Organisational barriers to interoperability

The growth of internet access as well as the development of national strategies for e-Government, have had a remarkable impact on the information society. This progress has brought about a broad range of new issues and challenges, among these, those of interoperability of systems and services. One area, in which barriers are common, yet not fully understood, is organisational interoperability. In this paper we present results from empirical research exploring such obstacles in Norwegian public administration and government agencies. The findings are based on semi-structured interviews, and organised in ten categories of barriers to organisational interoperability. The results presented in this paper are aimed at deepening the understanding of organisational interoperability in e-Government. The identification of barriers is a first step for finding solutions to achieve interoperability goals.