Interoperability

Interoperability is the ability of one system to exchange information with another and use what it receives. NIST’s glossary gives the short form: the ability of one entity to communicate with another entity. For technology selection, the useful unit is not the label “integrates with your ERP” but the specific exchange the task depends on.

Verify the fields, links, and permissions the task needs

For an invoice-evidence lookup that reads from an ERP, the exchange must deliver the order identifier, receipt date, received quantity, and supplier with the same meaning they have in the source; keep the link between an order and its receipts; carry the source’s access restrictions so that a record restricted there stays restricted here; and propagate updates and deletions. It must also support the source’s version, authentication method, and request limits.

Each of those is a separate check on known records. An authorized ingestion service account may read across branches while the application preserves document access rules and enforces each end user’s permissions. Broad ingestion access alone does not show that users can see restricted records. The rule is broken if the application drops or bypasses those restrictions and returns records the user may not access. Access outside the ingestion account’s own authorization is a separate violation. A connector that maps “received quantity” to a field that already subtracts returns has preserved the name and changed the meaning.

Standards help, and do not finish the job

GOV.UK’s guidance recommends open standards because they increase compatibility with other systems and reduce vendor lock-in. A shared format settles how data is written; it does not settle whether two systems mean the same thing by a field, or whether relationships and permissions survive the transfer. Structural agreement and agreement on meaning are checked separately.

Record which exchanges were verified, on which versions, and which remain unknown. A supplier’s list of supported integrations is a starting point for that record, not a substitute for it.

References: NIST glossary: interoperability, GOV.UK: Make use of open standards. Examples here are illustrative.