interoperability in public sector
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Interoperability in Public Sector
- How Use of a Lightweight Approach Can
Reduce the Gap Between Plans and Reality
- Svein Ølnes, Western Norway Research Institute (Vestforsk), Norway
www.vestforsk.no
Interoperability?
Norwegian Swiss
www.vestforsk.no
Content
Main question answered
What a difference a little semantics can do
The troublesome gap between plans and reality
Los – An example of a lightweight approach
Conclusions and further research
www.vestforsk.no
Main question answered
There is a huge gap between plans and reality when it
comes to functional interoperability in public sector
Are the ambitions too high?
Part of the solution: A lightweight approach
“as simple as possible”
www.vestforsk.no
What a difference a little semantics can do
www.vestforsk.no
What a difference a little semantics can do
www.vestforsk.no
Gap between plans and reality
European level (Codagnone and Wimmer, 2007):
Although a lot of attention is already been paid to interoperability, the gaps in this storyline were assessed as very high and relevant according to the eGovernance model.
Norway
Framework for service oriented architecture proposed 2007
Not much has happened since
The Government is struggling with how to deal with this issue
In the mean time a lot of trials and errors (for instance the Seres I and II example by the National Registry Centre (BrønnøysundRegister Centre)
www.vestforsk.no
Interoperability - definitions
Definition 1 (EIF 1.0):
Interoperability means the ability of information and communication technology (ICT) systems and of the business processes they support to exchange data and to enable the sharing of information and knowledge.
Definition 2 (EIF 2.0):
Interoperability is the ability of disparate and diverse organisations to interact towards mutually beneficial and agreed common goals, involving the sharing of information and knowledge between the organizations via the business processes they support, by means of the exchange of data between their respective information and communication technology (ICT) systems.
www.vestforsk.no
Increasing complexity in frameworks
EIF 1.0 (2004)
Organisational interoperability
Semantic i.o.
Technical i.o.
EIF 2.0 (draft, 2008)
Revision of EIF 1.0 startedin 2006 – still no final update
www.vestforsk.no
Comparison to the development of HTML5
xhtml 1.0
HTML 4.01 expressed in xml syntacs
xhtml 1.1
Pure xml (no Mime text/html, but xml)
xhtml 2.0
a shiny new and bright standard “relieved from the HTML sufferings”
full support for the semantic web
no backwards compatibility
a disaster!
HTML5
the browser developers in charge
support for Microformats rather than the full semantic web
pragmatics rather than theoretical perfection
www.vestforsk.no
Los – A lightweight approach to interoperability
Los – Norwegian for “Navigator at sea”
aided navigation in a sea of information
A thesauri for public services
controlled vocabulary arranged as a thesauri
ca. 400 keywords + ca. 1 500 synonyms, outdated terms ++
user orientation (the terms used by “the man in the street”)
expressed using the Dublin Core metadata standard, rss sharing
distinguish between description of services and the services themselves
Exchange of information between sectors and organisations
Cross sector: Between government agencies and municipalities
Between organisations in the same sector
Primarily used in the municipalities
ca. 100 (of 430) municipalities uses Los in their portals
www.vestforsk.no
Los – structure
Tema = Theme
Emneord = Keyword
Nettressurs = Net resources
www.vestforsk.no
Los – examples of use in municipality portals
Bergen
www.vestforsk.no
Los – examples of use in municipality portals
Sørum
Førde
www.vestforsk.no
Classification and Categorisation
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Conclusions and further research
We are waiting for guidelines (ref. EIF 2.0 and other
frameworks)
In the mean time: Shed light on the good examples
Look for simpler solutions (less risk, quicker gains)
Is there too little emphasis on “simple” solutions?
for instance: rss as a method of information exchange, microformatsand/or RDFa for semantic expressions
“small pieces loosely joined” (David Weinberger)
“Top down” or “bottom up”?
How does lightweight approaches go together with more
demanding interoperability initiatives and frameworks?
www.vestforsk.no
End of presentation
Thanks for your attention!
Svein Ølnes – [email protected]
This presentation: http://j.mp/d6WX2G