternatively in a broad sense, taking into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system to system performance
.
While interoperability was initially defined for IT systems or services and only allows for information to be exchanged (see definition below), a more generic definition could be this one:
This generalized definition can then be used on any system, not only information technology system. It defines several criteria that can be used to discriminate between systems that are "really" inter-operable and systems that are sold as such but are not because they don't respect one of the aforementioned criteria, namely:
The IEEE Glossary defines interoperability as:
James A. O'Brien and George M. Marakas define interoperability as:
, they are exhibiting syntactic interoperability. Specified data format
s, communication protocols and the like are fundamental. XML
or SQL
standards are among the tools of syntactic interoperability. This is also true for lower-level data formats, such as ensuring alphabetical characters are stored in ASCII
format in all the communicating systems.
Syntactical interoperability is a necessary condition for further interoperability.
, the term can be defined as:
In two-way radio
, interoperability is composed of three dimensions:
With respect to software, the term interoperability is used to describe the capability of different programs to exchange data via a common set of exchange formats, to read and write the same file format
s, and to use the same protocols. (The ability to execute the same binary code
on different processor
platforms is 'not' contemplated by the definition of interoperability.) The lack of interoperability can be a consequence of a lack of attention to standardization
during the design of a program. Indeed, interoperability is not taken for granted in the non-standards-based portion of the computing world.
According to ISO/IEC 2382-01, Information Technology Vocabulary, Fundamental Terms, interoperability is defined as follows: "The capability to communicate, execute programs, or transfer data among various functional units in a manner that requires the user to have little or no knowledge of the unique characteristics of those units".
Note that the definition is somewhat ambiguous because the user of a program can be another program and, if the latter is a portion of the set of program that is required to be interoperable, it might well be that it does need to have knowledge of the characteristics of other units.
This definition focuses on the technical side of interoperability, while it has also been pointed out that interoperability is often more of an organizational issue: often interoperability has a significant impact on the organizations concerned, raising issues of ownership (do people want to share their data?), labor relations (are people prepared to undergo training?) and usability. In this context, a more apt definition is captured in the term "business process interoperability
".
Interoperability can have important economic consequences, such as network externalities. If competitors' products are not interoperable (due to causes such as patent
s, trade secret
s or coordination failures
), the result may well be monopoly
or market failure
. For this reason, it may be prudent for user communities or governments to take steps to encourage interoperability in various situations. In the United Kingdom
, for example, there is an eGovernment
-based interoperability initiative called e-GIF
while in the United States there is the NIEM initiative. Standards Defining Organizations (SDOs) provide open public software specifications to facilitate interoperability, and an example is Oasis-Open organization. As far as user communities, Neutral Third Party is creating standards for business process interoperability. Another example of a neutral party is the RFC
documents from the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF).
” interoperability – the ability to take a medical device out of its box and easily make it work with one’s other devices – has attracted great attention from both healthcare providers and industry.
Interoperability helps patients get the most out of technology, and it also encourages innovation in the industrial sphere. When different products can be combined without complicated and expensive interfaces, small companies can enter a field and make specialized products. Without interoperability, hospitals are forced to turn to large vendors that provide suites of compatible devices but that do not specialize in any one area. Interoperability promotes competition, and competition encourages innovation and quality.
From the perspective of Intel, a major producer of consumer healthcare devices, there are six major factors that affect an industry’s ability to achieve interoperability. First there needs to be a demand for interoperable products. Second, there must be standards, or rules, defining what interoperability means in the field. Third, business conditions must encourage manufacturers to make their products interoperable. Fourth, guidelines must exist that make the often-complicated standards easier for companies to interpret. Fifth, compliance must be verified by independent testing; and finally, interoperability must be actively promoted. The rapid rise of wireless
technology illustrates that interoperability is attainable.
Conditions in the biomedical industry are still in the process of becoming conducive to the development of interoperable systems. A potential market of interested hospitals exists, and standards for interoperability are being developed. Nevertheless, it seems that current business conditions do not encourage manufacturers to pursue interoperability. Only sixteen to twenty percent of hospitals, for example, use electronic medical records (EMR). With such a low rate of EMR adoption, most manufacturers can get away with not investing in interoperability. In fact, not pursuing interoperability allows some of them to tout the inter-compatibility of their own products while excluding competitors. By promoting EMR adoption, companies such as Intel hope to create an environment in which hospitals will have the collective leverage to demand interoperable products.
