Interoperability in e-Government Solutions: The Case of Brazilian Federal Universities

Abstract

Governments use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to provide citizens, organizations and governments with online services and tools. One of the key factors in this context is system interoperability, since it promotes the exchange of information among systems in different levels. Achieving high levels of interoperability, however, is challenging because it involves different concepts, business processes, standards, languages, ontologies and laws. The Brazilian government has defined the e-PING Interoperability Standards to specify the guidelines for achieving interoperability in different levels, but many public organizations cannot completely implement the interoperability aspects in their solutions. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present an investigation we conducted with the ICT departments of the Brazilian federal universities to understand whether and how they use the e-PING interoperability standards, and what are the main challenges. Results show that most universities do not fully implement interoperability requirements mainly because of a shortage of ICT staff, lack of knowledge and lack of clear instructions on how to achieve interoperability using the e-PING standards. Such findings allow us to identify several improvements on the Brazilian egovernment strategy. CCS Concepts• Information systems➝Web applications• Applied computing➝Information integration and interoperability • Applied computing➝E-government • Software and its engineering➝Interoperability.

Interoperability in electronic records managements systems: An evaluation of the universities in Ankara

“…These findings show that the organizational dimension of interoperability should be emphasized as much as its technical and legal dimension. In other studies on interoperability in e-government services in the literature, it is seen that the lack of technical infrastructure, legal problems, lack of financial resources, insufficient human resources, awareness problems, resistance to change, lack of support from the senior management, security and privacy problems and coordination problems are observed (Laskaridis et al, 2007; Çalık, 2010; Sulehat and Taib, 2016; Oliveira and Eler, 2017; Maroye et al, 2017). It is thought that the main problems that need to be dealt with after the legal and technical infrastructure are made suitable for interoperability are the lack of senior management support, the lack of expert personnel, and the low level of awareness and knowledge of the personnel.…”

“…In the study, the main problems related to interoperability were identified as lack of legal infrastructure, lack of any control mechanisms, coordination problems, lack of financial resources, and lack of expert personnel. Similarly, in studies conducted in Brazilian universities and Belgian public institutions, problems such as the lack of expert staff, lack of financial resources, legal uncertainties, resistance to change have been identified (Oliveira and Eler, 2017; Maroye et al, 2017). In various studies, model suggestions for interoperability have been presented as results of the researches.…”