The Forgotten Level of Interoperability

Multienterprise MDM, 360-Degree views and Data Catalogs are terms that can be found from Gartner’s hype cycle. One thing in common within all of these is that each of them are, in the end, about interoperability. The puzzle to be solved within each of them is about how organizations and systems within those communicate with each other.

This communication is called interoperability. It can be defined as the ability of a collection of communicating entities to (a) share specified information and (b) operate on that information according to an agreed operational semantics.

As interoperability itself is a really broad term, it should be divided into levels describing what type of interoperability are we talking about. The most commonly agreed division is into four levels. 

1. Machine level interoperability: The ways machines communicate together to exchange data.
2. Syntactic interoperability: Defines the format and structure of the data exchanged.
3. Semantic interoperability: The meaning of the data being exchanged.
4. Organizational interoperability: Aims to maintain the context when information is transcending organizational boundaries as business processes, workflows and data.

Machine level as well as syntactic interoperability are already highly standardized. Semantic interoperability is getting more and more attention with promising theoretical background, but still suffering from practical implementation problems . 

But what about organizational interoperability? One might argue that modern data governance processes are focusing on organizational interoperability as well, but is it enough? In order to be able to answer that question, we must first understand what exactly is on the organizational level of interoperability.

Current definitions of organizational interoperability

There are various European standards defining organizational interoperability:

IDABC EIF v.1.0 defines organizational interoperability as "defining business processes and bringing about the collaboration of administrations that wish to exchange information and may have different internal structures as well as aspects related to requirements of the user community". [1]

EPAN describes that organizational interoperability "is concerned with the coordination and alignment of business processes and information architectures that span both intra- and interorganisational boundaries. Coordination of business processes across organisational boundaries is essential if a single, aggregated view of a service from the customers' perspective is to be achieved. It is suggested that administrations could develop an exemplar scheme that would define standard approaches to each of the main requirements of any public service and use this exemplar to benchmark all other services; that common functionality could be provided on a shared basis through a broker service to reduce development, deployment and operational costs to the public administration and to each service fulfilment agency, and to ensure consistency of experience for users of services across all agencies in the public sector through the use of agreed standards across all services; that expenditure reviews could be undertaken to ensure that financial priority is given to those schemes that comply with the structured customer support services set out above and with interoperability standards; and that each administration could develop a central programme of organisation development assistance and funding to bring this change about". [2]

ETSI’s definition: "Organisation interoperability, as the name implies, is the ability of organisations to effectively communicate and transfer (meaningful) data (information) even though they may be using a variety of different information systems over widely different infrastructures, possibly across different geographic regions and cultures. Organisational interoperability depends on successful technical, syntactical and semantic interoperability". [3]

The problem is that these definitions are heterogeneous, assigned issues are very vague, and there are little to none classifications of options available for solving the issues [4]. But what is preventing us from achieving the conceptual clarity on this level? Is the level too broad? Is there too big of a gap between levels three and four? Or is the level four just being misunderstood? Or maybe it is a combination of all of these?

Suggested structure for levels of interoperability

When evaluating levels of interoperability, there can be seen more than one level behind organizational interoperability with some levels going even beyond organization level. This article suggests a following structure for levels of interoperability.