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.
, fire fighting
, EMS
, and other public health and safety departments, because first responders need to be able to communicate during wide-scale emergencies. Traditionally, agencies could not exchange information because they operated widely disparate hardware that was incompatible. Agencies' information systems such as computer-aided dispatch systems (CAD) and records management systems (RMS) functioned largely in isolation, so-called "information islands." Agencies tried to bridge this isolation with inefficient, stop-gap methods while large agencies began implementing limited interoperable systems. These approaches were inadequate and the nation's lack of interoperability in the public safety realm become evident during the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center structures. Further evidence of a lack of interoperability surfaced when agencies tackled the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
In contrast to the overall national picture, some states, including Utah, have already made great strides forward. The Utah Highway Patrol
and other departments in Utah have created a statewide data-sharing network using technology from a company based in Bountiful, Utah
, FATPOT Technologies.
The Commonwealth of Virginia is one of the leading states in the United States when it comes to improving interoperability and is continually recognized as a National Best Practice by Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Virginia's proven practitioner-driven Governance Structure ensures that all the right players are involved in decision making, training & exercises, planning efforts, etc. The Interoperability Coordinator leverages a regional structure to better allocate grant funding around the Commonwealth so that all areas have an opportunity to improve communications interoperability. Virginia's strategic plan for communications is updated yearly to include new initiatives for the Commonwealth - all projects and efforts are tied to this plan, which is aligned with the National Emergency Communications Plan, authored by Department of Homeland Security's Office of Emergency Communications (OEC).
The State of Washington seeks to enhance interoperability statewide. The State Interoperability Executive Committee (SIEC), established by the legislature in 2003, works to assist emergency responder agencies (police, fire, sheriff, medical, hazmat, etc.) at all levels of government (city, county, state, tribal, federal) to define interoperability for their local region.
Washington recognizes collaborating on system design and development for wireless radio systems enables emergency responder agencies to efficiently provide additional services, increase interoperability, and reduce long-term costs.
This important work saves the lives of emergency personnel and the citizens they serve.
The U.S. government is making a concerted effort to overcome the nation's lack of public safety interoperability. The Department of Homeland Security's Office for Interoperability and Compatibility (OIC) is pursuing the SAFECOM and CADIP programs, which are designed to help agencies as they integrate their CAD and other IT systems.
The OIC launched CADIP in August 2007. This project will partner the OIC with agencies in several locations, including Silicon Valley
. This program will use case studies to identify the best practices and challenges associated with linking CAD systems across jurisdictional boundaries. These lessons will create the tools and resources public safety agencies can use to build interoperable CAD systems and communicate across local, state, and federal boundaries.
Each of these has an important role in reducing variability in intercommunication software and enhancing a common understanding of the end goal to be achieved.
Interoperability has also surfaced in the Software patent debate
in the European Parliament
(June/July 2005). Critics claim that because patents on techniques required for interoperability are kept under RAND (reasonable and non discriminatory licensing) conditions, customers will have to pay license fees twice: once for the product and, in the appropriate case, once for the patent protected programme the product uses.
, couplings
, brakes
, signalling
, communications, loading gauge
, operating rules, to mention a few parameters. North American railroads are highly interoperable, Europe, Asia, Africa, Central and South America, and Australia much less so. The parameter most difficult to overcome (at reasonable cost) is incompatibility of gauge, though variable gauge axle systems such as the SUW 2000
are starting to come to the rescue.
System
System is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole....
s and organizations to work together (inter-operate). The term is often used in a technical systems engineering
Systems engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how complex engineering projects should be designed and managed over the life cycle of the project. Issues such as logistics, the coordination of different teams, and automatic control of machinery become more...
sense, or alternatively in a broad sense, taking into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system to system performance
Performance improvement
Performance improvement is the concept of measuring the output of a particular process or procedure, then modifying the process or procedure to increase the output, increase efficiency, or increase the effectiveness of the process or procedure...
