1. Interoperability in Public Sector - How Use of a Lightweight Approach Can Reduce the Gap Between Plans and Reality - Svein lnes, Western Norway Research Institute (Vestforsk), Norway

2. Interoperability? Norwegian Swiss www.vestforsk.no

3. 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

4. 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

5. What a difference a little semantics can do www.vestforsk.no

6. What a difference a little semantics can do www.vestforsk.no

7. 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 (Brnnysund Register Centre) www.vestforsk.no

8. 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

9. 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 started in 2006 still no final update www.vestforsk.no

10. Comparison to the development of HTML5 xhtml 1.0 HTML 4.01 expressed in xml syntacs xhtml 1.1 Pure 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

11. 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 ++ faceted classification expressed in the Dublin Core metadata standard 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 www.vestforsk.no 100 (of 430) municipalities uses Los in their portals ca.

12. Los structure Tema = Theme Emneord = Keyword Nettressurs = Net resources www.vestforsk.no

13. Los examples of use in municipality portals Bergen www.vestforsk.no

14. Los examples of use in municipality portals Srum Frde www.vestforsk.no

15. Classification and Categorisation www.vestforsk.no

16. 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 Is there too little emphasis on simple solutions? Top down or bottom up? How does lightweight approaches go together with more demanding interoperability initiatives and frameworks? www.vestforsk.no

17. End of presentation Thanks! Contact information Svein lnes sol@vestforsk.no www.vestforsk.no