Towards a pragmatic methodology to bridge the gap in e-government interoperability: A case of patient refereral information exchange

Electronic government interoperability frameworks (e-GIFs) have been extensively developed as mechanism tools for achieving the interoperability. However, the success of their adoption and implement has been imprecise due to numerous obstacles and barriers such as bureaucracy, compliances, capacity and enforcement. These make the gap between conceptual framework and implementation. This paper presents a pragmatic methodology called "Interoperability Practical Implementation Support or IPIS". The IPIS was design to achieve the three dimensions (organizational, semantic and technical) of interoperability with the inclusion of three main components: Applicative Interoperability Collaborative Process (AICP), Automated Interoperability Support Tool (AIST) and Interoperability Registry (IR). The IPIS was applied to the implementation of patient referral information exchanges as a success case.