.
While interoperability was initially defined for IT systems or services and only allows for information to be exchanged (see definition below), a more generic definition could be this one:
Interoperability is a property of a product or system, whose interfaceInterface (computer science)In the field of computer science, an interface is a tool and concept that refers to a point of interaction between components, and is applicable at the level of both hardware and software...
s are completely understood, to work with other products or systems, present or future, without any restricted access or implementation.
This generalized definition can then be used on any system, not only information technology system. It defines several criteria that can be used to discriminate between systems that are "really" inter-operable and systems that are sold as such but are not because they don't respect one of the aforementioned criteria, namely:
- non-disclosure of one or several interfaces
- implementation or access restriction built in the product/system/service
The IEEE Glossary defines interoperability as:
the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange informationInformation exchangeInformation exchange is an informal term that can either refer to bidirectional information transmission/information transfer in telecommunications and computer science or communication seen from a system-theoretic or information-theoretic point of view....
and to use the information that has been exchanged.
James A. O'Brien and George M. Marakas define interoperability as:
Being able to accomplish end-user applications using different types of computer systems, operating systems, and application software, interconnected by different types of local and wide area networks.
Syntactic interoperability
If two or more systems are capable of communicating and exchanging dataData exchange
Data exchange is the process of taking data structured under a source schema and actually transforming it into data structured under a target schema, so that the target data is an accurate representation of the source data. Data exchange is similar to the related concept of data integration except...
, they are exhibiting syntactic interoperability. Specified data format
Data format
Data format in information technology can refer to either one of:* Data type, constraint placed upon the interpretation of data in a type system* Signal , a format for signal data used in signal processing...
s, communication protocols and the like are fundamental. XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
or SQL
SQL
SQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....
standards are among the tools of syntactic interoperability. This is also true for lower-level data formats, such as ensuring alphabetical characters are stored in ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
format in all the communicating systems.
Syntactical interoperability is a necessary condition for further interoperability.
Semantic interoperability
Beyond the ability of two or more computer systems to exchange information, semantic interoperability is the ability to automatically interpret the information exchanged meaningfully and accurately in order to produce useful results as defined by the end users of both systems. To achieve semantic interoperability, both sides must refer to a common information exchange reference model. The content of the information exchange requests are unambiguously defined: what is sent is the same as what is understood.Interoperability and Open Standards
Interoperability must be distinguished from Open Standards. Although the goal of each is to provide effective and efficient exchange between computer systems, the mechanism for accomplishing that goal is very different. Open Standards imply interoperability ab-initio, i.e., by definition, while interoperability does not, by itself, imply wider exchange between a range of products, or similar products from several different vendors, or even past future revisions of the same product. Interoperability may be developed post-facto, as a special measure between two products, while excluding the rest, or even when the vendors of the two 'interoperable' products are forced into a dominant/submissive or exploitative relationship vis-a-vis themselves or their customers.Open Standards
Open Standards rely on a broadly consultative and inclusive group including representatives from vendors, academicians and others holding a stake in the development. That discusses and debates the technical and economic merits, demerits and feasibility of a proposed common protocol. After the doubts and reservations of all members are addressed, the resulting common document is endorsed as a common standard. This document is subsequently released to the public, and henceforth becomes an open standard. It is usually published and is available freely or at a nominal cost to any and all comers, with no further encumbrances. Various vendors and individuals (even those who were not part of the original group) can use the standards document to make products that implement the common protocol defined in the standard, and are thus interoperable by design, with no specific liability or advantage for any customer for choosing one product over another on the basis of standardised features. The vendors' products compete on the quality of their implementation, user interface, ease of use, performance, price, and a host of other factors, while keeping the customers data intact and transferable even if he chooses to switch to another competing product for business reasons.Post Facto Interoperability
Post-facto interoperability may be the result of the absolute market dominance of a particular product in contravention of any applicable standards, or if any effective standards were not present at the time of that product's introduction. The vendor behind that product can then choose to ignore any forthcoming standards and not co-operate in any standardisation process at all, using its near-monopoly to insist that its product sets the de-facto standard by its very market dominance. This is not a problem if the product's implementation is open and minimally encumbered. However, this is not often the case and the product is both closed and heavily encumbered (e.g. by patent claims). Achieving interoperability with such a product is both critical for any other vendor if it wishes to remain relevant in the market, and extremely difficult to accomplish because of lack of co-operation on equal terms with the original vendor, who may well see the new vendor as a potential competitor and threat. The newer implementations often rely on clean-room reverse engineering in the absence of technical data to achieve interoperability. The original vendors can provide such technical data to others, often in the name of 'encouraging competition,' but such data are invariably encumbered, and may be of limited use. Availability of such data is not equivalent to an open standard, because:- The data are provided by the original vendor on a discretionary basis, who has every interest in blocking the effective implementation of competing solutions, and may subtly alter or change its product, often in newer revisions, so that competitors' implementations are almost, but not quite completely interoperable, leading customers to consider them unreliable or of a lower quality. These changes can either not be passed on to other vendors at all, or passed on after a strategic delay, maintaining the market dominance of the original vendor.
