Interoperability is critical for:

• Most effective use of ICT in education by students and teachers.
• Achievement of government objectives and the success of current initiatives such as the UK BSF programme, 14-19 Diplomas and personalisation.
• Engagement of all companies and organisations that can contribute, both large and small, and to enable innovation to happen.

We currently envisage that the proposed E.E.P. Interoperability Update and Roadmaps will track development of interoperability in the following areas:

i) MIS; both for MIS-MIS and MIS-VLE interoperability.
ii) SIF; to inter-school exchange and inter-school/college working (e.g. as envisaged in the BSF programme for 14-19 students).
iii) Content; particularly content packaging standards such as SCORM, but also de-facto standards where readers are available.
iv) Web browser standards; particularly those to enable wider use of PDAs, phones and mobile computers.
v) Network security and inter-connection standards; particularly issues such as network lock-down that prohibits use of certain content and collaboration between educators working on different school or LA networks.
vi) Authentication standards; particularly Shibboleth and issues relating to access to national education networks.

The current stance of the E.E.P., pending the discussions that will be facilitated over the coming year, is to believe that the needs of educators and students to communicate and collaborate should be paramount. This implies that approaches that reduce their ability to do so are only acceptable if there are insurmountable technical obstacles or serious risks that cannot otherwise be managed.

The aim of the E.E.P. in facilitating discussions on interoperability is to help ensure that the interoperability standards necessary, to achieve the transformations in education that government desires, are created in time to enable initiatives to be a success.