{"id":3186,"date":"2025-11-04T15:19:52","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T15:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/codata.org\/blog\/?p=3186"},"modified":"2025-11-04T16:01:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T16:01:13","slug":"ode-to-loi-legal-and-organisational-interoperability-data-moves-at-the-speed-of-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/codata.org\/blog\/2025\/11\/04\/ode-to-loi-legal-and-organisational-interoperability-data-moves-at-the-speed-of-trust\/","title":{"rendered":"Ode to LOI (Legal and Organisational Interoperability) – Data moves at the speed of trust"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reflections on Legal and Organisational Interoperability at IDW2025 from Matti Heikkurinen, LOI Lead and Project Portfolio Manager, CODATA\"\"<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll start with a confession: until quite recently, whenever I heard the word \u201cinteroperability\u201d, I thought of the ability of any two systems to reproduce the same bit sequence across a connecting medium (wire, fibre, or airwaves). Formidable challenge, when you consider all the possible combinations of network vendors, device types, software stacks, noise, hardware failures, and human factors at play. But the engineering community has developed standards and processes to test technical interoperability through protocol analysis, plugtests, fault-tolerant software and hardware, among others. The <\/span>blackouts<\/span><\/a> are rare, <\/span>worms<\/span><\/a> usually stay in the cans, and Cloud outages <\/span>shouldn\u2019t cause insomnia<\/span><\/a> (we hope).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

MoUSLA \u00e0 la r\u00e9alit\u00e9<\/span><\/h3>\n

Travelling towards Brisbane, I had a high degree of trust in the technical and semantic interoperability of the aircraft components, backed by <\/span>Byzantine Fault tolerance<\/span><\/a>. I was less certain about finding pure algorithmic solutions or engineering approaches to provide complete solutions for the topics of the <\/span>IDW 2025<\/span><\/a> session at the destination: <\/span>Legal and Organisational Interoperability (LOI)<\/span><\/a>. This covers the ability of organisations not only to exchange information (Technical interoperability) and understand its meaning (Semantic interoperability), but also use the shared meaning to achieve mutually beneficial goals (Organisational interoperability) in a manner that defines and complies with the relevant legal basis for data sharing (Legal interoperability).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Two randomly connected organisations are unlikely to reproduce the same policy decisions, given their unique governance models, legal frameworks, and standard operating procedures just because they can reproduce bit sequences sent by the other party. Nevertheless, organisational and legal interoperability are crucial to society, and mechanisms to achieve mutually beneficial goals have been developed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) have received significant attention as promising solutions for these challenges. And indeed, they do provide formal components to support and document Organisational and Legal interoperability. However, one of the motivations for the session was the (possibly controversial) view that, even if the agreements themselves were fully machine-actionable, they wouldn\u2019t guarantee interoperability. They are the fiber-optic cables of LOI that need infrastructure around them to become operational; MoUs and SLAs are the desserts, not the whole meal.<\/span><\/p>\n

CAREless whisper – Guilty machines have got no rhythm\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

The opening plenary put any worries about the fit of our session topic to rest. The talks covered different aspects of indigenous data governance (presented in more detail in <\/span>another blog<\/span><\/a>), covering the different aspects of the <\/span>CARE principles (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics)<\/span><\/a>. The interesting weak signals in the session were the immediate pushback on governance models that were seen as too simplistic and the mutual benefits of adhering to CARE principles based on the <\/span>SODA<\/span><\/a> principles. The latter seemed important from the sustainable CARE point of view; ethics backed by enlightened self-interest tends to be much stronger LOI component than ethics alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

The broader context of the LOI issues were covered by several other sessions and talks: the session on <\/span>\u201cIncreasing Resilience of Global Earth and Environmental Science Data Supply Chains\u201d<\/span><\/a> brought new kinds of hazard scenarios into the spotlight, the RDA plenary session\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cBalancing ethical considerations and Open Science principles when sharing community relevant data\u201d<\/span><\/a> presented the challenges in determining when sharing – or collecting – data might do more harm than good.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur\u201d session –\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cLegal and organisational aspects of data interoperability: climate adaptation case studies\u201d<\/span><\/a> – included talks and discussions that were thought-provoking without exception. Some of the highlights included:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n