Multi-Level Interoperability for ICT-Enabled Governance: A Framework for Assessing Value Drivers and Implications for European Policies

In the context of European policy and strategy for e-Government, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are seen not only as a means to improve public services, but a way to facilitate multi-level governance. As a consequence, interoperability is predominantly seen as an instrument for enabling cross-border collaboration between public administrations within and between different Member States. Many initiatives and projects have been promoted and carried out during the last decade resulting in a growing number of potentially reusable best practices and benchmarks. Nevertheless, the complexity and volume of resulting project outcomes represent a challenge for effective exploitation of the results in other initiatives and intervention contexts. Furthermore, despite the recognition of interoperability as a multi-faceted concept (i.e. technological, organizational, and semantic), it seems to be mainly the technological aspects of interoperability that emerge from the available project results. This paper proposes an interpretative framework which aims to provide a systemic perspective and an instrument to elicit the links between interoperability and governance, outlining the various challenges that this poses. It considers state-of-the-art contributions at both academic and practitioner level. In particular, it discusses the multiple dimensions of interoperability and the value drivers underpinning the conceptual and measurement framework proposed. It also looks at how this framework could be applied to the evaluation of two case studies at cross-border, and national-city level in Europe. The paper concludes with the main findings of this exploratory analysis, outlining indications for future research on interoperability as a key driver for ICT-enabled governance. Interoperability is found to play a strategic role in the delivery of e-Government services to local and national communities within the EU. Moreover, its significance is expected to increase over the next few years, especially in terms of how it supports emerging city governance models and acts as the backbone of communications at a pan-European, national and local level