- The data themselves may be encumbered, e.g. by patents or pricing, leading to a dependence of all competing solutions on the original vendor, and possibly leading a revenue stream from the competitors' customers back to the original vendor. This revenue stream is only a result of the original product's market dominance and not a result of any innate superiority.
- Even when the original vendor is genuinely interested in promoting a healthy competition (so that he may also benefit from the resulting innovative market), post-facto interoperability may often be undesirable as it is not the result of a collaborative process and thus may contain many defects or quirks that can be directly traced back to the original implementation's technical limitations, but affect the customer negatively. In an open process, such limitations would have been easily identified and corrected, and the resulting cleaner specification used by all vendors for higher-quality implementations. This is not possible post-facto, as customers already have valuable information and processes encoded in the faulty but dominant product, and other vendors are forced to replicate those faults and quirks even if they could design better solutions, for the sake of preserving interoperability.
- Lack of an open standard can also become problematic for the customers, as in case of the original vendor's inability to fix a certain problem that is an artifact of technical limitations in the original product. The customer wants that fault fixed, but the vendor has to maintain that faulty state, even across newer revisions of the same product, because that behaviour is a de-facto standard and many more customers would have to pay the price of any break in interoperability caused by fixing the original problem and introducing new behaviour.
Telecommunications
In telecommunicationTelecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...
, the term can be defined as:
- The ability of systems, units, or forces to provide services to and accept services from other systems, units or forces and to use the services exchanged to enable them to operate effectively together.
- The condition achieved among communications-electronicsCommunications-electronicsIn telecommunication, communications-electronics is the specialized field concerned with the use of electronic devices and systems for the acquisition or acceptance, processing, storage, display, analysis, protection, disposition, and transfer of information.C-E includes the wide range of...
systems or items of communications-electronics equipment when informationInformationInformation in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
or services can be exchanged directly and satisfactorily between them and/or their users. The degree of interoperability should be defined when referring to specific cases.
In two-way radio
Two-way radio
A two-way radio is a radio that can both transmit and receive , unlike a broadcast receiver which only receives content. The term refers to a personal radio transceiver that allows the operator to have a two-way conversation with other similar radios operating on the same radio frequency...
, interoperability is composed of three dimensions:
- compatible communications paths (compatible frequencies, equipment and signaling),
- radio system coverage or adequate signal strength, and;
- scalable capacity.
Software
File format
A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...
s, and to use the same protocols. (The ability to execute the same binary code
Executable
In computing, an executable file causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instructions," as opposed to a data file that must be parsed by a program to be meaningful. These instructions are traditionally machine code instructions for a physical CPU...
on different processor
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
platforms is 'not' contemplated by the definition of interoperability.) The lack of interoperability can be a consequence of a lack of attention to standardization
Standardization
Standardization is the process of developing and implementing technical standards.The goals of standardization can be to help with independence of single suppliers , compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality....
during the design of a program. Indeed, interoperability is not taken for granted in the non-standards-based portion of the computing world.
