An Open, Transparent, Community-based Development Process for Interoperability Specifications

The software development process utilized to implement enterprise systems using a component architecture in a distributed environment is well understood. The service oriented architecture enables the joint development of global and enterprise-wide solutions by several developers following enterprise-wide IT-strategies as coordinated by the customer. However, the necessary level of collaboration between parties from the private or public sector requires well-defined interoperability specifications. The existing standardization processes are usually too complex and inflexible for widely available interoperability specifications in rather specialized application domains. The Semantic Interoperability Centre Europe (SEMIC.EU) defines an open clearing process to enable the collaborative development of interoperability specifications in order to exchange data especially between public administrations from the Member States of the European Community. Based on this scenario the publishing process and tools required for interoperability specifications supporting the data exchange in service-or Web-oriented architectures are compared with the traditional software development process.