Effective cross-boundary governance processes are critical to creating and sustaining interoperable systems. These governance processes must exist outside each participating organization’s traditional bureaucratic structures and be designed to provide a similar kind of decision making capability to these “no-one-in-charge, shared-power world” environments. To be effective in this horizontally oriented setting, cross-boundary governance processes must be acknowledged by and supported by government leaders.

Interoperability requires, to varying degrees, changes in organizational resources beyond information technology such as personnel, equipment, and funding. It most often necessitates changes to current policies and procedures and the creation of new structures of authority to support decision making processes that must involve multiple organizations. Sometimes these organizations have similar goals and work models, sometimes their goals are quite divergent or even competing. Developing clarity about roles and responsibilities of each participating organization has been found to be an important factor in the success of information sharing and interoperability initiatives. Cross-boundary governance bodies are critical in creating this clarity.

Often the capabilities necessary to create network oriented governance structures is lacking. In part, this is due to the inherent conflict between traditional hierarchical processes versus the kind of cross-boundary processes required to create interoperability. The kinds of decisions necessary to build enterprise interoperability often come in conflict with existing governance processes. For many governments and the specific organizations involved, creating enterprise interoperability is uncharted water. In these environments there is often a lack of agreed upon decision making processes as well as a lack of knowledge of each of the participating organizations and clarity about roles and responsibilities, and the fear of losing autonomy. Enterprise interoperability initiatives require cross-boundary governance structures that have their own clear lines of authority and decision making processes.

New governance structures must recognize the realities of the political environment in which they seek to create interoperability. They must be designed to complement traditional mechanisms with transparent, realistic, and flexible cross-boundary governance structures. These structures should not arbitrarily replace existing lines of authority with cross-boundary governance structures that disregard how decision making flows through agencies and branches of government.

Government leaders often hold the exclusive authority to empower cross-boundary governance structures to make decisions on behalf of a group of organizations; decisions that, while not in the best interests of or supported equally by each individual agency or partner, may reflect the overall enterprise priority. It is a focus on the enterprise priority that will guide interoperability efforts; decision making must be removed from individual agencies and shared across those agencies involved.