According to ISO/IEC 2382-01, Information Technology Vocabulary, Fundamental Terms, interoperability is defined as follows: "The capability to communicate, execute programs, or transfer data among various functional units in a manner that requires the user to have little or no knowledge of the unique characteristics of those units".
Note that the definition is somewhat ambiguous because the user of a program can be another program and, if the latter is a portion of the set of program that is required to be interoperable, it might well be that it does need to have knowledge of the characteristics of other units.
This definition focuses on the technical side of interoperability, while it has also been pointed out that interoperability is often more of an organizational issue: often interoperability has a significant impact on the organizations concerned, raising issues of ownership (do people want to share their data?), labor relations (are people prepared to undergo training?) and usability. In this context, a more apt definition is captured in the term "business process interoperability
Business process interoperability
Business process interoperability is a property referring to the ability of diverse business processes to work together, to so called "inter-operate"....
".
Interoperability can have important economic consequences, such as network externalities. If competitors' products are not interoperable (due to causes such as patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
s, trade secret
Trade secret
A trade secret is a formula, practice, process, design, instrument, pattern, or compilation of information which is not generally known or reasonably ascertainable, by which a business can obtain an economic advantage over competitors or customers...
s or coordination failures
Coordination failure (economics)
In economics coordination failure is a concept that can explain recessions through the failure of firms and other price setters to coordinate. In an economic system with multiple equilibria, coordination failure occurs when a group of firms could achieve a more desirable equilibrium but fail to...
), the result may well be monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
or market failure
Market failure
Market failure is a concept within economic theory wherein the allocation of goods and services by a free market is not efficient. That is, there exists another conceivable outcome where a market participant may be made better-off without making someone else worse-off...
. For this reason, it may be prudent for user communities or governments to take steps to encourage interoperability in various situations. In the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, for example, there is an eGovernment
EGovernment
E-Government is digital interactions between a government and citizens , government and businesses/Commerce , government and employees , and also between government and governments /agencies...
-based interoperability initiative called e-GIF
E-GIF
e-GIF is the UK eGovernment Interoperability Framework.It is an ambitious exercise intended to resolve and prevent problems arising from incompatible content of different computer systems.-What are the aims of e-GIF?:...
while in the United States there is the NIEM initiative. Standards Defining Organizations (SDOs) provide open public software specifications to facilitate interoperability, and an example is Oasis-Open organization. As far as user communities, Neutral Third Party is creating standards for business process interoperability. Another example of a neutral party is the RFC
Request for Comments
In computer network engineering, a Request for Comments is a memorandum published by the Internet Engineering Task Force describing methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems.Through the Internet Society, engineers and...
documents from the Internet Engineering Task Force
Internet Engineering Task Force
The Internet Engineering Task Force develops and promotes Internet standards, cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite...
(IETF).
Medical industry
New technologies are being introduced in hospitals and labs at an ever-increasing rate, and many of these innovations have the potential to interact synergistically if they can be integrated effectively. The need for “plug-and-playPlug-and-play
In computing, plug and play is a term used to describe the characteristic of a computer bus, or device specification, which facilitates the discovery of a hardware component in a system, without the need for physical device configuration, or user intervention in resolving resource conflicts.Plug...
” interoperability – the ability to take a medical device out of its box and easily make it work with one’s other devices – has attracted great attention from both healthcare providers and industry.
Interoperability helps patients get the most out of technology, and it also encourages innovation in the industrial sphere. When different products can be combined without complicated and expensive interfaces, small companies can enter a field and make specialized products. Without interoperability, hospitals are forced to turn to large vendors that provide suites of compatible devices but that do not specialize in any one area. Interoperability promotes competition, and competition encourages innovation and quality.
From the perspective of Intel, a major producer of consumer healthcare devices, there are six major factors that affect an industry’s ability to achieve interoperability. First there needs to be a demand for interoperable products. Second, there must be standards, or rules, defining what interoperability means in the field. Third, business conditions must encourage manufacturers to make their products interoperable. Fourth, guidelines must exist that make the often-complicated standards easier for companies to interpret. Fifth, compliance must be verified by independent testing; and finally, interoperability must be actively promoted. The rapid rise of wireless
Wireless
Wireless telecommunications is the transfer of information between two or more points that are not physically connected. Distances can be short, such as a few meters for television remote control, or as far as thousands or even millions of kilometers for deep-space radio communications...
technology illustrates that interoperability is attainable.
