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The purpose of this paper is to present such an analytical framework for analyzing Government Interoperability Frameworks (GIFs) and to do a comparative analysis of a set of GIFs using the analytical framework. Based on the comparative analysis, the paper presents a set of recommendations useful for new GIF initiatives.

Drawing on literature and personal knowledge and experience, an analytical framework is proposed for qualitative comparison of GIFs. The analytical framework is based on three core areas of interoperability frameworks – context, content, and process. A total of 21 GIFs are analyzed and evaluated against the framework. The primary sources of information for the study are the interoperability framework documents. In some cases, published articles, brochures, etc. are used as additional sources of information.

The comparative analysis shows that the analytical framework adequately covers all the features of the GIFs. Comparative analysis also shows that most of the GIFs concentrate mainly on technical and syntactical aspects only. Organizational and semantic issues are covered only by a handful of GIFs. At the policy level, most common interoperability policies are found to be: the universal adoption of common specifications used on the internet and world wide web, use of XML for data integration and data management, and use of open standards for all public sector information systems. Regarding management of GIF, it is found that German, Greek and New Zealand GIFs document the process of standards life cycle management in a much better way, whereas UK e‐GIFs' coverage of management and compliance mechanism of GIF is excellent. Overall, it is found that the UK e‐GIF is one of the most mature and exhaustive on all counts. German – Standards und Architekturen f¨r eGovernment‐Anwendungen on the other hand is found to be a unique effort. It incorporates features of both an enterprise architecture and those of an interoperability framework.

The contribution of the study is substantial for academia and practitioners. For academics, this framework can be used in future research as a tool to benchmark and grade GIFs. The practitioners, on the other hand, can use the study, to identify various essential features of a GIF which can be very useful for new GIF initiatives. The six‐layered e‐government technical architecture discussed here can be used to check the current status of technical interoperability in an organization and to identify gaps in the technology coverage.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a tool in the form of a roadmap for planning and implementation of interoperability capabilities. The issue of interoperability is gaining importance for offering services as “one-stop shop” due to rapid developments in the field of e-government in recent times. Several complexities are associated with this important dimension, and there is an urgent need for developing a tool to facilitate rollout of e-government projects with interoperability capabilities. The proposed roadmap can enable knowledge sharing among key stakeholders for building a common vision and contribute to planning and implementation of interoperability features of e-government.

The paper is an exploratory study using the phenomenographic interpretive approach. The literature review identifies the facets and the issues that are crucial for facilitating interoperability. The status of interoperability in some of the developed countries is reviewed where e-government is in a relatively mature stage. Based on the review, this paper identifies an initial set of issues that can guide semi-structured interviews with policymakers, partners and the government agencies implementing e-government projects. The views of these key stakeholders are then analyzed and used for developing the roadmap for implementation of interoperability of e-government services. The findings are then mapped in India’s context for triangulation purpose.

The paper provides insights into various planning and implementation issues that have to be addressed for building interoperability capability. A roadmap is proposed encompassing the essential legal, regulatory, organizational and technical aspects that are deemed essential for successful planning and implementation of interoperability capability.

The study has the limitation that the exploratory part of the study is based on inputs from key actors in the Indian context only. It needs to be validated by empirical studies in various contexts.

The roadmap proposed will be useful for the policymakers, as it can guide them for planning and implementing e-government systems with interoperability capabilities. It can be used as a knowledge-sharing tool for spreading awareness of steps required for designing and implementing interoperability capabilities.

The paper contributes by providing a tool in the form of a roadmap that can be used by the policymakers and implementers to take a holistic view of requirements for development of interoperability capabilities. The paper can form the basis for future research in specific issues of interoperability.

This work focuses on the interoperability of the blockchain from the viewpoint of its technological evolution in the wider context of supply chain systems. Interoperability concerns the most since it is among the most persevering problems in the process of blockchain adaptation. The study aims to trace and pinpoint all the different methods that affect the interoperability of blockchains, gather all the obtainable evidence and recognize gaps in between the applicable approaches mentioned across the contemporary academic literature.

