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Data Interoperability - ICT Policy

Office of the Chief Information Officer

Policy No. BI/POL/001; Status: Approved; Date of Effect March 2006; Next Review Date; March 2008

Version 1.0

1. Policy Statement

Departments and Agencies must comply with the approved Whole of Victorian Government (WoVG) standards for data interoperability between information systems.

2. Context

Definition - Data Interoperability

In this policy, the term "data interoperability" is used to refer to the ability of IT systems to be able to provide data and services to each other. This ability to provide data and services needs to be considered at the levels of business processes, information, applications and technology.

Data interoperability can be applied to IT systems from a single department, from different departments, or to the Victorian Government IT systems communicating with external parties.

Rationale

The increasing use of ICT across government results in a large variety of data being gathered, stored and exchanged.

To improve services to citizens and businesses, the government needs to share information between departments/agencies. This requires ensuring that:

• The meaning and handling of data usage is consistent with its original purpose, meaning and handling. This consistency must take into account legislative and regulatory requirements, such as compliance with privacy legislation, freedom of information and record keeping.
• Appropriate agreements are created between providers and users of data to cover purpose, meaning, handling and availability.
• ICT capital and operational budgets allocations take into account the investment into and usage of shared data by individual Victorian government departments/agencies.
• Intellectual property ownership and its licensing are explicitly addressed in course of data sharing.

As the Victorian Government embarks on initiatives such as "Connected Government" and "Region-place Based Management", it is important to ensure data from various departments / agencies is interpreted in a consistent manner. This will help minimise the effort required in joining data from one source department/agency with that from another.

3. Objectives

Through the standards to follow, this policy aims to:

• Enable different departments and agencies to continue to work as an integral part of the government, therefore reducing the risk of creating islands of disconnected information.
• Achieve treatment of business data as a government asset, by reusing existing data assets with little or no additional investment.
• Improve government services to citizens and businesses by enabling interoperable business processes and analytics.
• Enable dynamic communities in which government services can be customized and targeted to changing profile of geographically co-located populations and their needs.

4. Glossary

ICT - Information and Communications Technology

Information and Communications Technology - Technologies that include IT and telecommunications networks.

5. Related Information

The following publications provide information about related work at the Australian national government level:

1. Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) Publications and Initiatives

• National Service Improvement Framework (NSIF) - http://www.nsif.gov.au/
• Australian Government Technology Interoperability Framework (AGTIF) - http://www.agimo.gov.au/practice/framework
• National Government Interoperability Framework (NGIF) – Draft status. To be published.

Further Information

This policy from the Department of Treasury and Finance, is also available in pdf format (47kb) (This document requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader). .

Last updated: 19 November 2007

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