6. swot analysis opportunities

8/3/2019 6. SWOT Analysis Opportunities

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SWOT Analysis

- Opportunities -


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SWOT Analysis

Opportunities

As it becomes apparent there are many areas of interest wheretechnical interoperability is a strong demand and can be seen as a

great opportunity. These areas include confidentiality,trustworthiness, ubiquity of services, information access andmanagement, human-computer interaction, middleware, security,organizational and social issues, large scale systems, softwaretechnology, etc.

Some obvious technical issues that will be considered, amongstothers, include: Reusability: Technically interoperable solutions, or at least some of

their modules, are reusable by other applications.

Portability: Technical interoperability has an immediate descendant orconsequence of being independent from hardware and softwareplatforms. Portability helps the reusability of developed interoperablesolutions.


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SWOT Analysis

Opportunities

Flexibility Connectivity and interoperation among computers, among entities

(governments, businesses, citizens, and individuals), and amongsoftware components can increase the flexibility and agility of ICTsystems, thus reducing administrative and software costs forgovernment. They may also reduce the time needed to implementsoftware applications and services. Flexibility issues can be examined intwo contexts:

At the national level, flexibility and agility may be increased asinteroperability increases. Interoperability can, for instance, assist in thedelivery of e-Government services and help the business sector interactelectronically with administrations, reducing administrative costs burden andencouraging SMEs to go digital.

At the European level, interoperability supports the Single Market and itsassociated four freedoms of movement of people, capital, goods andservices.


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SWOT Analysis

Opportunities

Integration Technical standards are being developed through open processes, and

their adoption is being driven by the pressure software companies tomeet their customers requirements for standards adherence. Standardsand interoperability work best when processes are loosely coupled.

The problems of interoperability are neither unique nor new. Theinteroperability problems of integrating disparate databases, distributednetworks, e-procurement solutions, B2B data exchanges, enterpriseapplication integration, portal integration, B2C (consumer/citizen)solutions, mobile communications, and others all exist in private industryas well as the public sector. In general, there is a common need acrossall industries for research, new technologies, and improved standards toaddress interoperability.


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SWOT Analysis

Opportunities

Open Standards5

ICT industry experience is that best of breed solutions,regardless of the business or development model but evaluatedon the basis of the best value for the money.

provide the best functionality mix, support interoperability betweencomponents through their compatibility with open standards, andensure continual upgrades, software support and expertise.

Open standards compatibility should be a major selectioncriterion for software to ensure its interoperability,

it should be recognized that open standards may evolve quickly andpreferences for any open standard or versions of open standards,including OSS-style open standards, should be avoided to preservethe utmost flexibility in a best value assessment of technology andsolutions for administration interaction and business problems.


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SWOT Analysis

Opportunities

Private/public multi-stakeholder partnerships6

The best approach to achieve and ensure interoperability is by the public sector

partnering with the private sector, in particular the ICT industry. Withoutpartnering with the private sector, several risks may appear:

The risk of adopting technologies and standards that become outdated andunsupported over time.

The risk of not being able to rapidly take advantage of technology advancesand business process improvements that private industry develops.

The risk of adopting standards that do not interoperate between the private andpublic sectors (e.g., privacy standards, security certification standards).

For this reason, governmental efforts and projects should work in close

cooperation with international standards bodies such as OASIS and W3C.Standardization and frameworks within governments, such as the EIF, e-GIF,etc., plus direct involvement in international standardization efforts, such asthose of the W3C, OASIS, and others, and working with regional intermediaries,are essential to assure interoperability.


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SWOT Analysis

Opportunities

Motives for standardization bodies and governments7

In many cases, market parties will not themselves arrive atadequate solutions in the area of technical interoperability. Thismeans that a role is reserved for various other actors who cancontribute in their own ways to solving the problem, within theirscope, responsibilities and limits. The main interest lies on(national) government and standardization bodies, but theEuropean Union and other organizations can also contribute.


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SWOT Analysis

Opportunities

Rewriting vs. reusing

Many companies wish to continue using their existinglegacy applications. Sometimes the cost and disruptioninvolved in rewriting these applications would outweigh anybenefit. In general, this is a common threat. Mostcompanies are not interested in throwing code away. Butthere are times when it makes better sense to let go of theold systems and rewrite them from scratch. One reason forrewriting is when the application is tied to an archaic

module (e.g. database).


