The Digital Continuity 2020 Policy calls for information, systems and processes to be interoperable by 31 December 2020.
The potential of your agency's information and data to be shared and re-used depends on its quality, discoverability, and overarching management.
To achieve this potential, your agency needs to build interoperability across a range of themes – business, security, legal, semantic and technical.
Building interoperability means you can exchange information and data between different systems. It is dependent on clear, shared expectations for the context and meaning of data across systems.
Data governance and management is the foundation for building interoperability. It supports standardisation and management to facilitate discoverability and sharing. It is an essential component of information governance, particularly in data-centric agencies.
To start learning about interoperability, read about:
- Interoperability key themes
- Interoperability development phases
- Interoperability scenarios
- Data Interoperability Maturity Model
Why interoperability?
Interoperability supports the use and reuse of government information and data as key assets and can:
- provide consistent, coordinated and more timely services
- improve accessibility
- lessen the impact of structural changes in government
- reduce the risks of technical obsolescence
- inform policy development and decision-making
- reduce the cost of information and data management through reuse and shared infrastructure
Implementation advice
The following implementation advice helps build your agency's capability to meet Digital Continuity 2020 Policy interoperability expectations:
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Principle 3 – Information is interoperable |
Implementation advice |
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Agencies will have interoperable information, systems and processes that meet standards for short and long-term management, improve information quality and enable information to be found, managed, shared and re-used easily and efficiently. |
Interoperability key themes help you understand how interoperability is not just a technical fix. It also relies on working with your information and data to align your business, security, legal and semantic needs. Interoperability development phases will help you plan and implement solutions to address interoperability hurdles that are visualised in the interoperability scenarios. Your results from using the Business System Assessment Framework (BSAF) can be used to identify:
Minimum metadata supports a standards-based approach to sharing information and data. |
Other interoperability initiatives
Other interoperability initiatives are being led by a range of Australian Government agencies, including:
- Office of the National Data Commissioner framework for data sharing and release
- Programs under the Digital Transformation Agency agenda , such as the whole-of-Federal Government digital platforms and a secure cloud strategy
- Data integration partnership for Australia (DIPA), led by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
- Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet's Guidance on data sharing for Australian Government Entities
- Multi-agency data integration project (MADIP)
More information
- Data Interoperability Standards Consortium – (DISC; United States)
- Cloud strategy – Digital Transformation Agency (DTA)
- Guidance on Data Sharing for Australian Government Entities – PM&C
- Multi-Agency Data Integration Project – Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
- The Open Data Institute – (ODI; Australian network)
- Project interoperability – (ODNI; United States)