Use the Interoperability Maturity Model (IMM) for enhanced interoperability
The EC's ISA programme developed an Interoperability Maturity Model to provide public administrations insight into two key aspects of their interoperability performance:
- The current interoperability maturity level of a Public Service;
- Improvement priorities to reach the next level of interoperability maturity.
The Interoperability Maturity Model measures how well a public administration interacts with external entities in order to organise the efficient provisioning of its public services to other public administrations, businesses and or citizens. The IMM helps owners of a Public Service to enhance the quality of the service delivery, reduce costs and overcome integration issues by reusing available services and orchestrate services in an effective manner to maximize service outcome and benefits for citizens and public administrations.
Interoperability of a Public Service
The IMM measures the interoperability of a Public Service – a service rendered in the public interest. The service is delivered by a public administration to citizens (A2C), business organizations (A2B) and/or other public administrations (A2A). Examples are:
- Citizens (A2C) are offered the service to access their Electronic Health Record
- Businesses (A2B) are offered the service to register and pay for the filling of patents
- Administrations (A2A) are offered the service to obtain European vehicle information
The example below provides in more detail how a Public Service (declare income tax) is rendered towards the public. A process trigger initiates the Public Service that consists of several process steps. The process outcome of the Public Service, the public decision, is via a service delivery channel made available towards administrations, businesses and citizens.
Interoperability domains
In the context of interoperability maturity, the IMM measures how well a public service is able to interact with other organisations to realise mutually beneficial and agreed common goals through the exchange of information and reuse of services.
Three different domains of interoperability are distinguished:
- Service Delivery – Providing end-users accessibility to the public service
- Service Consumption – Consumption of reusable services from other public administrations and businesses. This can include the consumption of functionalities, base registry information and security services
- Service Management – Controlling and monitoring the process flow related to external service interactions from trigger to outcome
How to use the model
The IMM suite can help you to further improve your interoperability in two ways:
- IMM Full: a comprehensive toolset for a detailed analysis of the interoperability of the Public Service. This requires an in-depth analysis of the service landscaping. The IMM Full assessment typically is conducted with the help of support from ISA in order to assess the various interoperability attributes. Based on the assessment a tailor-made set of recommendations is provided towards the service owner. Reach out to ISA to plan in an introductory meeting.
- IMM Lite: a quick scan of the interoperability of the Public Service with the help of an online tooling available via EU Survey: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/IMMSurvey. Designed as a self-assessment tool the IMM assessment criteria has been condensed into targeted question sets in order to evaluate key interoperability aspects of a public service. Such insight results in personalised, confidential feedback and recommendations how a service can improve. The IMM Lite is designed to take approximately 20-30 minutes to complete. After filling in the questionnaire a report will be generated with the interoperability scores plus recommendations how to further improve your public service.
Example outcome of an IMM survey
Nature of documentation: Other