The role of interoperability in egovernment applications: An investigation of critical factors

The aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding on the role of interoperability in eGovernment applications. The focus of interest is on eGovernment applications involving more than one agency or heterogeneous technical infrastructures. The main research objective is to identify a set of critical factors that influence eGovernment interoperability. To fulfil this objective we reviewed the relevant literature and examined 18 case studies of European eGovernment applications where interoperability has a significant role. The results enabled us to identify a number of critical factors categorized as technical, semantic, organizational, political, legal, managerial and economic. We believe that the results of this research can be used by practitioners and researchers alike. Practitioners may use the results as guidance when developing their own applications. Researchers can further extend these results, for example, by attempting to better understand current trends, by identifying additional critical factors and by investigating the relationships between factors.