Conditions in the biomedical industry are still in the process of becoming conducive to the development of interoperable systems. A potential market of interested hospitals exists, and standards for interoperability are being developed. Nevertheless, it seems that current business conditions do not encourage manufacturers to pursue interoperability. Only sixteen to twenty percent of hospitals, for example, use electronic medical records (EMR). With such a low rate of EMR adoption, most manufacturers can get away with not investing in interoperability. In fact, not pursuing interoperability allows some of them to tout the inter-compatibility of their own products while excluding competitors. By promoting EMR adoption, companies such as Intel hope to create an environment in which hospitals will have the collective leverage to demand interoperable products.
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
EGovernment
E-Government is digital interactions between a government and citizens , government and businesses/Commerce , government and employees , and also between government and governments /agencies...
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
European Interoperability Framework
The European Interoperability Framework is a set of recommendations which specify how Administrations, Businesses and Citizens communicate with each other within the EU and across Member States borders....
. They also initiated the Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe
Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe
The Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe is an eGovernment service initiated by the European Commission and managed by the Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens Unit...
(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.
Public safety
Interoperability is an important issue for law enforcementPolice
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
, fire fighting
Fire fighting
Firefighting is the act of extinguishing fires. A firefighter fights fires to prevent loss of life, and/or destruction of property and the environment...
, EMS
Emergency medical services
Emergency medical services are a type of emergency service dedicated to providing out-of-hospital acute medical care and/or transport to definitive care, to patients with illnesses and injuries which the patient, or the medical practitioner, believes constitutes a medical emergency...
, and other public health and safety departments, because first responders need to be able to communicate during wide-scale emergencies. Traditionally, agencies could not exchange information because they operated widely disparate hardware that was incompatible. Agencies' information systems such as computer-aided dispatch systems (CAD) and records management systems (RMS) functioned largely in isolation, so-called "information islands." Agencies tried to bridge this isolation with inefficient, stop-gap methods while large agencies began implementing limited interoperable systems. These approaches were inadequate and the nation's lack of interoperability in the public safety realm become evident during the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center structures. Further evidence of a lack of interoperability surfaced when agencies tackled the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
In contrast to the overall national picture, some states, including Utah, have already made great strides forward. The Utah Highway Patrol
Utah Highway Patrol
The Utah Highway Patrol is the functional equivalent of the state police for Utah. Its sworn members, known as Troopers are certified law enforcement officers and have statewide jurisdiction...
and other departments in Utah have created a statewide data-sharing network using technology from a company based in Bountiful, Utah
Bountiful, Utah
Bountiful is a city in Davis County, Utah, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 42,552, a three percent increase over the 2000 figure of 41,301...
, FATPOT Technologies.
The Commonwealth of Virginia is one of the leading states in the United States when it comes to improving interoperability and is continually recognized as a National Best Practice by Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Virginia's proven practitioner-driven Governance Structure ensures that all the right players are involved in decision making, training & exercises, planning efforts, etc. The Interoperability Coordinator leverages a regional structure to better allocate grant funding around the Commonwealth so that all areas have an opportunity to improve communications interoperability. Virginia's strategic plan for communications is updated yearly to include new initiatives for the Commonwealth - all projects and efforts are tied to this plan, which is aligned with the National Emergency Communications Plan, authored by Department of Homeland Security's Office of Emergency Communications (OEC).
The State of Washington seeks to enhance interoperability statewide. The State Interoperability Executive Committee (SIEC), established by the legislature in 2003, works to assist emergency responder agencies (police, fire, sheriff, medical, hazmat, etc.) at all levels of government (city, county, state, tribal, federal) to define interoperability for their local region.
Washington recognizes collaborating on system design and development for wireless radio systems enables emergency responder agencies to efficiently provide additional services, increase interoperability, and reduce long-term costs.
