What is interoperability?

Hi, my name is Yulia and I'm a curriculum engineer at Inrupt.

In this video we'll learn about interoperability, and how it affects individuals and organizations.

What is interoperability and why do we care about it? 

There are a number of definitions of interoperability out there and you can find our picks in the video description. For this video we'll define interoperability as the spectrum of effort that it takes for existing and new entities to communicate with each other. Where an entity is an individual, organization, device or a process.

Let's take a user and an organization and consider them on a communication  and effort spectrum. Low effort and ease of communication means that something is interoperable, and high effort and a difficulty to communicate effectively means that it isn't interoperable.

When a new user starts to interact with a new organization and the only barrier of entry for them is signing in, then we can consider this to be low effort and therefore these two entities are interoperable. However, if the user has to create an account and can't sign in with some existing account, then we're moving closer to high effort and less interoperability. Other things that reduce interoperability and require effort both on the user and organization level are: adding payment information or populating the user profile. For an organization, to provide better services, consider the effort of continually gathering and then analyzing user data throughout the interaction with each user. This end of the spectrum - requiring high effort to facilitate effective communication- is considered not interoperable.

Currently there are many silos on the web making many things not fully interoperable. To break out of the data silos that dominate the web today, interoperability is one of our central goals. For example, an interoperable web would allow a user to change their address in one place, and then have that change be reflected within all the services that they use. As opposed to today's web where address data must be updated in each and every service individually.

Consider existing examples of interoperable tech. Gas pumps, for instance. A person can keep using the same petrol stations, regardless of which car they are driving at the time, because there is a standard for all gas pumps and all cars at any gas station. It is “low effort” to refill a car’s tank - no matter the car, the pumps, or the station. 

Another example is the PNG standard. When opening a PNG file, it doesn't matter what operating system or device is being used, the file will render just the same without additional effort, making this an interoperable data format.

Last example we'll use is the way that search engines are able to extract useful metadata about your search query, no matter which engine you use. This is possible due to Linked Data Principles. We'll dive more specifically into this example and Linked Data in our next video.

Gas pumps, PNG files, and search engines using Linked Data are great examples of existing interoperable technology around us. 

Let's examine interoperability more specifically from two different perspectives: users and organizations on the web. 

We'll start with the user. In an interoperable world, a patient would be able to go to a specialist doctor that they were referred to, and that specialist would be able to access their health record, as well as the latest notes from the patient's primary doctor, and any prescriptions that they are taking with minimal effort. In this scenario we have three different users involved: the primary care doctor, the patient, and the specialist. 

For this to work and be interoperable, the patient has to have an easy way to consent to their health record being shared with either doctor. The health record has to be accessible, unified, and stored in a format that works with either doctor's office, regardless of their preferred applications or health related software, just like our earlier example with the png standard. 

This way the doctors can use their preferred software to work with patient health data, billing, and insurance, while the patient can use their preferred tools to consent to their health record being shared, and the extent to which they are willing to share their health, billing, and insurance data with their health care providers.

We can extend this example to the entertainment sector, property management, or government services, which is what we do in one of the videos linked below this video. For now, let's consider the benefits of interoperability for organizations.

Nearly every organization in the world struggles to capture a complete and consistently up-to-date, 360-degree view of their users. In this struggle they integrate numerous platforms and data warehouses to avoid data duplication, staleness, and decay.

As organizations invest more resources to create and maintain complex data infrastructures, data becomes essential, so that they can learn about their customers and provide them with better services. 

All this effort results in large operational overhead, which can be difficult to keep compliant with all the required regulations.

In an interoperable world organizations can forgo this data gathering, maintaining, and deduplicating effort by requesting access to user data directly from the users.

Let's take a car insurance company for example. At present, the auto insurance rates are determined by the driver's official driving record, the area that they live in, their age, gender, and the type of car that they drive. These factors have been derived from various risk models that the insurance company uses to determine rates. 

In an interoperable world the driver would have data about their driving habits, not only from the government agency that issued their drivers license, but also from the car itself, and possibly from their phone GPS data. 

The driver can consent to sharing some or all of this data with their insurance company in a bid to get a lower rate. 

This data provides the insurance company a multitude of benefits:

• A relationship with that customer that is built on trust
• More detailed data about their customer that can enable more tailored experiences
• Ability to build more precise risk assessment models
• Easier time complying with regulations like GDPR and CCPA

Let's consider another quick example. When a person chooses to dine at a restaurant and views the menu online, the restaurant has the opportunity to request access to that person's food allergies and dietary restrictions data. If the potential customer consents to sharing that data, they get a personalized menu, and the restaurant gains insights about their customers, and can adapt their menu based on data, while building a trusting relationship with their customers. 

We'll extend these examples to a variety of public and private sectors in later videos. For now let's recap what we discussed so far.

We defined interoperability as the spectrum of effort that it takes for existing and new entities to communicate with each other. Low effort makes entities interoperable, and high effort makes entities not interoperable.

The benefits of interoperability are multifaceted. Interoperable systems allow users to reuse their data across multiple systems with awareness and consent. Reclaiming agency over their data and presence on the web.

For organizations, interoperability allows for building closer relationships with their customers that are based on trust. Having access to complete, valid, and consistent  customer data allows companies to forgo gathering, storing and maintaining that data, thereby reducing operational overhead, while complying with data privacy regulations, and reducing risks. 

In the next videos we dive into the technology that enables a more interoperable world, address some of the other Web 2.0 challenges that we discussed in earlier videos, and start to consider the future of the web in more detail.

Thank you for watching!