15.11.2012 Views

icegov2012 proceedings

icegov2012 proceedings

icegov2012 proceedings

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

aspects are hardly discussed as they are messy. Goldkuhl [16]<br />

describes that the interoperability is not only a technical subject,<br />

but there is a need to conceptualize the organizational aspects as<br />

well. He further explains that the interoperability is also about<br />

what people do for information systems to interoperate. Scholl<br />

and Klischewski [41] describe that the assessment of<br />

interoperability is still unclear and faces many challenges, the<br />

evaluation and measurement methods need to be investigated<br />

properly. They also identify nine major constraints that affect the<br />

interoperability: 1) constitutional, 2) jurisdictional, 3)<br />

collaborative, 4) organizational, 5) informational, 6) managerial,<br />

7) technological, 8) cost, and 9) performance. Some of these<br />

constraints also reflect the organizational aspects of<br />

interoperability and need to be included in interoperability<br />

measurement process. Aspects of organizational Interoperability<br />

can be measured within an organization between two or more<br />

information systems as well as between different organizations<br />

with multiple information systems.<br />

This paper presents a measurement instrument and a set of<br />

measurement constructs to assess and benchmark organizational<br />

aspects of interoperability. Section 2 discusses the interoperability<br />

maturity models and frameworks to investigate the organizational<br />

aspects of interoperability. Section 3 proposes the interoperability<br />

measurement instrument and derives the measurement constructs<br />

for each sub-layer of the organizational interoperability layer. In<br />

section 4, a case study is conducted at the population welfare<br />

department government of Sindh, Pakistan using the developed<br />

organizational layer and its measurement constructs for assessing<br />

the organizational interoperability. Finally, section 5 discusses the<br />

results of the outcome of case study.<br />

2. BACKGROUND<br />

Interoperability maturity models described in literature mostly<br />

focus on the technical aspects of public organizations [3, 9, 11, 22,<br />

28, 34, 46]; whereas the organizational aspects are parsley<br />

discussed with little emphasis on the measuring and<br />

benchmarking perspective. Measures to assess organizational<br />

interoperability are hardly indicated in these interoperability<br />

maturity models. Maheshwari et al. [32, p-2] discuss ten different<br />

interoperability maturity models and related measurement<br />

approaches to investigate the interoperability measurement issues<br />

and challenges in public service organizations. Only a handful of<br />

maturity models [16, 22-23, 28] discuss the aspects of<br />

organizational interoperability, whereas the majority remains<br />

centrally focused on technical interoperability. Furthermore, they<br />

argue that the measuring and benchmarking the interoperability of<br />

public organizations is challenging as it encompasses a<br />

widespread array of diverse areas and dimensions. In a similar<br />

vein, Shahkooh et al. [43] investigated some generic (e.g.<br />

INTEROP NoP, NEHTA, and IDEAS) and country specific (e.g.<br />

Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, and United Kingdom) egovernment<br />

interoperability frameworks. They, after investigating<br />

different frameworks describe interoperability as:<br />

“a set of policies, strategies, standards, guidelines, and<br />

instructions to connect different governmental organizations in<br />

order to facilitate fast and easy information exchange to deliver<br />

services to the citizens, businesses, and employees” [43, p-65]<br />

Thus, the interoperability on the whole is a combination of<br />

technical as well organizational aspects that affect the information<br />

exchange and sharing between any two or more entities. Though<br />

the existing interoperability models and frameworks sparsely<br />

217<br />

address these issues in different layers, levels, and steps; there are<br />

hardly any guidelines to incorporate these aspects into a single<br />

measurement instrument. This paper proposes the measurement<br />

instrument that incorporates both technical and organizational<br />

aspects of interoperability. In order better understand the<br />

interoperability measurement layers, we investigate the selected<br />

interoperability maturity models and frameworks that are<br />

commonly discussed literature and utilized by national and<br />

international organizations:<br />

Levels of Information Systems Interoperability (LISI): The<br />

LISI model developed by the US Department of Defense (DoD)<br />

comprises of five levels i.e. isolated systems, connected systems,<br />

functional distributed, domain integrated, and enterprise universal.<br />

These levels of LISI are centrally focused on the technical<br />

interoperation of the systems [18, 35, 43, 46].<br />

NC3TA Reference Model for Interoperability (NMI): The<br />

NMI model also mainly focuses on the technical aspects of<br />

interoperability while including the interoperability degrees i.e.<br />

unstructured data, structured data, seamless data sharing, and<br />

seamless information sharing to classify the content type of the<br />

exchanged data and information flows. The model aims to<br />

improve the functional efficiency by introducing the structured<br />

data interpretation and exchange [35, 46].<br />

Organizational Interoperability Model (OIM): The IOM model<br />

is an extension of LISI model that includes the organizational<br />

aspects of interoperability. Although the model only focuses on<br />

the organizational interoperability, the levels of OIM i.e.<br />

independent, ad-hoc, collaborated, integrated, and unified are<br />

closely aligned with the environmental description of levels of the<br />

LISI model. OIM model provides some information in each level<br />

for shared value systems, shared goals, and common structures but<br />

does not provide any guideline to achieve the desired<br />

organizational interoperability [9, 18, 35].<br />

Levels of Conceptual Interoperability Model (LCIM): The<br />

LCIM model in [18, 35, 46] describes five levels of conceptual<br />

interoperability i.e. system specific data, documented data, aligned<br />

static data, aligned dynamic data, and harmonized data. The<br />

model shows that the interoperability is not only subjective to the<br />

technical capability of the systems but also the composability on<br />

the conceptual levels. The levels of LCIM conceptual model were<br />

later extended and reproduced [47, 49] as i.e. no-interoperability,<br />

technical interoperability, syntactic interoperability, pragmatic<br />

interoperability, dynamic interoperability, and conceptual<br />

interoperability. The LCIM conceptual models also centrally<br />

focus on the technical interoperability of the systems [18, 35, 46-<br />

47].<br />

European Interoperability Framework (EIF): The EIF 1.0<br />

framework by Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment<br />

Services to public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens<br />

(IDABC) was first introduced in 2004 [23]; which was later<br />

upgraded to EIF 2.0 in 2008 [22]. The version EIF 1.0 comprised<br />

of three layers i.e. organizational, semantics, and technical; which<br />

were extended to five layers in EIF 2.0 i.e. organizational,<br />

semantics, technical, political, and legal interoperability. Unlike<br />

other models and frameworks (LISI, NMI, OIM, LCIM), the EIF<br />

focused not only on technical interoperability but also other<br />

organizational aspects of the interoperability [15-16, 22-23, 30,<br />

43].<br />

European Interoperability Maturity Model (EIMM): The<br />

EIMM by Advanced Technologies for interoperability of

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!