An analysis is done of seven interoperability approaches based on their relevance, practical usefulness and adoption processes concerning the blockchain. Mainly, this work examines interoperability from several different perspectives. An interoperability modular decomposition via a layered model has been defined through the level of conceptual interoperability (LCIM) and level of information system interoperability (LISI), which represent the most popular metrics with regard to assessing the level of interoperability from a qualitative level.

Generally, the findings of this work are directed in two major aspects: Firstly, it expands the research around blockchain technology interoperability by providing crucial background information and pinpointing important connotations for both industrial and academic environments. It also defines and analyzes several different approaches toward the blockchain platform's interoperability. Secondly, it also identifies and proposes several scenarios that take advantage of multiple blockchain application approaches, highlights various issues and challenges to the evolution of interoperability standards and solutions and indicates the desired areas of further research.

An essential aspect of the originality of this paper is that, contrary to other work contributions, this work summarized the different interoperability approaches for blockchain in supply chain systems. Mainly, seven approaches were discussed for practitioners and researchers, and the open issues and future research direction were considered.

Central banks from more than 100 countries, representing 95% of the global financial output, are studying Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). CBDCs can potentially enable safe, efficient and inexpensive cross-border and cross-currency payments in today's interconnected financial system. However, a critical factor influencing their expansion is cross-border interoperability. Therefore, there is a high demand from central banks, researchers, computer scientists, policy- and decision-makers to explore this topic further. Its better understanding will improve information management, enhance the decision-making process, and result in the redesign of central banks' processes and products (digital currencies).

The authors investigate this novel and timely topic by conducting a Multivocal Systematic Literature Review (MSLR) on CBDCs cross-border interoperability. Additionally, the authors collect and analyze empirical data from various online resources such as CBDC trackers.

The authors conclude that although the academic literature on CBDC cross-border interoperability is very limited, valuable documents published by central banks and other entities discuss this issue and provide valuable insights. The authors paid particular attention to the reports published by the Bank of International Settlement (BIS) as it proposes three different models for CBDC cross-border interoperability. The study research reveals that most CBDC cross-border interoperability projects run by several central banks and other organizations explore these three BIS models. For this research, the authors performed an in-depth study of CBDC cross-border interoperability cases to investigate all three BIS models. The findings illustrate that although technical interoperability is feasible, plenty of work needs to be done in terms of standards and interfaces. In addition, other non-technical interoperability areas need to be explored and addressed, as there are concerns related to legal issues, regulations, jurisdictional boundaries, policy challenges and governance.

Research on CBDCs is progressing quickly, so, despite the authors’ use of an MSLR to identify the state-of-the-art, interested parties should be aware that new information is prone to appear imminently. Hence, this study work should be understood as a basis to build upon. Also, although the authors have included major academic databases in this study search, there is the possibility that a few papers may have been published in outlets that the authors have not covered. Finally, since the search in the grey literature returned thousands of hits, the authors had to define a stopping criterion for the documents to analyze.

The authors provide insights on the current state of CBDC cross-border interoperability, which is valuable to policy- and decision-makers currently assessing the situation and deciding on avenues to pursue.

The authors provide an integrated and critical view of the developments of CBDC cross-border interoperability, considering not only available academic literature but also fundamental documents from key institutions such as central banks and related organizations.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the importance of, and problems with, interoperability along long term digital archiving systems.

The article reviews the literature about interoperability and takes an engineering‐oriented look at implementation within the LuKII project. It also draws heavily on actual experience in the LuKII (LOCKSS und KOPAL Infrastructure und Interoperabilität) project.

The need for interoperation is well established, but the implementation requires significant technical work to define and test key aspects of interoperability.

The need for interoperation among digital archiving systems is very much there, but achieving it is hard. Systems built at different times and along different principles require a degree of reengineering that can test the skills (and sometimes the patience) of the creators. Interoperability also requires fresh thinking about how archiving systems can reasonably measure important abstract concepts like integrity and authenticity.

As OSI standards are becoming finalized, computer manufacturers and vendors are beginning to provide networking solutions based on OSI protocols. Products which implement OSI protocols are available from most major suppliers. They cover all seven layers and support several technologies and applications. Technologies supported include X.25 networks and various types of local area networks; applications supported are file transfer, virtual terminal, message handling, and directory services. Several projects are underway to promote conformance and interoperability testing of OSI products. This article describes some of these testing projects and a sample of OSI products available.

