Interoperability, specifications and standards; interfaces with associated services

The objective in this section is to bring together considerations; outline strategies.

• Consider different types of interoperability:
  • transfer of / hand off complete portfolio information
  • communication / sharing of selected portfolio items with other systems

Need: specifications which properly support the interfaces both with the desired services, and with the repositories.

Need: to support various compound items such as individual learning plans (ILPs?), action plans, etc. which may not be interoperable as a whole, but may have contents which can be used by other systems in different ways.

Strategy:

• Consider UKLeaP and IMS ePortfolio as defining many of the requirements.
• Consider an RDF and DC approach for the relationships, while keeping the bulk of the other specs for the individual items.
• Strongly promote discussion about the item types, aimed at consensus.

Need: to support exchange of CV between systems in context of eLearning and eHR.

Strategy:

• Consider Europass CV from Cedefop as defining many of the requirements.
• Consider existing Specifications like HR-XML or IMS ePortfolio and IMS LIP to build an application profile including your community requirements.
• At this time two Application profiles for Europass CV using these standards are already developed by two european projects: Telcert and the Europortfolio Europass CV AP built using both IMS LIP and IMS eP and HR-XML SEP specifications, Kite which are working on an Europass CV AP using HR-XML SEP specifications in collaboration with EIfEL.

Questions:

• What specifications and standards are needed to support relevant web services?
• Is there a systematic difference between service interopability and repository interopability?
• What about the level of interoperable units?
• What is the relative success and influence of:
  • the IMS specifications
  • the HR-XML specifications
  • the Europass CV?