Interoperability in the Model Accelerated

Society1
Jan GOOSSENAERTS
Information Systems, Dept. of Technology Management, Eindhoven University of
Technology, POBox 513, Paviljoen D12, NL-5600 MB Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Email: janbmgo@gmail.com

Abstract: Information Society Technologies (ISTs) are rapidly becoming part of a

new backbone for society, and are characterized by techno-diversity. The e-Europe
Action Plan targets a transformation of a wide range of social interactions
characterized by socio-diversity. Both techno-diversity and socio-diversity contribute
to acceptance problems for project results. This paper explores the role of conceptual
models as mediating artefacts of society-wide services for sustained and
multiplicative acceptance.

1. Introduction
European policies for the knowledge society as agreed at the Lisbon Council of 2000, the
Stockholm Council of 2001, the Seville Council of 2002, and as reflected in the e-Europe
Action Plan target a rapid transition towards a society in which Information Society
Technologies (ISTs) constitute a new backbone. The term “IST infrastructure” is used to
refer to this backbone, and the “infrastructure acquisition (IA) project” is a hypothetical
extension of the e-Europe Action Plan, covering all the activities required to achieve the
knowledge society. The IA project is implemented by means of smaller projects that
propose and perform “local and small” steps towards making the vision reality. Each
project addresses the social interactions in a fragment of society, and must build on a
technology generation.
For the sustained and multiplicative acceptance of its results (as required by the
knowledge society vision) each project faces the hurdles of socio-diversity and techno-
diversity. The latter hurdle consists of an increasing number of coexisting technologies and
services, including grid, web-services, internet, broadband and wireless communications,
multi-media, knowledge management technologies, and innumerable software solutions.
Also the challenges posed by socio-diversity are evident as one reflects about the diverse
stakeholders that engage in the social interactions within the scope of the IA project:
citizens of all ages and cultures, businesses, SMEs, public bodies, local and central
authorities.
Is there room for accelerating the transition to a knowledge society? This paper seeks
an answer to this question, and proposes “society-wide services for sustained and
multiplicative acceptance.” The services target reduced acceptance risks for project results.
They are based on insights from Cultural-Historical Activity Theory in combination with
goal and domain models at the layer of Computation Independent Models (CIM) as
proposed in the OMG Model Driven Architecture (MDA)[1]. While techno-diversity is
driven by global innovation, it invades society through consumer buying and business
investment. Model mapping techniques permit the delivery of services across technology
generations, and via any consumer owned device.

1
Cite as: Goossenaerts, Jan, 2004, Interoperability in the Model Accelerated Society. In eAdoption and the
Knowledge Economy: Issues, Applications, Case Studies.; Cunningham, P.; Cunningham, M., Eds.; IOS
Press: Amsterdam, pp. 225-232
2. Interoperability Problems in becoming a Knowledge Society

2.1 – Agents, eco-system and their instruments

In broad terms the transition to the knowledge society will see different social agents
utilizing new and improved technical artifacts, systems, and processes, which we call IST
instruments. Agents are groups or individual users/consumers and organizations, which
may or may not be unified in sectors, countries, or regions. Implementation of IST
instruments in businesses has been a corner stone of industrial development since World
War II. Recent e-challenges concern the successful extension of goal-oriented use of IST
instruments to humans – how to improve the acceptance of IST instruments by humans? –
and to society – how to apply IST instruments to improve the effectiveness of public
policies, strategies, and intervention options?
In the future, when the e-Europa objectives will be achieved, the knowledge society will
see interactions that involve at least three kinds of agents and their IST instruments:
 Humans or micro-agents with their personal IST instruments;
 Meso-agents such as businesses, universities, public bodies or any other kind of
organisation, with their organisational IST instruments;
 Society, the (socio-industrial) eco-system in which micro-agents and meso-agents
exist, and which has an IST infrastructure to share information, publicly, for certain
missions, or in the context of contracts.
Each pair of agent and instrument is a “software/data/knowledge intensive system” for
which the standard IEEE 1471-2000[2] defines architecture. Table 1 lists these systems and
describes their aspects as named by the standard.
Table 1: Agents and their instruments in the knowledge society.
Nr Agent/System Environment Components Principles guiding design Methodologies
Scale and evaluation
(i) human natural & socio- limbs, senses, body personal development learning,
Micro industrial eco- parts training
system
IST personal its owner and keyboard, memory, user-friendliness, ergonomy, user centered
instr. information his/her work/life display, speaker,... calmness,... engineering
system contexts Human centrism
(ii) Company, public socio-industrial employees, productivity, market share, strategic/ tactical/
Meso body, university eco-system facilities, students, competition, customer operations
(market) products, etc satisfaction management
IST enterprise the organization databases, functionality, usability, non- Information system
instr. information & its processes systems, functional requirements implementation;
system documents, plans & model driven
schedules, etc Business centrism architecture (MDA)
(iii) socio-industrial the natural roads, harbours, sustainability, growth, legal industrial policy
Macro eco-system environment airports, facilities, security, social security, development, policy
courts, enforcement equal rights, privacy making, society
authorities, customs oriented design
IST information socio-industrial telecom. networks, policy objectives, e.g. society aware 4+1
instr. infrastructure eco-system & public databases & becoming a knowledge view (software
(public, social) its natural registries, society intensive eco-
environment middleware,... Society centrism systems, MDA )

