Defining a Model for Effective e-Government Services and an Inter-organizational Cooperation in Public Sector Nunzio Casalino 1 , Maurizio Cavallari 1,2 , Marco De Marco 1 , Mauro Gatti 3 and Giuseppe Taranto 4 1 Università degli Studi Gugliemo Marconi - CERP, Via Plinio 44, 00193 Rome, Italy 2 Università del Sacro Cuore Milano, Largo A. Gemelli 1, 20123 Milan, Italy 3 Università La Sapienza, Via del Castro Laurenziano 9, 00161 Rome, Italy 4 LUISS Guido Carli - LBS, Via Pola 12, 00198 Rome, Italy Keywords: Public Sector, Interoperability, e-Government, Innovation, Change Management, Organizational Issues, Online Services, Learning Contents, National Best Practices. Abstract: Accomplishing interoperability among public information systems is a complex task not only by the variety of technological specifications and by the nature of the organisations in which the systems are implemented, but also because a detailed evaluation and analysis of the multiple aspects involved is lacking. The aim of this paper is to identify and summarize the main aspects regarding the field of interoperability (strategic frameworks, laws, regulations, specific requirements, organizational and technical issues) by means of the location and assessment of works that focus on the identification and analysis of the barriers, the organizational issues and the success and risk factors in information systems (IS) for public sector. Most of the interesting studies, based on the literature review of organisational studies, focus on other related themes such as bond interconnection, information sharing, and process integration in public administration but not on the specific subject of interoperability between European public administrations IS. 1 INTRODUCTION Interoperability is the capacity of information systems to process, store and exchange electronic documents using uniform technology standards and processes. In the age of the advanced information society, the interoperability of information systems of different organisations, both public and private, is a major factor in the efficiency of the economy. A number of European Commission directives indicate the crucial impact of this issue on the evolution of the information society and the EU Digital Agenda, one of the 7 flagships in the Europe 2020 strategy, defines interoperability as a main line of action. One of the question marks when addressing an objective as ground breaking as the interoperability is, “Are the necessary skills in place?” Whereas most European countries have developed excellent legislative frameworks and have set up the necessary institutions, the skills required of the players for the actual implementation of interoperability remain an obstacle. In the last five years were established several governmental programs, action plans, interoperability strategies, public sector IS frameworks. Besides quite a few public projects on interoperability’s aspects, funded by the European Commission and the creation of observatories on e- government issues, highlight the importance of interoperability for public organizations. However, despite this recognition and the investment and effort already made in the pursuit of improved collaboration and data exchange capacity between different government agencies, the level of interoperability between agencies remains far short of adequate and the problems and difficulties caused by this lack of interoperability are evident. Transparency means knowing the reasons, facts, and logics of the decision taken. Unfortunately, public agencies continue to operate in a highly fragmented manner and delay in service delivery, lack of transparency regarding bureaucratic procedures, requiring filling out numerous application forms with identical sets or subsets of data. 400 Casalino N., Cavallari M., De Marco M., Gatti M. and Taranto G.. Defining a Model for Effective e-Government Services and an Inter-organizational Cooperation in Public Sector. DOI: 10.5220/0004968704000408 In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2014), pages 400-408 ISBN: 978-989-758-028-4 Copyright c  2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)