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SWOT Analysis

Opportunities

Economical issues

In addition to technical benefits, technical interoperabilityprovides tangible business value in reduced overallexpenses. In the long term, at least two areas of costsavings can be seen: personnel costs and hardware costs.Naturally, this can be seen in line with other parameterssuch as reusability, portability, expandability and flexibilityof the applications developed.


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Further Investigations


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Open Standardsv

A major contributor to interoperability is voluntary open standards development plus

voluntary open standards adoption. Open standards development, without significant

adoption of the resultant standards, does nothing in the effort to achieve interoperability.

Standards, like software, must evolve to take advantage of technology advances. Best-of-

breed solutions, evaluated on a best value for money basis, that are continually updated

and have software support to meet customer standards-compatibility expectations are the

best approach to achieve and ensure ongoing interoperability.

Governments, through their procurement, research, and policies, should support and

encourage the efforts of the ICT industry to voluntarily develop, adopt and promote open

standards. Applications developed should fully leverage the competitive marketplace to

reach interoperability.

The ICT industry has devoted considerable resources towards voluntarily defining, and

changing hardware and software to adhere to open technology standards. Government,

through its procurement, research, and ICT policies should support these efforts and fully

utilize them to reach interoperability. Cost effective, open-standards compatible hardware

and software, where the underlying standards have been widely adopted, is an enabler of

interoperability. Open-standards compatible software can be developed using any

software development model, and can be licensed under a variety of business models.

Open source does not mean or imply open standard or compatibility with open

standards, and vice-versa, as open standards may be implemented by software developed

under any business or development model. Open source is not a standard or set of

standards, but instead simply software whose code is publicly available. Nothing in and of

it ensures that OSS is interoperable, even with other OSS programs. For instance, the

freedom to modify OSS code necessarily provides the ability to change the code in ways

that may undermine a programs ability to interoperate with other programs and devices.

Beyond open standards compatibility, general business requirements, functionality

requirements, total cost of ownership, and other elements of a best value for money

evaluation should drive the selection of software, not how the software was developed or

is licensed.

Looking to this issue from a merely technical point of view, it is evident that successfulimplementations and emerging normative standards from Europe and central governments


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make an extensive reference to the W3C Recommendations. In fact, applications

conformant with the basic W3C goals (universal access, semantic web, web of trust) and

design requirements, like interoperability and decentralization, are perfectly in line with the

present and future requirements of applications. In fact, technical interoperability,

portability, accessibility are just a consequence of conforming to W3C Recommendations,

and any existing application conformant to these standards will conform to emerging

regulations with little or no effort.

Therefore, being active actors in developing web technologies can be an excellent

opportunity to be competitive in the market. Even more important, moving without taking

into account what is going on in the field, can result in a tremendous waste of resources.

v The document is part of QualiPSo Deliverable D3.1.1b Technical Interoperability: Report about ImportantIssues, Requirements and State-of-the-Art , pages 52-53.

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Private/public multi-stakeholder partnershipsvi

Many of the interoperability hurdles the public sector faces are the same as, or very similar

to, the hurdles private sector companies face, but some distinct differences do exist. In

particular, many governmental business processes are closely tied to legislation,

regulations, and court findings. Process improvement and data semantics resolution

frequently requires revision to the underlying legislation or regulations. The European

Unions coordinated approach facilitates such legislative and regulatory changes.

Nevertheless, governmental services/business process owners must aggressively

pursue change to affect it even within the context of the EU. European Commission states

that there is a need for commitment at all levels for interoperability to happen (i.e. global

and international, European, national, regional and local) and there is a need to ensurethat consequential adjustment of European or national policies occur.

Through greater interoperability, large improvements in EU intra-Government and inter-

Government services are possible. Additionally, from the private industry perspective,

improved interoperability with the private sector and citizens/consumers could, and should,

be a major source of business process/services improvement. Many of the business

process improvements made in the private sector over the last decade or so have been

accomplished by companies working with their customers and suppliers (the extended

enterprise) to streamline their supply chains. Information flow, as well as the flow of

physical goods/services, from supplier to government and, in many cases, from

government to citizen/consumer, could be streamlined through similar extended enterprise

efforts. There is a plethora of commercial software available to support such business-to-

business exchange of data. Similar to private industry, these extended enterprise efforts

would result in more customer-centric, citizen-friendly, governmental enterprises.

