Interoperability standards

[fretchen]

We constantly have discussions about appropiate interoperability standards. I did not see a simple solution on this until now:

I think that there should be something on interoperability. But what ?

• The need of standards ? Are there ressources ?
• Should GovStack be mentionned as a possible standard ?
• What about ISO ?
• What about other common standards ?
• Connection to vendor lock-in most likely important ?

[avvertix]

I think here is worth mentioning that interoperability can be viewed from different angles. From the perspective of a guideline I think the following are the key ones:

1. Data Export. Getting data out of the system, this can be realized in form of file based exports or APIs
2. Data Import. Getting data inside the system, this can be realized in form of file based exchange or by offering APIs

Personally I don't think we should mention specific standards in the guidelines, but only general approaches and the fact that the most appropriate standard for data exchange should be researched based on the use cases.

We can, probably, suggest to take into account interoperability from day one by introducing early an API or a way to programmatically run import/exports.

As I understand the comments, may be we can settle on two aspects:

• APIs or files for getting data in and out of the system, which can be relevant both for integrating with other systems, but also for vendor lock-in questions: if you want to change a vendor, you may want to get all your data out of the system once.
• compliance with existing standards for data structure: not sure if this is the best wording, hence by way of example what I mean is e.g.: if you need to decide for a learning management system: there are a couple of standards how course data is usually structured and what is saved and there are naming conventions, which means that it is relatively simpler to get all your data out and (with minor adjustments) into another system if you want to change to another one. The same is true e.g. for many fields of medical data, etc. Open source tools usually comply with one of these standards, but closed ones not necessarily. This second point is rather on data interoperability than software

[fretchen]

So I summarize from what I understand:

Point 1

• It is a fairly strong recommendation to have a properly documented API (otherwise you will be hard in integrate into any other software stack).
• Second best, but is a proper way to manually extract data via file exports.

Point 2
It is recommended to base yourself on existing data structures. Examples:

• SCORM in education
• FHIR for health
• OpenAPI for json

Is this fair ?

[avvertix]

@GFA-DIU the phrasing of the two aspects are in-line with what I was trying to express. @fretchen your summary is totally right. Have a properly documented API, have ways of import/export data then if there are standards those ways and documentation should come in a standard format.