Deployment of the Finnish Interoperability Platform in the Design of the Research Information Hub

Abstract

In Finland, a suite of integrated tools has been created for interoperable digital public service development – an Interoperability platform. The service is provided by the Finnish Population Register Centre and it serves the entire public administration in Finland. The main components are the concept definition tool, the code list tool and the modelling tool.

A driving idea behind this development is that public administration should maintain and use information in a cost efficient, secure manner and make them as available as possible. Semantic interoperability and shared tools enable the integration of services and data content and user-centric service development.

In the development of the Finnish Research Information Hub (www.research.fi), the starting point is to define and refine concepts from the national Glossary for Research Administration. In many cases, relevant terminologies have also been defined in other public sector efforts. Next code lists are either reused or developed. Finally, by using the Interoperability platform, the data models are built, utilizing the concepts, code lists and model definitions of other domain-related models. Reuse of these information structures from other services means that they can share the same conceptual definitions, code lists and model components for those parts where there is conceptual overlap. This reflects positively on the exchangeability of the data that they hold. All defined components are public on the interoperability platform.

The hub will use as its resource both national sources such as universities’ CRISes, funders’ registries and international ones like ORCID, and the enriched research information will be available e.g. back to the universities’ CRISes, ORCID, OpenAIRE. The data models and terminologies are interoperable with international standards such as CERIF and CASRAI.