The application of category theory to interoperability to increase understanding of the problems and to facilitate the development of practical tools for their solution.

Category theory is naturally suited to handling interoperability. The use of first order predicate logic in many information systems may be justified through its completeness. However, the work of Gödel shows that such systems are undecidable if they rely on formal systems of number and/or sets. For interoperability dyadic higher order logic is required, which is neither complete nor decidable if based on sets. However, pure category theory is still axiomatic so is also neither complete nor decidable. Applied category theory based on cartesian closed categories for process is natural and is both complete and decidable. Gödel's theorems therefore do not apply.

The paper finds that composed adjunctions appear particularly well‐suited for modelling interoperability, with composition of distinct functors for mapping across a number of levels and of endofunctors for business process interoperability. The monad/comonad category provides a powerful abstraction of the business process. The development of a tool based on categorial principles written in Haskell may be a way forward but only as an initial set model approach.

This paper applies categorial constructions which permit a natural formal approach to interoperability.

The purpose of this paper is to employ a case study of the Omeka content management system to demonstrate how the adoption and implementation of a metadata standard (in this case, Dublin Core) can result in contrasting rhetorical arguments regarding metadata utility, quality, and reliability. In the Omeka example, the author illustrate a conceptual disconnect in how two metadata stakeholders – standards creators and standards users – operationalize metadata quality. For standards creators such as the Dublin Core community, metadata quality involves implementing a standard properly, according to established usage principles; in contrast, for standards users like Omeka, metadata quality involves mere adoption of the standard, with little consideration of proper usage and accompanying principles.

The paper uses an approach based on rhetorical criticism. The paper aims to establish whether Omeka’s given ends (the position that Omeka claims to take regarding Dublin Core) align with Omeka’s guiding ends (Omeka’s actual argument regarding Dublin Core). To make this assessment, the paper examines both textual evidence (what Omeka says) and material-discursive evidence (what Omeka does).

The evidence shows that, while Omeka appears to argue that adopting the Dublin Core is an integral part of Omeka’s mission, the platform’s lack of support for Dublin Core implementation makes an opposing argument. Ultimately, Omeka argues that the appearance of adopting a standard is more important than its careful implementation.

This study contributes to our understanding of how metadata standards are understood and used in practice. The misalignment between Omeka’s position and the goals of the Dublin Core community suggests that Omeka, and some portion of its users, do not value metadata interoperability and aggregation in the same way that the Dublin Core community does. This indicates that, although certain values regarding standards adoption may be pervasive in the metadata community, these values are not equally shared amongst all stakeholders in a digital library ecosystem. The way that standards creators (Dublin Core) understand what it means to “adopt a standard” is different from the way that standards users (Omeka) understand what it means to “adopt a standard.”

Using an introductory organizational case study, this paper examines the tension digital publishers face between wanting to adhere to relevant standards, and the temptation to modify or create one's own local standards. The discussion examines the long‐term costs of deviation from standards, and provides three major considerations for selecting appropriate standards: local capacity for standards support, available choices, and integration with the local technical environment. The paper also explains strategies for maintaining core standards support, while retaining room for innovation and added value to digital publishing programs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of the standardisation of two largely overlapping electronic document formats between 2005 and 2008, and its implications for future IT standards development.

The document format controversy is researched as an exemplary case study of the institutional rivalries, perspectives and strategic interests at play in standardisation processes. The study adopts a methodological lens of discursive institutionalism in order to explain how actors assume and perform a variety of roles during the controversy. It consults a range of documentary sources, including media commentary, corporate press releases and blog posts, financial reports and technical specifications.

The study shows that: first, intentions to increase competition in the office software market through the standardisation of document formats led to a standards “arms race”; second, this further entrenched the position of a single market actor; and third, the resulting public debate nevertheless has reinvigorated the push for genuinely open standards.

Information technology standards are often touted as mechanisms for increasing the competitiveness of a market, thereby benefitting consumers and the greater public. In the presence of dominant institutional actors, efforts to standardise can, perversely, undermine this benefit. Increased public scrutiny through online media offers a potential remedy.

This research presents a novel account of the controversy over the document format standardisation process, understood through the lens of discursive institutionalism. It also shows the increasing and potentially putative role of online media in the development of IT standards generally.