1. Technical interoperability: Technical Interoperability is associated with hardware/software components, systems and platforms that enable machine-to-machine communication to take place. This kind of interoperability is often focused on (communication) protocols and the infrastructure needed for those protocols to operate. [5]
2. Syntactic interoperability: Syntactic Interoperability deals with data formats. Messages transferred by communication protocols need to have a well-defined syntax and encoding. However, many protocols carry data or content, and this can be represented using high-level transfer syntaxes such as HTML, XML or ASN.1. [5]
3. Semantic interoperability: Semantic Interoperability is about exchanging information with unambiguous, shared meaning. Thus, interoperability on this level means that there is a common understanding between people of the meaning of the content (information) being exchanged [5].
4. Pragmatic interoperability: Pragmatics underlines the importance that it is not sufficient to understand what is communicated, but also what is the intention behind it, how to interpret the communicated information and how to act upon it [6]. If the social context is not taken into account, there will be new technical solutions with unclear business benefits [6]. Pragmatic interoperability encapsulates syntax and semantics purposeful use [7]. To ensure pragmatic interoperability, messages sent by a system cause the effect intended by that system; i.e., the intended effect of the message is understood by the collaborating systems [8]. Pragmatic interoperability can only be achieved if systems are also syntactically and semantically interoperable [9]. Pragmatic interoperability at the business level exists only if there is compatibility between the business requirements of collaborating parties expressed through their business intentions, business rules, and organizational policies [10]. Pragmatic interoperability, at the system level, is achieved if collaborating systems share the same intention of message use [8].
5. Business Process interoperability: One of the definitions for business process interoperability is the “ability of different processes to work together and exchange information, data, control information, etc.”. Aim of business process interoperability is to enable two or more processes to share, exchange and use various types of resources e.g. informational and human for the benefit of the whole organization [11]. Therefore, solving the problem of interoperability becomes essential, as it will favour the evolution of organizations towards interoperable environments. Thus, it appears the concept of collaborative performance which must be measured and managed. A shared policy and process framework is required to support appropriate business collaboration models and provide a sustainable environment in which interoperable solutions can be created, deployed and managed [12].
6. Synergy interoperability: Only after business processes are linked, can there be shared benefits. This leads to the next level of interoperability, synergy interoperability. Organization Synergy occurs when people and processes merge seamlessly to continuously expand the ability of the organization to deliver products and services to its customers, while maintaining competitiveness. Business goals can be achieved in a more productive and efficient manner. Synergetic results come from a culture that enables an organization to integrate its diverse skills and capabilities in a way that makes it possible to achieve outstanding results that were unpredictable when looking at each division of the organization independently. Simply put, it's efficiency at its absolute best. The firm’s quest to create customer value is dependent on the synergistic coordination of many parts of the organization, wherein internal resources and capabilities are effectively harnessed to create a competitive advantage. The often sub-optimal relationship between marketing and sales acts as an inhibitor to success in this regard 
7. Goal interoperability: Goal interoperability can be seen as reciprocal integration and common goals among organizational units. Aligning goals clarifies the priorities and connects employees and teams within an organization. The requirements that have to be satisfied to achieve interoperability at goal level, can be represented directly through the interaction concept [13]. Interaction contributions and their associated result constraints represent the intended effect, or goal, of the user and the provider. The term capability is also used to denote the provider goal. An interaction between a user and a provider is possible, if a common effect can be established that satisfies the constraints of both the user and provider [13]. This means that the result constraints of the user and provider must overlap.
8. Strategic interoperability: Strategic interoperability is about linking an organization's structure and resources with its strategy. Strategic interoperability is foundational by nature. As communities and networks morph, they are going to rely on this level of interoperability. This foundational layer can enable an organization's strategic plan. Strategic interoperability is getting attention especially in the sector of healthcare in order to create a larger healthcare environment in which care providers operate. With a vision in place, interoperability can go beyond connecting systems and devices to supporting healthcare organizations’ strategic plans.
9. Cultural interoperability: As multinational operations become more frequent and business partners more diverse, the relevance of cultural interoperability is increasing. Cultural interoperability can be grounded in a common language, a similar ethos and comparable principles [14]. It can also be developed and enhanced through multinational exercises, personnel exchanges and liaison officers [14]. It should be understood that interoperability goes over and beyond the problem of linguistic communication, or the difficulties involved in harmonizing procedures, technical arrangements.
10. Environmental interoperability: Organizational environments are composed of forces or institutions surrounding organization that affect performance, operations, and resources. It includes all of the elements that exist outside of the organization's boundaries and have the potential to affect a portion or all of the organization. Examples include government regulatory agencies, competitors, customers, suppliers, and pressure from the public. Inter-organisational cooperation has been one of the most used organisational strategies to compete and become adapted to the exigencies of the global market [11]. Thus, collaboration is becoming more a necessity than an option. Environmental interoperability can be seen in contexts of (i) extended and/or virtual enterprises, (ii) supply chain management, and (iii) enterprises networks [11].
11. Global interoperability: Global interoperability is the highest level of interoperability. It consists of globally agreed rules and sets the baseline for all the other levels of interoperability. Global interoperability is required for better interoperability for e.g. healthcare, IT and international coalitions such as NATO. One good example of global interoperability is the existence of different alphabets and the inherently imperfect nature of transliteration.

Categorization

To be able to understand the nature of different levels of interoperability on a more in-depth level, they should be inspected from the perspective of communication and behaviour. Each level of interoperability extends the scope of communication enabled. And each level can also be recognized as a behaviour on a certain level of organization. Technical and syntactic interoperability behaviour can be seen occurring on data level and these enable signal level communication.

