Semiotic Interoperability
A Critical Step towards Systems Integration
Weizi Li
1
, Kecheng Liu
1,2
and Shixiong Liu
1
1
Informatics Research Centre, University of Reading, Reading, U.K.
2
Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China
Keywords: Organisational Semiotics, Semiotic Framework, Information Systems Integration, Semiotic Interoperability,
Communication.
Abstract: Information systems integration becomes critical in enhancing organisational competitiveness through
effective use of information resource provided by the whole host of information systems. Information
systems integration in its nature is a process of bringing about the capability of communication and
information exchange between systems; while interoperability, often as the result of systems integration, is
such a capability. However currently there is a lack of theoretical foundation for representation and measure
of the interoperability in organisations. Organisational semiotics provides a theoretical foundation for
systems interoperability. A notion of ‘semiotic interoperability’ is proposed in this paper as a paradigm,
guiding systems integration and measuring degree of interoperability, covering aspects from physical
properties, transmission structure of signs, placing emphasis on communicating meaning, intention to social
consequence of information.
1 INTRODUCTION
Information systems integration is becoming critical
for organisation as enterprises seek to maximise
their IT investment in order to support information
sharing to become more agile and competitive
(Clabby, 2003). The drivers for system integration
often include both organisational and technical
factors, such as the extended use of existing legacy
systems often generates needs for integration with
new systems; the need to consolidate and globalise
especially in the circumstances of mergers and
acquisitions where many legacy mission-critical
systems need to be integrated to enhance
information exchange; the seek for productivity
increase as well as cost cut through integrating
business processes, transactions and applications
(Panian, 2006).
Therefore systems integration is not just
connections among IT systems. It is the issues of the
whole organisation where both social and technical
aspects need to be considered. The information
system integration is defined as the process that
ensures the interactions between information
systems necessary to achieve organisational
objectives. The ideal integration of information
systems should be organic and seamless
communications among not only technical systems
but also process, norms, people, culture as well as
organisational strategies.
The nature of information systems integration
lies in the successful signs communication among
different systems. Semiotics, as the study of signs
that examines the nature and properties of all kinds
of signs (Morris, 1946; Peirce, 1931), provides the
theoretical foundation on how signs can be
successfully communicated among systems.
Organisational semiotics is one of the branches of
semiotics particularly related to business and
organisations (Liu, 2000). Stamper has developed a
semiotic framework which guides us in examining
all the aspects of the signs and studying how signs
are used for communication and coordination in an
organisational context. Therefore organisational
semiotics provides a solid theoretical foundation to
guide the information systems integration. This
paper will introduce a new concept of semiotics
interoperability which is defined into different level
of interoperability. Semiotic interoperability
provides a solid conceptual framework by
explaining how signs can be successfully
communicated in different level. This can be further
508
Li W., Liu K. and Liu S..
Semiotic Interoperability - A Critical Step towards Systems Integration.
DOI: 10.5220/0004627005080513
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Information Retrieval and the International Conference on Knowledge
Management and Information Sharing (KMIS-2013), pages 508-513
ISBN: 978-989-8565-75-4
Copyright
c
2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
developed to guide the design of seamless
integration as well as to assess organisation’s
integration level to identify organisation’s
requirement towards comprehensive integration.
2 INFORMATION SYSTEMS
INTEGRATION
AND INTEROPERABILITY
Information systems integration is the process that
ensures the interaction between information systems
necessary to achieve domain objectives (Chen et al.,
2008a; EN/ISO I9439, 2003). The development of
information systems integration can be divided into
two phases: technical integration and comprehensive
integration. Technical integration is the preliminary
stage of integration which allows information
systems to understand each other’s functionalities in
order to improve efficiency of using information
(Chen et al., 2008b). In the context of computer-
based systems, information system integration is the
faculty for two heterogeneous computer systems to
function jointly and exchange information resource.
From a networked systems perspective, it gives the
ability of interactions and information exchanges
between information systems. Another point of view
from (ISO, 2000) explains that two systems are
considered as integrated if there is a detailed
standard format for all constituent components. It
improves the information exchange and utilisation
interoperability between information systems,
applications, devices and units (Guo and Wang,
2012).
