The Test Bed team has published a new guide with design guidelines for governance interoperability and tips to cover governance aspects as part a project’s conformance testing.

The Interoperability Test Bed provides comprehensive support in enabling a solution’s interoperability. Through the GITB software it provides a complete conformance testing platform through execution of scenario-based test cases, whereas through its validators (for XML, RDF, JSON and CSV) it provides validation for semantic specifications. A project’s conformance testing is typically designed to cover its business processes, addressing also the core technical elements needed in all communications. An area that is however often overlooked is governance, in the form of the agreements and policies that bind together involved stakeholders.

In collaboration with the CAMSS team (Common Assessment Method for Standards and Specifications), an analysis was made on best-in-class governance specifications to extract common design guidelines for interoperability at governance level, and also determine conformance testing tips to translate governance requirements into executable test cases. The analysis leveraged the European Interoperability Reference Architecture (EIRA©) to determine governance building blocks, which were then used to retrieve the analysed specifications from the EIRA© Library of Interoperability Specifications (ELIS).

The result of this analysis is the guide on governance interoperability design and conformance testing that is now available as part of the Test Bed’s online guides. The new guide approaches governance interoperability from legal, organisational, semantic and technical perspectives; within each of which a further classification is made on thematic topics. For each topic the guide lists design guidelines on improving governance interoperability, before considering these in practical terms from the perspective of conformance testing.

The new guide provides surprising insight into the how many testable requirements can be extracted from governance agreements and policies. Being made aware of these, a project owner may choose to increase the conformance testing coverage for her solution, beyond the obvious test cases sourced from functional and non-functional requirements. For each case practical tips on test design are provided, that should be enough to guide initial test development and serve as inspiration for similar tests.

Besides providing a valuable reference for project owners, the new guide also shows how the Test Bed can enable a solution’s interoperability across all “interoperability dimensions”. This term is borrowed from the EIRA© which defines three such dimensions for a solution to express the nature of its building blocks. Structural interoperability focuses on the building blocks composing the solution, behavioural interoperability addresses interactions with the solution’s environment, whereas governance interoperability covers the rules that bind involved stakeholders. Given the Test Bed’s focus on validating message exchanges between involved systems, one can easily see how structural and behavioural interoperability are addressed, but this may be less obvious for the governance dimension. The new guide addresses this point showing how governance requirements can also be practically tested for.

More information on the EIRA© and the ELIS that were used as the new guide’s foundations can be found in their respective Joinup spaces. Regarding the Test Bed itself, general details on its services and other use cases can be found in its Joinup space, with its value proposition being a good starting point for newcomers. To receive updates on Test Bed news and releases remember to subscribe to the Test Bed on Joinup, and to follow Interoperable Europe’s updates on X and LinkedIn.

The Interoperability Test Bed is a service provided by the European Commission’s DIGIT, offering conformance testing and validation solutions in support of IT systems’ cross-border interoperability.