The IMAPS team released the updated complete suite of the IMAPS solution, including specialised versions of its survey. IMAPS and its specialisations allow public service owners to get detailed insights on the legal (LIMAPS), organisational (OIMAPS), technical (TIMAPS) and semantic (SIMAPS) interoperability maturity of their digital public services.
In the same context, the IMAPS team is also publishing the relevant High Level Solution Architecture Templates (HL SATs). The HL SATs define minimal interoperability architectures, provide guidance and support a common understanding of the most critical building blocks for interoperability.
What is IMAPS?
IMAPS is a self-assessment tool, provided as online survey, which enables public service owners to evaluate key interoperability aspects of their digital public service, such as multilingualism, reuse / self-production, data protection, etc. The assessment is performed from a “behavioral” perspective, focusing on the means and ways that digital public services interact with each other. Ultimately, IMAPS helps public administrations to improve the interoperability maturity of their digital public services towards seamless delivery.
IMAPS covers the main aspects of a digital public service lifecycle, namely the service delivery, the service consumption and the service management. These, in turn, are being assessed in terms of data, information and knowledge specifications, capabilities and manifestations, meaning specific details that enable and support peer-to-peer service collaboration.
What are advantages of IMAPS?
The IMAPS solution…
- Allows public service owners to check the alignment of the digital public service with the new European Interoperability Framework (EIF);
- Can be applied for assessing the interoperability maturity of any digital public service – from open data portals, online tax declaration, e-health and public procurement services;
- Can be used for evaluating digital public services at all levels of government (international, European, national, regional and local).
What can you expect from an IMAPS assessment?
IMAPS provides you with:
- A user-friendly online questionnaire for completing the assessment (available via EUSurvey);
- An interoperability maturity score indicating where your service stands today considering key interoperability aspects – from ad hoc (level 1) to seamless interoperability (level 5) – which can be used as benchmark;
- A set of recommendations for improving your digital public service, based on interoperability standards and good practices;
- A report of your IMAPS assessment to support your investment decisions for service improvement;
- A statement of conformance with the EIF principles.
How to use the IMAPS specialisations? Follow the user journey!
Specialised versions of IMAPS are also available and allow public service owners to further assess specific legal, organisational, semantic and technical interoperability aspects.
Take a look at the simple illustration of a “user journey”, presenting the overall assessment process that starts from IMAPS and leads to its specialisations. It gives more context and explanation to the end-user on how the IMAPS Specialisations surveys can be used, what to expect from the assessments, as well as what is their connection to the IMAPS survey. Find the IMAPS user journey attached and below:
What has changed in the new versions of IMAPS and its specialisations?
The new version of the IMAPS solution is more user-friendly (e.g. simplified language and improved user guidance in the surveys) and has been aligned with the terminology of similar interoperability solutions (e.g. SIQAT, EIRA, CAMSS).
Explore the new releases and share your feedback!
We invite you to discover the IMAPS suite and start the assessment of your digital public service(s).
Visit our new releases of IMAPS (v.2.0.0), LIMAPS (v1.0.0), OIMAPS (v1.0.0), SIMAPS (v.1.1.0) and TIMAPS (v1.0.0)!
If you wish to find out more about the architectural guidelines and the respective HL SATs, visit: LIMAPS HL SAT, OIMAPS HL SAT, SIMAPS HL SAT, TIMAPS HL SAT.
What to expect next?
We are moving towards a unified user experience by bringing together all different Interoperability actions (Behavioral, Governmental, Structural). A unified package will be available to you in order to reach the next level in the interoperability maturity of your digital public service!
Stay tuned to learn more!
In case of questions, please contact the IMAPS team via e-mail to DIGIT-IMAPS@ec.europa.eu.