Interoperability frameworks and enterprise architectures in e-government initiatives in Europe and the United States

Public administrations have been very much concerned since the 1980s about the need of avoiding vendor lock-in when procuring themselves with information technology (IT) infrastructure. The boost of e-government that has taken place in recent years has put this concern again in the agenda of public administrations. Interoperability has shown up as a principle in the conception and deployment of the e-government initiatives, and the interoperability frameworks have been the tool for implementing the principle. In this paper, the use of the interoperability frameworks and of the enterprise architectures within the e-government initiatives is surveyed. The scope of the survey is Europe and the United States. As far as the author is aware, all trends in interoperability policy fall within the scope of the survey. The survey is focused on the methodological tools that e-government agencies have devised for achieving the interoperability at the public administrations. The tools are interoperability frameworks and enterprise architectures. (C) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.