Public sector software must meet governmental business requirements. The public sector

faces many of the same decisions that private industry does in deciding whether to acquire

or build software. Governmental entities, like private companies, vary in size and business

requirements, both of which affect ICT software and hardware selection. Like private

industry, in some cases governments should allow software to drive process, while in other

cases, governments should have process drive software. Also like private industry,

software applications may be developed in a variety of ways, and offered under many

different types of licenses. In almost all cases, software and hardware acquisition costs are

merely a part of the overall total costs of ownership (TCO) interoperability and cost

elements such as training have become major parts of the cost equation. In the


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competitive environment, ICT companies offering open standards compatible proprietary

software solutions have strong incentives to deliver robust functionality and open

standards based interoperability to meet customer requirements and sell their products.

vi The document is part of QualiPSo Deliverable D3.1.1b Technical Interoperability: Report about Important Issues,

Requirements and State-of-the-Art , pages 53-54.

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Motives for standardization bodies and governmentsvii

a) Motives for standardization bodies

An important motive for standardization bodies to contribute to technical interoperabilitysolutions is to enhance the attractiveness of their activities to their members. Focused

efforts in the area of interoperability enhance the utility of standards to members. In

addition, the risk of deadlocks declines (the situation in which a standard gains little

popularity and early adopters are faced with large changeover costs). The body also

becomes more attractive to its members if specific expertise in this area is built up and

exchanged.

A second motive is that of the organizations image relative to other organizations. In acertain respect the typical telecommunications market is becoming less attractive now that

bandwidth is increasingly becoming a commodity. The added value is shifting more and

more to higher layers in the chain.Standardization bodies find it more attractive to focus

on functions which add a lot of value.

A third motive now that the time of system standards is past and systems are

increasingly made up from a box of protocols is that demand for interoperability is

expected to increase. The required gateways/converters, middleware and APIs will

become markets in themselves. More and more standardization bodies, forums and

consortia are busy producing these building blocks. Coordination between the various

building blocks is becoming more and more important. A role for a kind of standards

integrator is thus coming into being. Interoperability questions are a central element in this.

A fourth motive is that interoperability is becoming increasingly pivotal in the regulatory

framework. Efforts in that area result in a good link to the European and national

regulators.

Finally, ways of achieving innovativeness and work on break-through technologies

(including disrupting technologies) are increasing. It is simpler to devote attention to such

developments if one is not repeatedly faced with the nuisance of the undesirable

consequences of fragmentation as a result of the introduction of new technologies.

b) Motives for national governments

An important motive for national governments to contribute, or have others contribute, to

interoperability is linked to the so-called network effect. This is a phenomenon whereby theattractiveness of some services, such as telephony services, increases with the number of


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consumers who take the service. Large networks are thus attractive, but value can also be

created by linking (large and small) networks. If, for example, a mobile telephony network

is still small, if it has interconnection with all the other fixed and mobile telephony networks

the user can nevertheless reach all the other telephone users and the value of the network

is high. This is commonly called a gateway or, if modifications are needed, an adapter. It

goes without saying that it is in the public interest to maximize the value of

telecommunications networks and services to end-users, and hence to encourage

interconnection and interconnectivity. Precisely now that all kinds of new fixed and

networks are being created, it is important to link these new systems to the existing

networks as far as possible, in order to maximize their value to the end-users.

A second motive for governments to take action to promote (technical) interoperability is

that a lack of ways to link networks can result in undesirable organization of the market. If

networks are not (or cannot be) linked, this strengthens the dominant position of large,

existing parties. The desired competitive market will not then come into being. The

absence of technical compatibility options can be seized on by parties with substantial

market power to evade access obligations. In other words, access obligations are of little

effect if the technical potential for interoperability is lacking.

The third motive concerns the desire for a technology-neutral policy. Policymakers are

becoming increasingly convinced that policy support for certain technologies is a risky

approach, requiring that the winners be identified in advance. In practice this turns out to

be difficult, certainly for a government. In addition, the consequences of wrong choices are

great (one has only to think of the European initiatives for high-definition television).

Finally, some important aspects should be also considered:

Interoperability can be helpful in relation to launching application areas that

governments consider important, such as e-Government. In this context one thinks of

the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) and the IDA eLink middleware design.

Areas such as e-health and e-learning are also highly important.

The concept of interoperability fits well into present European regulation.

The degree to which technical standards operate as a barrier to access to markets often

plays a part in international trade agreements. A high degree of interoperability can

partly eliminate this source of friction.

vii The document is part of QualiPSo Deliverable D3.1.1b Technical Interoperability: Report about Important Issues,

Requirements and State-of-the-Art , pages 54-56.

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6. swot analysis opportunities

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