The 2014 State of Play Report on Interoperability in Europe measures an average alignment of 74% for 19 assessed countries. Of these countries, 5 reach over 90% alignment.
The report details all areas of progress and identifies the main trends and challenges that administrations face when designing and implementing their National Interoperability Frameworks (NIFs).
Different levels of maturity
"A centralised regular monitoring of interoperability initiatives and a strong cooperation effort among public administrations are the basis for an effective NIF implementation", the report says. There is a need to establish effective monitoring activities to ensure NIF implementation. The report identifies a wide divergence in the scores which reflects the different levels of maturity of the NIFs in the countries analysed.
Trends and challenges
‘Open data’ and ‘open technology’ are identified as trends in ways of improving interoperability in EU countries. Openness and reuse of government data, open specifications and open source are emphasised in many countries and interoperability initiatives.
One of the challenges listed in the report are the budgetary constraints hindering the pursuing of current work or carrying out new initiatives. Legal aspects such as multiple and conflicting laws on base registries are also underlined. Other challenges can be found in the area of semantics and multilingualism, and in the legacy technology in place.
The report is made available by the National Interoperability Framework Observatory (NIFO) community this week.