Foreword

The New Zealand e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) is a set of policies, technical standards and guidelines (recommended practices) covering data and information, information and communications technology (ICT), and inter-agency electronic business protocols in the public sector.

Working groups comprising government and vendors have worked on the production of this document over the months of October to December 2001. The partnering with IT and IM vendors has proven extremely invaluable in reaching consensus over the choice of open standards to achieve a framework for a 'joined-up' government.

As much as interoperability is about agencies working together to improve delivery of services, it also impacts the vendor community, in that they need to understand and provide services based on inter-agency business needs. Contribution by the vendor community in the formative stages of the New Zealand e-GIF is an important factor to ensuring the validity of the framework.

A document such as the e-GIF is "living" in that it must change as technology and business needs change. This will be assured through design of appropriate governance arrangements for the e-GIF, which will guide future change to the policies, standards and guidelines in a way that should be both measured and responsive.

This document uses technical material from a Referential Architecture produced as part of the Leveraging Infrastructure project of the E-government Unit. It also has incorporated parts of the United Kingdom's e-GIF document. [ The UK e-GIF copyright notice is reproduced in full in Appendix B. The following is a shortened version: e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) © Crown copyright 2001]

Figure 1: A Who's Who of the e-GIF Contributing Agencies and Vendors