Interoperability toolkits: An overview

As more industry sectors and organisations adopt ecosystem approaches (as per Trend 1 of our API Economy Trends for 2025), we are seeing a greater focus on interoperability.

At Platformable, we describe four types of interoperability:
 

Recently, we have been involved in supporting interoperability across regulated industries:

• Worked with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to introduce a common classification of API category types and interoperability measures so that APIs from various IP Offices can be searchable and discoverable in a global catalogue 
• Working with Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) on mapping interoperability pathways that could support an ecosystem of book and claim registries for the sustainable aviation fuel industry
• Worked with sustainability standards bodies and ISEAL to identify opportunities to increase interoperability when adopting an ecosystem approach, when aligning standards with regulations and mapping the associated data models, and when implementing data quality strategies
• Worked with a health enterprise to map the interoperability landscape across 10 Canadian provinces and nationally to measure maturity of health data and digital health ecosystems
• Presented on data governance and interoperability needs to OpenFinity members
• Continued tracking data and open standards interoperability for our open banking/open finance trends reports.

From this work, we see the need for any organisation participating in an open digital ecosystem to create an interoperability toolkit that describes how they are approaching interoperability.

As regulations and standards intersect, we think there will be a greater need for these kinds of interoperability toolkits.

Interoperability toolkits in specific sectors

Traceability

New sustainability financing reporting frameworks, standards and regulations will require a focus on interoperability. The Taskforce on Nature-based Financial Disclosures for example has released a discussion paper on nature transition plans, which include elements where an organisation would work with others to detail their transition and financial disclosure plans. Some of the elements of the proposed transition plan would need to be shared with others and could be created using an interoperability toolkit template.  

Open banking/open finance/embedded finance

In open banking, banks or other financial services lenders might be seeking to work with external stakeholders to build out data systems that use new data sources (such as rent payments and payroll) to determine credit worthiness. Banks, lenders, and credit assessment bureaux could share their data models and interoperability tooling with others to reduce the burden and more quickly integrate systems that might provide new credit pathways for businesses and individuals/households.

Digital health

There are also various strategies being created and implemented across countries, regions and internationally where governments are encouraging new data and systems interoperability. For an organisation keen to participate in these interoperability activities, having a clear map of your own interoperability readiness would help your collaboration efforts and help you assess strategic approaches being planned to see if they align with your own interoperability capabilities.

For example, Canada is attempting to address health data interoperability through a 5 year roadmap commitment. Any organisation (pharmaceutical company, research, health tech, community organisation, industry stakeholder, or provincial government) could create their own interoperability toolkit to define where they currently stand in terms of their own data interoperability so that as roadmap strategic actions are implemented, they can determine whether the strategies align with their own approaches and estimate the size of complexity and work involved in adapting accordingly.

Proposed content for an interoperability toolkit

An interoperability toolkit at the organisational level could include the following content:

• A statement or signpost to an existing policy from the organisation that describes why the organisation is prioritising and committed to interoperability
• Metadata for any of your ecosystem-facing data models and data dictionaries for each data model
• Reference library of any standards or data models that have been officially adopted by you
• Any interoperability standards, certifications, or mandatory requirements that are applied when procuring new technologies 
• Description of your data quality processes (how data is transformed internally to validate against standards and data types or how outliers are identified and addressed)
• Conformance and data transformation tooling, including AI tools, used to assist with validation and data transformation
• AI nutrition label or process to ensure alignment with using data and systems that meet AI governance requirements  
• API specifications, including OpenAPI or AsyncAPI (or other) API description
• Data license
• Description of any data sharing or trust framework approach
• Description of how interoperability and data justice practices are aligned
• Data sharing business model
• Description of how other stakeholders can provide feedback or discuss their systems needs for integration
• Interoperability roadmap: a description of future actions you plan to take aimed at increasing interoperability.

This might seem like a bit of work, but in most cases, an interoperability toolkit is more about bringing together existing resources in one place. For example, if the organisation has adopted our data governance model, the majority of these elements could be lifted directly from the data governance framework. If your organisation is considering building out a complete API contract, elements of that could be shared.

Maturing your organisation's ecosystem mindset with an interoperability toolkit

The goal with an interoperability toolkit is to make it easy for internal teams to continue building data assets in an interoperable way (by placing all resources in one area), and to provide your partners and wider stakeholders with a better understanding of how they can integrate data and assets from your organisation into their processes (when sharing an interoperability toolkit with others).

The level of detail of the interoperability toolkit would differ based on the role and positioning of the organisation. Our ecosystem design model discusses how organisations can choose to be a participant in an open ecosystem (focusing on their core business and working with others in an open ecosystem), a facilitator (encouraging best practices and interoperable approaches within their network) or an orchestrator (creating tools and promoting best practice approaches that support the whole ecosystem more generally).

For example, a participant might share their metadata and data models and reference library with others. A facilitator might also include their policy around interoperability and build some conformance tooling for their partners, and an orchestrator might include API specifications in their toolkit. 

We also see an interoperability toolkit as a mechanism to start conversations internally around trust frameworks. Many of the components of an interoperability toolkit would eventually describe a trust framework schema and could be used as business requirements to build the technical aspects of a trust framework (where data can be exchanged securely and responsibly, according to agreed data sharing policies at scale and automatically in a machine-readable way). In our experience, some organisations at the start of their ecosystem journey are not ready to discuss building trust frameworks, so collecting resources around interoperability in one place helps them to start seeing how they will need future discussions around appropriate data sharing and mechanisms to involve and potentially share revenue with data providers.

As we continue to support organisations to apply an open ecosystem approach, we will be assisting them to document their interoperability toolkits as a resource that aids partnerships, integration, and industry-wide collaboration.