Assessment of organizational interoperability in e-Government

Abstract

The achievement of interoperability between public administrations across Europe is considered to be a crucial factor for the delivery of efficient, cost-effective and transparent public services. There are still many challenges and limitations to be faced, due to technical, semantic, legal and organizational factors. The importance of organizational interoperability towards information integration has been known for years. Nowadays, it still remains an enduring challenge and undoubtedly gains momentum due to the complexity of organizational aspect as the public organizations move toward inter-organizational governance as well as due to the enforcement of new policies such as Once Only principle and Open data. This paper initially highlights the importance of organizational interoperability in e-Government and the need to define metrics in order to assess the degree of organizational interoperability. A brief literature review on existing assessment tools, frameworks and models is presented. The development of a new model and tool for the assessment of organizational interoperability maturity of a digital public service, based on a referential model along with conceptual attributes, is thoroughly presented. The new approach can be used as an independent assessment model/tool in the area of organizational interoperability, while it could furthermore extend the IMAPS tool.