2.2 – Pragmatic Interoperability ... a problem of the IA project

Multiple projects are undertaken in the context of the IA project. They develop new IST
instruments as well as new ways of interacting for businesses, people, in the market and by
public administration.
 Acceptance of a project result by an external agent requires that the result can be
aligned with the agent’s goals, needs and context of work. Ensuring this is the purpose of
“pragmatic interoperability.” Pragmatic interoperability builds upon “technical
interoperability” and “semantic interoperability.” Technical interoperability is concerned
with the technical issues of linking up computer-based systems, the definition of open
interfaces and telecommunications. Syntax is part of this interoperability aspect. Semantic
interoperability is concerned with ensuring that the precise meaning of exchanged
information (content) is understandable by any other application not initially developed for
the purpose of processing this information.
Sub-projects must avoid scope creep and should focus on semantic and technical issues
in obtaining their planned results. Once results have been obtained, their acceptance outside
the project consortium is a complex and common challenge. Acceptance problems often
involve people-centric, business-centric, or society-centric aspects for which the project
team lacks the competences. Whereas exploitation plans for more traditional artefacts can
be executed by relevant market players, it is as yet not evident that the “model ware” on
which the knowledge society will be based, must be handled in the same way. An
alternative option, which may be supported by the Open Source concept, is that the
conditions for pragmatic interoperability are ensured at the public level of the IA project,
and that services are offered to projects and their potential customers. This last option is
explored in this paper, without giving an in-depth analysis of its pros and cons, the required
business models, or suitable intellectual property regimes.

2.3 – A Sample Scenario

This scenario illustrates how people-, business- and society centric concerns are interwoven
in the working life of a person. Another paper [3] has addressed the data management
aspects of this scenario, which has been inspired by the IMS PSIM project [4,5].
Access to particular data about a person working in a role at a company is restricted by
several data protection rules or regulations. For example, it is not allowed to record and
publish a person’s health condition. It is however allowed to investigate and publish the
aggregate health condition of the work force in a certain industrial sector. On the other
hand, the interest of a physician in the ontogenic development of the worker may cause an
interest for certain data about work postures. The multiple data needs must be met without
violating the data protection rules: during the work the private and company IST
instruments (run-times) perform a selective data-collection on those aspects that matter for
their tasks, and upon disengagement, confidential data are erased. As the worker ends his
working day, his private IST run-time splits from the company’s IST run-time, and both
erase all confidential traces as to whom performed which work and how. The anonymous
posture measurement data on the work process may be stored for analysis and action, for
instance by the company’s quality engineer or health service, or by the worker’s physician.

3. Elements of a Comprehensive Methodology

The target of the IA project is the society of needs-driven and goal-driven agents, and its
IST infrastructure. To explain the services that can reduce the pragmatic interoperability
problem, we draw on three bodies of knowledge: (i) the Cultural Historical Activity Theory
in an elaboration that is due to Engeström [6] following original work by L.S. Vygotsky (on
the micro-agent) and A.N. Leont’ev (on the meso-agent); (ii) model driven engineering, in
which we use the OMG MDA terms [1]; and (iii) a decisional reference model. Drawing on
and combining these insights, the services for sustained and multiplicative acceptance are
proposed and illustrated in Section 4.
3.1 – Trajectories of Social Development and Change

Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) is suitable to perform contextual analysis for