Interoperability is the ability of information
systems to share information, services, and
functionalities among information systems
(NEHTA, 2007). It can be measured to evaluate that
the efficiency and productivity of information
systems integration (Leite, 1998). The
interoperability can be achieved through different
levels and manners. From business and enterprise
point of view, Panian (Panian, 2006) identifies
interoperability through different types of integration
which include data integration, business process
integration, business activity monitoring and
application integration. Chen and Vernadat (Chen
and Vernadat, 2004) defines three levels from
enterprise interoperability which covering physical
level about interconnection of devices via computer
networks; application level dealing with
interoperability of software applications and
database systems in heterogeneous computing
environments; business level on coordination of
functions that manage, control and monitor business
processes.
Information systems integration can be seen as
the process of sign communication not only among
technical systems but also interactions in the social
environment surround the systems. The effective and
comprehensive information systems integration
should fully consider and depends on the successful
use of sign at different levels of communications,
interactions and social activities. Organisational
semiotics provides a sound theoretical foundation on
how signs are used in the communications to support
information systems integration in organisation. A
new concept of semiotic interoperability is
introduced in this paper which defines
interoperability from a broader perspective of signs
with the purpose of giving a theoretical guidance for
effective information systems integration. Semiotic
interoperability will look at information systems
integration by explaining not only how signs are
structured and used in language, how signs are
organised and transmitted, what physical properties
signs have, but also how signs function in
communicating meanings and intentions, and what
the social consequences are of the use of signs.
3 SEMIOTIC
INTEROPERABILITY
3.1 Organisational Semiotics
Semiotics, as a branch of the philosophy related to
linguistics, is the study of signs and symbols. It
provides a sound theoretical foundation for
understanding of the nature and characteristics of the
sign-based communication. Organisational
semiotics, as a sub-branch of semiotics particularly
related to organisations, is the study of organisations
using the concepts and methods of semiotics.
Organisational semiotics provides a holistic view
about signs, information, systems and organisations.
An organisation can be seen as an information
system where information is created, stored, and
processed for communication and coordination and
for achieving the organisational objectives.
3.2 Semiotic Framework
Stamper has developed a semiotic framework
(Figure 1) that guides us in examining all the aspects
of the signs and studying how signs are used for
communication and coordination in an
SemioticInteroperability-ACriticalSteptowardsSystemsIntegration
509
organisational context. Organisations have both a
technical and a social dimension and their
performance relies heavily on their ability to
integrate both of these dimensions. From this
semiotic perspective, information systems
integration is about how signs are used for
successful communications in IT platforms serving
technical business operations as well as human
information functions supporting social dimension
of business activities.
Table 1: Semiotic interoperability framework.
Social
interoperability
The resultant interoperable systems
should be coherent with the social
commitment, obligation and norms
in the organisation and support
organisation’s strategy, vision and
objectives
Pragmatic
interoperability
Processes supposed by the systems
in individual contexts can be
aggregated to achieve the overall
intended purpose
Semantic
interoperability
Ability of interpreting and
converting information into
equivalent meaning to allow
information sharing between
systems
Syntactic
interoperability
Data exchange between systems
through compatible formats and
structures
Empiric
interoperability
Sign transmission through
compatible channels and protocols
between systems
Physical
interoperability
Connectivity between networks and
hardware and devices
Physical world, as a separate branch concerned with
the physical aspects of signs gives a handle to deal
with the factors governing the economics of signs,
which has become important in business contexts.
Empirics, has been defined as another branch to
study the statistical properties of signs when
different physical media and devices are used.
Syntactic, semantics and pragmatics respectively
deal with the structures, meanings and usage of
signs. Social world has been defined as the effects of
the use of signs in human affairs.
The three upper layers in the framework are
concerned with the use of signs, includes functions
of signs in communicating meanings and intentions,
and the social consequences while using signs. The
three lower layers in the framework aim to answer
questions on how signs are structured and used in
language, how signs are organised, what physical
properties signs have, etc. This work has been
widely used in analysing business organisation and
information systems design.
Figure 1: The semiotic framework (Stamper, 1973).
3.3 Semiotic Interoperability
It is common-sensible to see information systems
integration as a process of sign communication. The
semiotic framework that explains all aspects of how
signs can be used and communicated for successful
communication, determines the level of
interoperability of information systems integration.
Therefore we say systems are integrated in certain
level of interoperability if signs among systems are
successfully communicated in certain semiotic
framework level.