This important work saves the lives of emergency personnel and the citizens they serve.
The U.S. government is making a concerted effort to overcome the nation's lack of public safety interoperability. The Department of Homeland Security's Office for Interoperability and Compatibility (OIC) is pursuing the SAFECOM and CADIP programs, which are designed to help agencies as they integrate their CAD and other IT systems.
The OIC launched CADIP in August 2007. This project will partner the OIC with agencies in several locations, including Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
. This program will use case studies to identify the best practices and challenges associated with linking CAD systems across jurisdictional boundaries. These lessons will create the tools and resources public safety agencies can use to build interoperable CAD systems and communicate across local, state, and federal boundaries.
Achieving software interoperability
Software Interoperability is achieved through five interrelated ways:- Product testing
- Products produced to a common standard, or to a sub-profile thereof, depend on clarity of the standards, but there may be discrepancies in their implementations that system or unit testing may not uncover. This requires that systems formally be tested in a production scenario – as they will be finally implemented – to ensure they actually will intercommunicate as advertised, i.e. they are interoperable. Interoperable product testing is different from conformance-based product testing as conformance to a standard does not necessarily engender interoperability with another product which is also tested for conformance.
- Product engineering
- Implements the common standard, or a sub-profile thereof, as defined by the industry/community partnerships with the specific intention of achieving interoperability with other software implementations also following the same standard or sub-profile thereof.
- Industry/community partnership
- Industry/community partnerships, either domestic or international, sponsor standard workgroups with the purpose to define a common standard that may be used to allow software systems to intercommunicate for a defined purpose. At times an industry/community will sub-profile an existing standard produced by another organization to reduce options and thus making interoperability more achievable for implementations.
- Common technology and IP
- The use of a common technology or IP may speed up and reduce complexity of interoperability by reducing variability between components from different sets of separately developed software products and thus allowing them to intercommunicate more readily. This technique has some of the same technical results as using a common vendor product to produce interoperability. The common technology can come through 3rd party libraries or open source developments.
- Standard implementation
- Software interoperability requires a common agreement that is normally arrived at via a industrial, national or international standard.
Each of these has an important role in reducing variability in intercommunication software and enhancing a common understanding of the end goal to be achieved.
Interoperability as a question of power and market dominance
Interoperability tends to be regarded as an issue for experts and its implications for daily living are sometimes underrated. The European Union Microsoft competition case shows how interoperability concerns important questions of power relationships. In 2004, the European Commission found that Microsoft had abused its market power by deliberately restricting interoperability between Windows work group servers and non-Microsoft work group servers. By doing so, Microsoft was able to protect its dominant market position for work group server operating systems, the heart of corporate IT networks. Microsoft was ordered to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation, which will enable rival vendors to compete on an equal footing (“the interoperability remedy”). As of June 2005 the Commission is market testing a new proposal by Microsoft to do this, having rejected previous proposals as insufficient.Interoperability has also surfaced in the Software patent debate
Software patent debate
The software patent debate is the argument dealing with the extent to which it should be possible to patent software and computer-implemented inventions as a matter of public policy. Policy debate on software patents has been active for years. The opponents to software patents have gained more...
in the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
(June/July 2005). Critics claim that because patents on techniques required for interoperability are kept under RAND (reasonable and non discriminatory licensing) conditions, customers will have to pay license fees twice: once for the product and, in the appropriate case, once for the patent protected programme the product uses.
Railways
Railways have greater or lesser interoperability depending on conforming to standards of gaugeRail gauge
Track gauge or rail gauge is the distance between the inner sides of the heads of the two load bearing rails that make up a single railway line. Sixty percent of the world's railways use a standard gauge of . Wider gauges are called broad gauge; smaller gauges, narrow gauge. Break-of-gauge refers...
, couplings
Coupling (railway)
A coupling is a mechanism for connecting rolling stock in a train. The design of the coupler is standard, and is almost as important as the railway gauge, since flexibility and convenience are maximised if all rolling stock can be coupled together.The equipment that connects the couplings to the...