cognitive processes in which the cognition is embedded in broader institutional structures
and long-term historical trajectories of development and change [7]. Concepts and tools that
the society has developed during its history culturally mediate interactions of the human in
the world. For analyzing an activity, we must consider its “subject”, the entity performing
the activity, and its “object”, the necessary entity that allows realizing the outcome. A tool
can be anything used in the transformation process, including both material tools and
cultural mediators. The cultural mediators or artifacts that individuals (subjects) use also
carry the typical intentions and objectives of people in specific situations. In this
perspective, human development can be seen as a process of remediation: the substitution
of old mediating artifacts (for instance sentences on papers and in documents) with new
artifacts (IST instruments), which better serve the needs of the activity concerned.
Remediation means that the external objects are seen in a new context.
Moving from the micro-agent or human to the meso-agent, Leont’ev’s insights become
relevant. They concern the situatedness of the individual’s actions in the context of a
historically developed collective praxis, an activity system [7]. Due to the division of labor
the relation between the outcome (the value created) and the individual’s actions becomes
indirect and mediated. “Rules” cover the explicit and implicit norms, conventions, and
social relations within a community. “Division of labor” refers to the explicit and implicit
organization of a community as related to the transformation process of the object into the
outcome. It is recognized that the activity system is always internally heterogeneous and
multi-voiced because individuals taking part in activities have different views.
Virkkunen and Kuutti [7] use Engeström’s notion of expansive learning to explain
organisational and social change by inner contradictions of activity systems due to
substantial changes of its components. Because the IA project targets substantial changes in
society, it is unlikely that contradictions can be avoided as the results of a portfolio of
projects are transferred to society.

3.2 – Model Enabled Engineering

For businesses, in the course of the past fifty years several modelling languages and
techniques have been applied as organisations have externalised their structure and
operating procedures, especially with a focus on computer support for improved operations.
These trends have already given rise to the large-scale use of enterprise models and the use
of several dimensions to manage the complexity of enterprises applying ICT [8].
The knowledge society vision is defined for society, a socio-industrial eco-system. An
example of a society level goal is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. A common
hurdle when implementing a society scale strategy is the diversity at the operational layer:
gasses are emitted in a myriad of different situations. The people and businesses that are
within the scope of any measure use multiple technologies and solutions. In the knowledge
society vision, the IST instruments will play a key role in designing and implementing
policy measures in a calm manner, and in accordance with the relevant legal principles. As
consolidated models are available for the socio-technical contexts of work, any project will
deliver a “delta-specification” to realize a particular new scenario in a given socio-technical
context. The models at the three OMG MDA layers [1] (computation independent, platform
independent and platform specific) result from different development phases, each of which
offers its own contribution to the reduction of risks [9] and to the system design (Figure 1).
The Computation Independent Model (CIM) shows the system in the environment in which
it will operate, and thus helps in presenting exactly what the system is expected to do.
Useful as an aid to understanding a problem and for communication with the stakeholders,
it is essential to mitigate the risks of addressing the wrong problem, or disregarding needs.
The Platform Independent Model (PIM) describes the system in reference to a particular
architectural style (e.g., agent based or client/server) but does not show details of platform
use. The structure of this model might be quite different from the structure of a CIM layer
model of the same system. The Platform Specific Model (PSM) is produced from the PIM
by transformation. It specifies how the system makes use of the chosen platform and
technologies.
Each model layer has its own role in the life cycle of project results. By articulating
CIM layer models as a means to scope projects in the IA project portfolio, the project
results can be prepared for acceptance.

RISK: defining DBMS Operation &

wrong problem DBMS Diagnosis

Client need & CIM PSM Evaluation

resources consi- & Adaptation
stent
PIM PSM
CIM Testing
Conception &
& Acceptance
model building
PIM

Interface description Development & RISK: Not

systems engineering Production meeting
requirements
RISK: unnecessarily
constraining solution Engineering &
detailed design

Figure 1: Project Activities, Models (and Data) and Risks.

3.3 – A Decisional Reference Model

Assume that a given object system is addressed in a project (Figure 2, the high level Petri
net notation is used, crossed circles denote persistent data sets, and connectors from places
to activities (or processes) liberally follow the control/resource/input/output conventions of
the generic activity model). The object system performs a function in the environment, and
performance objectives are expressed and evaluated for it. The environment is the source of
inputs and the sink (market) for the outputs. The governance entity, the management entity
and the analysis&design entity perform reflective functions by determining/setting the
artefacts (objectives, problem, etc) linked from their right hand side. A quantitative
difference between objectives and performance data signals a problem to the management
entity. In pull-based change, the management entity will call upon the analysis&design
entity to analyse the problem of the object system, to create new designs (TO_BE model &
technology), and to compare performance. Governance and management entities decide
about the implementation of a new design in the object system.
 governance model
entity (ge) repository
objectives
technology
offer
analysis&
management
design entity
entity (me)
problem
AS_IS model
action TO_BE model
& technology & technology
means
performance
data
object system
input (os)
output

environment

Figure 2: The object-system in its environment.

