E-Government Interoperability Framework in Lithuania

Abstract

An e-Government Interoperability Framework (eGIF) is one way to achieve e-Government interoperability. An eGIF is a set of standards and guidelines that a government uses to specify the preferred way that its agencies, citizens and partners interact with each other. In order to come up to the expectations of their stakeholders and to achieve real resolution of the evolving interoperability problems, the scope of the eGIFs needs to be extended, including service composition and discovery, development and management of semantic schemas for governmental documents, certification mechanisms and authentication standards. Moreover, a shift from a paper-based specification towards a repository of services, data schemas and process models is needed, in order to serve the ever-changing nature of governments under transformation. Upon conducting a state of the art analysis of relevant frameworks at a pan-European and national level, lessons learnt from the pioneers UK eGIF, German SAGA and Greek eGIF are presented. The proposed Lithuanian eGIF model describes new approach, outlines the technical, semantic and organization dimensions and stresses the importance of political interoperability. It also provides three layers model moving from only standards and specifications based approach to systems and coordination support elements. Finally the chapter tackles the issues that rose within stakeholders’ community in the e-Government interoperability context.