e-Xchange

What is e-Xchange?

e-Xchange is a facility which the IDP Nerve Centre will use to manage the exchange of information with other information systems in government. It will consists of the following dimensions:

Why e-Xchange?

Looking back over the radical reform of municipal government over the past decade, it is perhaps no surprise that alignment and coordination of the policy, planning and budgeting processes across national, provincial and local spheres of government have not been satisfactorily resolved and that the Presidential Coordinating Council mandated the IDP Nerve Centre to assist it with the "implementation of a system of state-wide planning wherein Integrated Development Planning (IDP) serves as the basis for aligning policy, planning and budgeting processes across all spheres".

The challenge with the alignment and coordination of development clearly has many dimensions. One of these is that the proliferation of incompatible systems in Government makes it extremely difficult to share critical planning, budgeting and programme/project information between organisations. The answer to this problem cannot be found in attempts to integrate the systems because this adds enormous complexity with each additional stakeholder that must be satisfied. One quickly discovers that "one size" cannot fit all because organisations do have unique requirements. Based on advances in the field of collaborative computing in recent years, the more modern approach is to acknowledge that a certain degree of proliferation is unavoidable and to rather achieve collaboration by standardising the interfaces between systems.

The fundamental dilemma with sharing information between systems is that every system requires a data adaptor/translator for every other system that it needs to collaborate with. Whether these adaptors are implemented using the latest web services technology or by manually importing/exporting text or spreadsheet files, the problems remain exactly the same. The first problem is that it may be difficult or impossible to exchange information if two systems do not subscribe to compatible conceptual data models. If one system regards a phase of a project as an extension in time (typically financial year) while another regards it as an extension in space the one system will only store one location for the project while the other may store a different location for each phase it will not be possible to exchange information between these systems without loss of meaning. Even with compatible conceptual data models, it may still not be possible to exchange information if the semantic meanings of the contents differ. The fact that both systems may for example carry a Status field does not solve the problem of exchanging status information between two systems if one system recognises 11 values while the other only 4 values. This can only be resolved by mutual agreement between the parties interested in exchanging information.

To complicate matters even further, most systems undergo constant change without any obligation of their owners to notify collaborating systems of the potential impact of these changes. Against such odds it is hardly surprising that there are few, if any, examples of successful collaboration between systems in government.

What are the benefits of e-Xchange?

Since the IDP Nerve Centre realised from day one that it would have to exchange information with a multitude of other systems, the IDPNC is the first system in South Africa to be designed according to the common denominator proposed by ACTIONiT.

Funded by the Innovation Fund of the Department of Science and Technology, ACTIONiT has researched and developed a solution that has fundamentally changed the situation by providing a stable, standards-based common denominator. Any system now only requires one data adaptor to this common denominator rather than a multitude of adaptors to other systems. Typically, a data adaptor translates between the internal data representation of a particular system and the conceptual data model of ACTIONiT through a XML schema. This may involve workflow automation, for example to assemble a consolidated report from different systems, but may also be achieved without workflow automation and even by manually importing and exporting text or spreadsheet files, as long as the conceptual data model and semantic meaning are standardised.

ACTIONiT has, to date, developed data adapters as was required for its own proof of concept work. These adapters can be used as a starting point for similar initiatives. By design, ACTIONiT limits its work to developing an abstract "common denominator" and leaves it to the owners/developers of any system that wish to collaborate to develop a platform specific adapter for their own system. ACTIONiT specifications are implementation-independent.
 

What can be expected in the next several months?

ACTIONiT has set an abstract specification for the interoperable exchange of project and spatial related information and the IDP Nerve Centre will be the first production system to use these specifications to build its automated exchange mechanisms with peer systems. Specifically, in North West Province, automated exchange will be instituted between the IDP Nerve Centre and the Provincial Project Database - allowing both systems to benefit from information held by the other.

This implementation experience will also assist with the emergence of a common language: an emerging consensus about the semantic meaning of words, and establishment of standardised reference tables. To find out more about how ACTIONiT's research can benefit the exchange of information between the IDP Nerve Centre and your own system, please contact ACTIONiT.

Related Links:

Go to http://www.actionit.org.za