Our previous research work (Li, 2010) proposes
a set of theoretical and methodological methods for
information systems integration in digital hospital.
The theory of organisational semiotics has been used
for developing a list of methods (e.g. modelling
methods, implementation methods) and models (e.g.
ontology model, activity model). In addition, a
theoretical and conceptual architecture has been
proposed based on the semiotic framework. This
architecture identifies the requirements for
information systems integration at several levels (i.e.
organisational goal level, business services level,
business activities level, system functions level,
system communication level, and infrastructure
level), which support the communication among
information systems. Li’s work elaborates the
application of organisational semiotics theories, and
reveals that the semiotic framework is able to
illustrate the operation of organisation as an
information system, and to guide successful
communication between information systems. Hence
we focus on interoperability and communication in
this paper and propose the concept of semiotic
interoperability to identify the level of system
integration based on semiotics framework (Filipe,
2000; Liu, 2000; Stamper, 1973) and previous work
on how organisational semiotics supporting
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information systems integration (Li, 2010).
Semiotic Interoperability allows information
systems to work together through communication
with insight into the physical properties,
transmission structure of signs, placing emphasis on
communicating meaning, intention and social
consequence of information. Semiotic
interoperability can be further explained by the
semiotic interoperability framework (Table 1):
Physical interoperability
The interoperability at physical level indicates that
connectivity between networks, hardware and
devices. This level is concerned with the physical
connection and transmission channel in sign
communication. Signs are modelled by physical
signals (varying in time) and marks (static in time),
their sources and destinations and the routes over
which they are transmitted. Physical interoperability
is achieved when a chain of physical tokens,
transmitted along a route, is received at the other
end, by the receiver, conserving the same physical
properties. For example, the hardware devices of the
systems must be interconnected in order to support
the data transmission. However, although the
physical level has been achieved, the data
transmission cannot be succeeded without proper
communication channel and protocols. These issues
are concerned at empiric interoperability.
Empirics Interoperability
Empirics interoperability ensures sign transmission
through compatible channels and protocols between
systems. This level is concerned with the matching
of coding and decoding between sign sender and
receiver based on statistical properties of
information. In such communication, coding is done
at the sending end and decoding at the receiving end.
Interoperability at this level is achieved when the
receiver can reconstitute the same sequence of
symbols that were sent by the sender, irrespective of
any problems at the physical level. Research at this
level involves the study of communication devices
that are well matched to the statistical characteristics
of the media. The word meaning/matching in this
level means the equivalence of codes. The empiric
level ensures the capacity of communication
channels and protocols of different information
systems are matched. For example, specific
bandwidth and proper communication protocols
such as IEEE 108.11g have to be matched for both
systems in order to successfully transmit the data.
However, the information exchange still may fail if
the structures of the data for information systems are
incompatible. The issue of data structure is
concerned at the syntactic level.
Syntactic Interoperability
Syntactic interoperability ensures data exchange
between systems through compatible formats and
structures. Syntactics is concerned with rules of
composing complex signs from simple ones.
Communication is successful if the devices are able
to identify and internally rebuild each other’s
symbols and expressions, irrespective of the symbols
that are used. The syntactic interoperability is
achieved when the expression of information, or
language, or formula can be recognised by different
information systems. The data structures and format
of file and message have to be readable to both ends
of communication. For example, a program wrote in
JAVA cannot be recognised by other non-JAVA
supported information systems. However, although
the syntactic level is achieved, the communication
still may fail if the message cannot be understood by
other information systems. These issues are
concerned at the semantic level.
Semantic Interoperability
Interoperability at semantic level indicates the
ability of interpreting and converting information
into equivalent meaning to allow information
sharing between systems. Semantic level is
concerned with the meaning of signs. At the
semantic level of use of language, meaning acts as
the operational link between signs and practical
affairs. People use signs or a language in
communication. To enable one person to understand
another, there must be some principles governing the
use of signs which are established and shared in a
language community. At the semantics level,
communication is successful if signs are interpreted
for both sender and receiver according to same
principles. If an utterance may be interpreted in
several different ways this means that the
interpretation selected by the speaker would be the
same one selected by the hearer. The semantic
interoperability requires that the content’s meaning
and governing norms can be shared for different
information systems. The semantic level addresses
the issue of semantic interoperability, and involves
terminology aspects (homonyms, synonyms, scope)
as well as human language aspects. The semantic
interoperability can be achieved to give the same
meaning to exchanged information between
information systems, and it requires a conceptual
model which describes what information is
exchanged in terms of concepts, properties, and
relationships between these concepts.
