Standards and iteroperability in e-government initiatives

Public administrations have been very much concerned since the 80's about the need of avoiding vendor lock-in when procuring themselves with IT infrastructure. At that time the standards profiles helped public administrations in this respect. The boost of e-government that has taken place in recent years has put this concern again in the agenda of public administrations. Interoperability has shown up as a principle in the conception and deployment of the e-government initiatives, and the interoperability frameworks have been the tool for implementing the principle. In this paper, the main e-government initiatives are presented and their policies in the field of standards and interoperability are analysed. The focus is on the degree of commitment with open standards that each e-government agency has made explicit in its interoperability framework.