French Interoperability Framework

The French government recently published the first version of a Référentiel Général d'Interoperabilité, a National Interoperability Framework for ensuring interoperability in eGovernment services.

It is an excellent document outlining the necessity of interoperability and putting it into perspective for public authorities and the development of public administrations' infrastructures and eGovernment services. The document takes a clear stance on the need of standards for achieving genuine interoperability and on the benefits of standards for fostering innovation. And it puts this National Interoperability Framework into the broader context of the European Interoperability Framework and its objectives.

"La référence à des normes et standards externes permet auy pertenaires d'un échange d'aller au-delà de simples arrangemetns bilatéraux, de réutiliser des spécifications existantes e donc de limiteer des coûts liés à la réalisation de solutions spécifiques.

La stratégie européenne pour la croissance et l'emploi prćise qu'une standardisation forte et dynamique est un des instrument pour encourager l'innovation. Elle considère la standardisation comme d'intérêt public, en particulier lorsque la sécurité, la santé, l'environment et les performances sont en jeux (cf. EIF)." [p. 6]

In its detailed passages this interoperability guide lists concrete standards to be implemented for achieving specific functions. This is built up along six different levels of interoperability: political, legal, organisational, semantic, syntactic and technical.

And the document makes very clear that for IT infrastructures and eGovernment services it is essential to take standards and specifications from global open standards development organisations (fora/consortia) which complement the work of the official, formally recognised standards organisations. The principal global bodies taken into consideration are OASIS, W3C, IETF, Ecma, OMG and WS-I [p. 14]. The standards and specifications from these organisations complement the work of the formally recognised organsiations:

"En complément des organisations officielles, le secteur des technologies de l'information et des télécommunications se caractérise par un foisonnement d'organismes qui contribuent à l'évolution des standards." [p. 14]

In this respect, this French interoperability document also underlines the necessity of the changes to the European standardisation framework and the European ICT standardisation policy which the Commission outlined in its White Paper on ICT standardisation earlier this month. See my blog posts of Jul 6 and Jul 7. It is paramount that these legal changes are implemented fast so that the full potential of such strategies like the French interoperability strategy can fully flourish.