Intentional Alignment and Interoperability in Inter-Organization Information Systems - Intentional Perspectives on Information Systems Engineering - page 101

Alignment and Interoperability are major problems that have both been recog-
nized for a number of years. The importance of aligning information systems (IS)
with business has been considered at two levels. At the top level is strategic business-
IT alignment that aims to apply IT in an appropriate and timely way to meet business
goals. Empirical studies [ 7, 15, 21] , suggest that strategic IS alignment influences
business performance. At the second level we have technical business-IS alignment
that aims to ensure alignment of processes offered by information systems and those
of the real business. The issue of alignment has been considered from several per-
spectives, ERP [ 6, 20] , COTS [ 16, 18, 22, 27] , service orientation [ 5, 12, 14, 29] ,
and inter-organization information systems [ 1, 8, 11, 29, 30] .
Interoperability [ 17] is “the ability for a system or a product to work with other
systems or products without special effort on the part of the customer.” The interop-
erability problem is well known and can be found in many domains, some examples
are: database schema integration [ 24] , interoperability between modeling techniques
[ 10] , in meta-modeling platforms [ 19] , of ERP with other systems [ 3] , between het-
erogeneous information systems [ 2, 4] . Further, there are a number of application
domains where interoperability problems have been faced, in health care systems
[ 9] and in e-governance [ 13] .
Guijarro [13] stresses the fact that there is a need for guidance beyond technical
issues. Others [ 17, 30] suggest a multi-layered model consisting of a business layer,
a knowledge layer and an ICT systems layer. Ralyte [ 25] proposes that interoperabil-
ity must address business environment and business processes, the organizational
roles, skills and competencies of employees and knowledge assets on the knowledge
layer, and applications, data and communication components on the ICT layer.
In the last 10-15 years, enterprises have been merging and acquiring new ones,
entering into collaborations to offer enhanced customer value, optimizing opera-
tions by concentrating on core competencies and outsourcing peripheral services
etc. In other words, separate, individual enterprises are coming together to form
new enterprises. Such enterprise cooperation imposes its own demands on infor-
mation systems. Individually developed information systems must cooperate to
meet the requirements of the new system and come together to form a cohesive
inter-organizational information system.
As we see it, the issues of alignment and interoperability are rather more closely
entwined in inter-organizational systems than in traditional intra organization sys-
tems. Indeed, the alignment of individual systems to meet the global objective of
the inter-organizational system in which they participate requires interoperability
of the individual systems. This strong coupling of alignment and interoperability
is weaker in intra organizational systems. Accordingly, we attempt to make this
coupling stronger.
We propose that inter-organizational systems should be considered at two levels,
intentional and process. The former drives the latter. Consider the situation where
an inter-organizational system is to be built over systems of different organizations.
We believe that the intention of the new system should be a suitable combination
of the intentions of the individual systems. For this purpose, we examine the goal
hierarchies of the new system To Be with goal hierarchies of each of the older