Description
How is interoperability concretely fostered in the frame of this concrete example/good practice?
In its effort to increase cooperation and coordination among public administrations, Norway published the architecture principles for public sector digitalisation which were revised in 2019. A new version of the principles was published in January 2020. The main goal of the initiative is to foster the public sector’s interoperability and interactions with businesses. The architecture includes principles on user-centricity, subsidiarity and proportionality, legal interoperability, data sharing and reuse, solution sharing and reuse, support for interoperability, and trust. Each of these seven principles is defined by a set of recommendations and a list of useful resources to be reused. The implementation of the architecture principles is mandatory for public administrations at the national level and recommended for those at the sub-national level (e.g. municipalities).
What are the measures put in place to ensure compliance with the EIF?
One of the main initiatives of the country to foster cooperation and coordination has been the publication of the Norwegian Interoperability Framework (NIF) in 2018. It is a national transposition of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) that aims to help public administrations in defining, developing and managing digital public services, including cross-sectorial ones. Similar to the EIF, the NIF covers organizational, legal, semantic and technical aspects of interoperability and contains principles, conceptual models and guidelines to foster digital interaction across sectors. A central concept of the framework is the reuse of public services as an enabler for information sharing among agencies and as a facilitator for cross-sector interactions between public administrations, businesses and citizens.
Public administrations in Norway, at both national and sub-national levels, are recommended to use the NIF when developing interoperable digital services.
What challenges emerged during the implementation of this concrete example/good practice? How did you overcome them?
The main challenges that Norway faced when improving interoperability are related to the prioritisation of efforts, the need for sufficient resources and expertise, and the importance of ensuring the commitment of stakeholders in the different sectors.
To address these challenges, the country appointed experts in various fields (e.g. education, healthcare, security etc.) to be part of the project groups that were tasked with developing the NIF and revising the architecture principles. Both projects were led by the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency. These domain experts have subsequently adapted the national principles and the NIF to their specific domains. An example is the concretization of the architecture principles for the health sector, published by the Directorate of eHealth.
Main takeaways
What are the success factors of this concrete example/good practice?
What are the key lessons learnt from this concrete example/good practice?
The country learned that, through greater stakeholder involvement and participation, the quality of digital service delivery will improve, thus leading to the increased use of digital services.
The takeaways could also include answers to the following questions:
How did the implementation of this concrete example/good practice impact the level of interoperability in your country? Please provide concrete instances.
Through the implementation, the need for further tools and more holistic approach to interoperability initiatives has become clear. As a result, an ecosystem model and underlying toolkit is being developed and this operationalizes further the architecture principles and framework.
How it supports the implementation of the EIF recommendation(s)?
The interoperability framework (NIF) includes recommendations from chapter 3 – Interoperability layers, and it promotes the interoperability model as a framework to ensure interoperability on all levels. The architecture principles include many of the general recommendations from chapter 2.
Relevant related websites and documentation
For further information, you could consult:
2018 Digitalisation in Central Government report of the Office of the Auditor General of Norway
Norwegian Interoperability Framework
2020 architecture principles for public sector digitalisation