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511
Pragmatics Interoperability
Pragmatics interoperability ensures that processes
supposed by the systems in individual contexts can
be aggregated to achieve the overall intended
purpose. Pragmatics is the level of semiotics
concerned with the relationship between signs and
the potential behaviour/intention of responsible
agents, in a social context. Therefore, successful
communication at this level is achieved if the hearer
understands the speaker’s intentions, irrespective of
the semantic interpretation of the communicative
act. The communication may be successful even if
the hearer does not do what the speaker wishes him
to do, as long as the hearer correctly interprets the
intention expressed by the speaker
Interoperability is achieved at this level when
processes serving different purposes under different
contexts by different information systems can be
composed to jointly support a common intention.
The emphasis is on the context awareness for
processes integration. The following elements can be
considered in the context: information system itself,
intention, purpose, theme, time, location etc.
Social Interoperability
Social interoperability ensures that the resultant
interoperable systems should be coherent with the
social commitment, obligation and norms in the
organisation and support organisation’s strategy,
vision and objectives. Communication at the social
level requires the hearer and the speaker to share
social norms. A sign is meaningful if it actually
alters those norm structures. Knowledge at the social
level is thus essentially defined in terms of norms,
i.e. regularities of behaviour, perception, and
judgement. The interoperability in social level
ensures the intention or purpose of the sender has led
to a social consequence to the receiver through the
resultant interoperable systems. Social commitments
and obligations can often be created or discharged as
the result of a conversation. Even if the hearer does
not do apparently anything, the communication
succeeds at the social level as long as a result of the
communicative act, any social commitments are
created or modified.
The semiotic interoperability illustrates how well
the information systems are integrated. They also
identify requirements to be improved at each level.
Each level is correlated but independent with its
neighbours. The integration has to achieve the lower
semiotic interoperability level before moving
upwards. For example, the integration at the physical
level has to be achieved with right hardware and
right components before it is achieved at the empiric
level. Otherwise, even though the information
systems have been provided with the right protocol
and right communication channel, they still cannot
be successfully integrated without right selections of
hardware and components. Similarly, the
interoperability of syntax at syntactic level is
essential for information systems to understand the
meaning of exchanged information.
4 DISCUSSION
AND CONCLUSIONS
Currently information systems integration becomes
critical for organisations to enhance competitiveness
through information sharing and maximising their IT
investment. The issues on systems interoperability
and how interoperable systems need to be as a strong
support for organisational competitiveness have
drawn many attentions of researcher.
More and more researchers realise that it is
important to consider interoperability from not only
technical aspects but also higher level of
communication in human and social activities. Some
interoperability evaluation frameworks have been
proposed but there is a lack of solid theoretical
foundation leading to a sufficient coverage to define
and evaluate interoperability as well as guide the
integration through effective sign communication
across technical platform and human information
interactions. Most of the current interoperability
only covers physical, empirics, syntactics and
semantics interoperability, such as LCIM (Tolk and
Muguira, 2003), e-Health IF (NEHTA, 2007),
Enterprise IF (Chen and Daclin, 2006) and i-Score
(Ford and Colombi, 2007). Some of the researches
have mentioned interoperability from pragmatic or
social level such as EIF (EIF, 2004), AIF (ATHENA,
2003; Berre et al., 2007) and QIAM (Fewell et al.,
2004), but the above still remain inadequate because
currently there is no framework for a fundamental
representation of interoperability through a
comprehensive aspects of successful sign
communication.
The semiotic interoperability provides a
theoretical concept covering how signs are
communicated successfully from physical to social
level in order to achieve effective information
systems integration. Although the concept and
framework of semiotic interoperability is new, some
of the constituent claims have been studied in our
previous researches on how semiotics supports
information systems integration (Li, 2010; Li et al.,
2013, Li et al., 2009).
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Based on the concept of semiotic interoperability,
our future work will develop a detailed semiotics
interoperability evaluation framework to assess and
diagnose interoperability of information systems in
an organisation. This evaluation framework will be
used to identify organisation’s system integration
requirement with an aim to guide effective system
integration supporting organisational objectives.
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