Semantic interoperability enables different languages to communicate together. Pragmatic interoperability enhances this by adding patterns to the communication. And the actual interaction is happening on a business process level of interoperability. These three together form the tribal level of behaviour. 

Synergy, goal and strategic interoperability levels form purpose of organization which can be communicated further. By adding the communication of community coming within cultural interoperability there can be seen a combination forming organization level behaviour.

When we go beyond the organizational level, there still exists two levels of interoperability. Environmental level of interoperability can be seen covering a single society while the level of behaviour being pan-organizational. And finally, global interoperability can be seen as communication of whole humanity covering the universal rules of behaviour.

Figure 1 illustrates the different levels of interoperability as well as the categorizations of scope of communication and level of behaviour.

Figure 1: Levels of interoperability categorized

Summary

Often organizations start to build interoperability in a bottom-up manner which leads to many problems of modern information management. In order to enable cross-organizational interoperability, levels of interoperability should be approached from top towards bottom.

In the end, everything is about business. That’s why it is weird that we constantly keep focusing on the lowest levels of interoperability. Creating enterprise level data models with top to bottom approach, using generalized industry standards in data modeling and modeling data domains instead of business domains. All of these factors are causing information management to diverge from business. Unfortunately, business people do know the hidden characteristics of data better than data people.

Interoperability levels can also be seen describing the nature of governance and the need of standardization. On the first levels of interoperability governance can be very localized but higher we go the more centralized governance is required. While level of governance increases while climbing up those levels of interoperability, the amount of standardization reduces. By understanding the scope of governance and the amount of standardization required, it becomes possible to create a working information ecosystem.

Why should we only share semantically coherent information between organizations when we could be sharing knowledge instead? This way we would not need to reinvent the wheel. In order to gain information superiority, data should not be the number one focus. We should not be data-driven, but instead be driven by business and inspired by data.

REFERENCES

[1] IDABC (2004): European Interoperability Framework for Pan-European e-Government Services (EIF) Version 1.0. European Communities, Luxemburg. 

[2] EPAN (2004), European Public Administration Network, eGovernment Working Group: Key Principles of an Interoperability Architecture. Brussels.

[3] ETSI (2006) European Telecommunications Standards Institute: Achieving Technical Interoperability – the ETSI Approach. ETSI White Paper No. 3. By Hans van der Veer (Lucent Technologies) and Anthony Wiles (ETSI), October 2006. 

[4] Kubicek, H., & Cimander, R. (2009). Three dimensions of organizational interoperability. European Journal of ePractice, 6, 1-12.

[5] van der Veer, H., & Wiles, A. (2008). Achieving technical interoperability. European telecommunications standards institute.

[6] Rukanova, B., van Slooten, K., & Stegwee, R. A. (2006). Towards a meta model for describing communication. In Enterprise Information Systems VI (pp. 203-210). Springer, Dordrecht. 

[7] Allywood, J.: A Bird’s Eye View of Pragmatics. In: 4th Scandinavian Conf. on Linguistics, pp. 145–159. Odense University Press (1978)

[8] Asuncion, C. H., & Van Sinderen, M. J. (2010, September). Pragmatic interoperability: A systematic review of published definitions. In IFIP International Conference on Enterprise Architecture, Integration and Interoperability (pp. 164-175). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

[9] Pokraev, S.V.: Model-Driven Semantic Integration of Service-Oriented Applications. PhD thesis, University of Twente (2009)

[10] Roukolainen, T.: Modeling Framework for Interoperability Management for Collaborative Computing Environments. Licentiate Thesis, University of Helsinki (2009) 

[11] Alfaro, J. J., Rodríguez-Rodríguez, R., Verdecho, M. J., & Ortiz, A. (2009). Business process interoperability and collaborative performance measurement. International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 22(9), 877-889.

[12] Alexandrou, D., & Mentzas, G. (2009, February). Research challenges for achieving healthcare business process interoperability. In 2009 International Conference on eHealth, Telemedicine, and Social Medicine (pp. 58-65). IEEE.

[13] Quartel, D., & van Sinderen, M. (2007, October). On interoperability and conformance assessment in service composition. In 11th IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC 2007) (pp. 229-229). IEEE.

[14] Paget, S. (2016). ‘Interoperability of the Mind’ Professional Military Education and the Development of Interoperability. The RUSI journal, 161(4), 42-50.