4. Services for Sustained and Multiplicative Acceptance

The scope of the services for sustained and multiplicative acceptance includes the reflective
contexts of the governance, management and analysis&design entities of persons, business
and public agencies. The services can ensure interoperability throughout the project life
cycles. Missing today are especially the CIM based services during early and late project
phases. This leads to poor assessment of fitness for purpose, during project definition and
during the transfer of project results. Also to reuse of context models is still poor.
The mediating role of the CIM, PIM and PSM models in the IA project is sketched in
Figure 3. The knowledge society vision assumes that future needs will be met by future
technologies. The IA project calls for innovative sub-projects that perform steps towards
the vision. Such a project selects scenarios that exhibit a problem (i.e., scenarios in which
objectives are not met, pull style) or explain a promise (push style). The project proceeds by
scripting its scenarios w.r.t. the consolidated reference CIM models, by specifying CIM
models that take into consideration specific needs and technologies (CIM’=CIM+CIM);
by mapping its CIM to PIM and PSM models, and by implementing its design with the
reference agents (test bed).
The sample scenario of Section 2.4 is at the operational level in Figure 3. The events in
the work performed are interpreted in the concurrent contexts of the business, the person,
the health monitoring application, and the posture measurement enacted by the worker’s
physician. Hence, the PSM layer models of each of these contexts perform actions. These
operations are subject to certain legal principles such as protection of privacy. The
operations are also subject to context specific rules, for instance as specified in the contract
between the company and the worker, or in sector regulations.
Assume now that Project X wishes to implement a new scenario by means of automatic
image capturing and synthesis, and using grid technologies. Then the project services are
defined around reference objectives and domain models. These models include for instance
kinematical properties of the human body, models of the test work context (plant model and
process plans), and the interpretative structures of occupational health monitoring.
 These models are at CIM, PIM and PSM layers in accordance with the knowledge
captured on the domain and test bed. Project X will select those objectives for which
improved performance is targeted, and first describe its intention in reference to CIM layer
models and objectives. These descriptions are used for proposal evaluation, and might be an
input for decision processes of early customers of the project’s results. The CIM layer
models are stable and reflect the long term concerns and human values, both in terms of
their continuants (subjects and objects) and their interactions.
Next, the Project X must design the prototype for the test bed and for the (reference)
technology. This will involve the mapping (and extension) of CIM models to PIM models
(platform independent, but with a selected architectural style, for instance agent-based) and
of PIM models to PSM models.
With early bird customers mimicking the design decisions in the prototype by mapping
them to clones involving their own technologies and application contexts, the tree of PIM
and PSM models grows to meet the diversity at the operational level. As project results gain
maturity, and implementation technologies evolve, especially the PSM model repository
will grow.

<<< -----Strategic-------------------------------------------------------------------->>> Problem

Open Policy: Mission fulfilment; Competition Domain
<<Tactical------- Scenario >> Need (Identification)
Trend
Current Situation TO BE Vision
script
AS-IS Solution
CIM extend CIM’ Domain
(Conceptual
Abstraction level

View)
map
roadmap

PIM PIM
PIM
PIM
PIM PIM’
extend (Develop-
map ment View)
PIM
PIM PIM
PIM
PSM PSM’
con-
System
trol (Physical
event Technology
<- action -----Operational-> Trend
View)

Past Present Time Future

Figure 3: Roadmap and the acquisition of capabilities (new scenarios).

The existence of shared CIM models can help the project planner or policy maker in
gaining precision when identifying problems and solution directions in the language of the
stakeholders. By using CIM and expressing or agreeing on the problems that software
intensive systems have to solve, there is a much better chance that the right problem will be
addressed in the right way, also regarding its details, prior to engaging into a (costly)
implementation and use (acceptance).

5. Conclusions
Whereas interoperability is frequently addressed at the technical and semantic layers the
take-up risks of e-Europe project results may be reduced by deploying objective models and
domain models in analysing problems and in specifying and evaluating the desired
solutions. These models are computation independent.
 Assuming the availability of computation independent, platform independent and
platform specific models, a novel approach to facilitating pragmatic interoperability is
explored. Central in this approach are services for sustained and multiplicative acceptance.
The concept and purpose of these services has been illustrated by a hypothetical example.
The state of knowledge in model driven engineering and activity theory is such that the
technical realization of these services is feasible. Open challenges are in the business
models and the intellectual property regimes that would regulate the status of the models
and the interactions of the agents.
In a model accelerated society, the responsibility for the sustained and multiplicative
acceptance of project results may go beyond the scope of individual projects. The
indications that the transition to a knowledge society is a disruptive one, and the possible
opportunities to achieve a higher return on (public) investment should encourage the e-
Europe Action Plan to consider how it can better support the projects in its portfolio in
taking the acceptance hurdles created by techno-diversity and socio-diversity.

Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges discussions in the context of the INTEROP Network of
Excellence, Work package 4, as a source of ideas and encouragement for refining the
presentation of this paper. He also thanks the anonymous reviewers for their constructive
comments on the draft versions of this paper.

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