Interoperability

Interoperability refers to “the ability of systems, natively independent, to interact in order to build harmonious and intentional collaborative behaviors without deeply modifying their individual structure or behavior” (Barthe-Delanoë et al., 2014) Generally speaking, interoperability should be considered at the physical (e.g., standardized handling), organizational (e.g., inter-organizational protocols), business (e.g., business models with shared value), and digital levels (Pan et al., 2019)

There are two types of data interoperability: syntactic and semantic.

• Syntactic interoperability: enables different software components to cooperate, facilitating the communication and exchange data between two or more systems.
• Semantic interoperability: refers to the ability of computer systems to exchange data in a way that is understood by the other.

For two or more systems to be interoperable, they must be able to speak directly to one another in the same language, exchanging, interpreting, and sharing data. This is accomplished with syntactic interoperability, which requires adopting a common data format and common data structure protocols. It is the prerequisite for semantic interoperability, which involves the addition of metadata that links each data element to a controlled, shared vocabulary.

Semantic interoperability requires clear interfaces based on published standards (Al Humdan et al., 2020).