, brakes
Brake (railway)
Brakes are used on the cars of railway trains to enable deceleration, control acceleration or to keep them standing when parked. While the basic principle is familiar from road vehicle usage, operational features are more complex because of the need to control multiple linked carriages and to be...
, signalling
Railway signal
A signal is a mechanical or electrical device erected beside a railway line to pass information relating to the state of the line ahead to train/engine drivers. The driver interprets the signal's indication and acts accordingly...
, communications, loading gauge
Loading gauge
A loading gauge defines the maximum height and width for railway vehicles and their loads to ensure safe passage through bridges, tunnels and other structures...
, operating rules, to mention a few parameters. North American railroads are highly interoperable, Europe, Asia, Africa, Central and South America, and Australia much less so. The parameter most difficult to overcome (at reasonable cost) is incompatibility of gauge, though variable gauge axle systems such as the SUW 2000
SUW 2000
SUW 2000 is a type of variable gauge system that allows a train to travel across a railway break-of-gauge.The SUW 2000 design is manufactured by Polish company ZNTK Poznań for Polish State Railways...
are starting to come to the rescue.
See also
- Catalyst Communication
- Mutualink
- Agris: International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology
- PolytelyPolytelyPolytely can be described as frequently, complex problem-solving situations characterized by the presence of not one, but several goals, endings.Modern societies face an increasing incidence of various complex problems...
- Semantic WebSemantic WebThe Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by the World Wide Web Consortium that promotes common formats for data on the World Wide Web. By encouraging the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, the Semantic Web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a "web of...
- CollaborationCollaborationCollaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
- NormNorm-In academia:A designated standard of average performance of people of a given age, background, etc.*Norm , a set of statements used to regulate artificial intelligence software...
- List of computer standards
- UDEF, Universal Data Element Framework
- Enterprise InteroperabilityEnterprise InteroperabilityThe Enterprise Interoperability qualifies the faculty of Enterprise to establish a partnership activity in an efficient and competitive way in an environment of unstable market...
- Interop V-Lab
External links
- "When and How Interoperability Drives Innovation," by Urs Gasser and John Palfrey
- Webinar - “Connecting the Dots” of Systems Interoperability Using Open Standards (XML, RDF, and UDEF)
- CIMIT - Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology - the MD PnP Program on Medical Device Interoperability
- GIC - The Greek Interoperability Centre: A Research Infrastructure for Interoperability in eGovernment and eBusiness, in SE Europe and the Mediterranean
- Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO)
- Catalyst Communications
- Interoperability. What is it and why should I want it. Ariadne 24 (2000)
- Interoperability Constitution - DOE's GridWise Architecture Council
- Interoperability Context-Setting Framework - DOE's GridWise Architecture Council
- Decision Maker's Interoperability Checklist - DOE's GridWise Architecture Council
- OA Journal on Interoperability in Business Information Systems
- University of New Hampshire Interoperability Laboratory - premier research facility on interoperability of computer networking technologies
- Understanding COM Interop
- Interoperability vs. intraoperability: your open choice on Bob Sutor blog, 6 December 2006
- i14y.net presents the research concerning the possible interoperability between JBossJBossJBoss Application Server is an open-source Java EE-based application server. An important distinction for this class of software is that it not only implements a server that runs on Java, but it actually implements the Java EE part of Java...
Application ServerApplication serverAn application server is a software framework that provides an environment in which applications can run, no matter what the applications are or what they do...
, Microsoft .NET, BEA Weblogic and IBM WebSphereIBM WebSphereIBM WebSphere refers to a brand of computer software products in the genre of enterprise software known as "application and integration middleware". These software products are used by end-users to create applications and integrate applications with other applications...
through the Web Services - La France v. Apple: who’s the dadvsi in DRMs?, Nicolas Jondet (University of Edinburgh), SCRIPT-edSCRIPT-edSCRIPT-ed is the online journal of the SCRIPT Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law SCRIPT based in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh...
, December 2006 - ECIS European Committee for Interoperable Systems
- IP Crunch New ideas on interoperability and patents
- Gradmann, Stefan. INTEROPERABILITY. A key concept for large scale, persistent digital libraries.
- DL.org Digital Library Interoperability, Best Practices and Modelling Foundations