Achieving Interoperability in Critical IT and Communication Systems

Having discussed communications interoperability as a purely technical problem in his earlier co-authored text Emerging Public Safety Wireless Communication Systems (Artech, 2001), Desourdis (a senior systems architect at Science Applications International Corporation) has come to understand interoperability as, at root, a people problem, "that is, leaders and planners failing to use best practices to develop the right processes and tools (including standards) for sharing trusted information that drives predictable collaborative action." He therefore uses this text to describe interoperability of critical systems as a holistic problem. He postulates the causes of failed interoperability and derives a checklist for organization self-evaluation, defines best practices, reviews the people and processes that are required to support operational architecture, describes the IT and communications systems architecture that support interoperability, presents an example of a interoperability plan driven by local requirements couched in a hypothetical common national or multinational information-sharing framework, and examines emerging technologies that can aid in overcoming human deficiencies in interoperability. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)