Turf—the desire to avoid the costs of change, to reduce or control risk, and to preserve autonomy in an adversarial environment. The successful solutions depended on building trust and increasing incentives, or making the resistant participants more aware of incentives and benefits, and controlling costs.

Complexity and variety—Inconsistencies in scale and structure among governments and levels make compatibility and consistency in applications more expensive and complicated to design and develop. These uneven rates of development and technological sophistication result in an uneven capacity to innovate.

Need for a champion or powerful advocate—The champion is needed to overcome resistance to central coordination, standardization, or the uniformity and consensus necessary to achieve most integration objectives.