Information sharing

Information sharing – between organisations and systems – is one of the hardest nuts to crack. Yet it is one of the most pressing priorities, particularly in areas relating to government and the health of our society. Part of the solution is provided by information standards.

Two examples have arisen in the last couple of days. The hideous story of a man in Sheffield who fathered many children by raping his daughters has prompted calls for greater information sharing (Roger Graef on the Today programme). Mass murder in India prompts calls for greater information sharing between nations and their respective security agencies.

The truth is that most information systems are still walled gardens. The walls are sturdily constructed in part because of the need for privacy and data protection. It is no trivial matter to pass information from one system to another, where a host of prying eyes can look at it. In a local government environment, for example, it is quite difficult even to think through the implications of exchanging information between schools, social services and hospitals, still less across local and regional boundaries. However, I understand that much valuable work has already been done in the area of children’s services.

Let’s assume that the policy and data protection issues could be managed. We then have to deal with the issue of extracting information from one system and passing it easily to another. This is where standards-based information management should triumph. If ways of recording and storing information were standardised, it would be much easier to exchange it freely.

This has been tried, of course, within e-GIF, the British e-Government Interoperability Framework, with its Dublin Core based metadata scheme and its standardised taxonomy. e-GIF, however, was only a start. Work needs to be re-initiated to produce up-to-date, detailed metadata standards for government activities and to begin to negotiate their enforcement. Standardised information will be much more readily sharable.

The more obvious “national database of X” is often proposed, but such projects are often unsustainable. The work of developing and spreading a standard is much less expensive, but requires both political will and grassroots demand. We must hope .

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