Semantic Interoperability For Governments: Approaches For Model-Based Development Of Standardized Information Exchange

Electronic governments heavily rely on electronic organizational interfaces, at which electronic services are provided and data is being exchanged, both among government agencies, as well as with companies. In many sectors and domains of the Dutch government initiatives exist to standardize these organizational interfaces at semantic level. The ways in which these interfaces are designed are very diverse, not just in detail but often in their starting points. This poses extensive problems, as different semantic standards are not comparable and not interoperable. In this paper, we propose a solution to this problem by using a framework for the organizational interface in which the semantic standardization initiatives can be positioned and aligned with each other. In addition, we describe three general types of approaches that can be used to standardize the semantics of information shared between governments including the standard messages that need to be exchanged. Finally, we describe the organization that has been set up by the Dutch government to align and manage the various standardization initiatives using the proposed framework and approaches and we report on some of the lessons learned.