ISCN Global Mixer: MIMs - Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms for Open and Agile Smart Cities

In this ISCN Global Mixer, Gert Hilgers (OASC) provided insights on the topic of interoperability and demonstrated the advantages of Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) for cities and communities. 

Open and Agile Smart Cities is an international network of communities that aims to support local administrations in their digital transformation. OASC works with and for cities and communities to create sustainable impacts by reducing innovation costs and avoiding vendor-lock-in through the use of MIMs. 

MIMs are practical tools that enable communities to put in place effective local data sharing ecosystems and enable solutions to be shared between cities and communities worldwide. They help to address challenges that come with managing local data sharing ecosystems, such as data protection, data security, interpretation of data, and competing standards.

Currently, there are seven MIMs under development in different working groups: Context Information management, Shared Data Models, Ecosystem Transactions Management, Personal Data Management, Fair Artificial Intelligence, Security Management and Geospatial Information Management. 

By using MIMs, communities can more easily share and reuse data coming from partners that may use different approaches, compare and contrast the value of different approaches offered by vendors in procurements, and develop a path to change technical approaches.

MIMs address the key issues in managing data in a data sharing ecosystem. They set minimal requirements for application to make it easier to enable good-enough interoperability between them, and they are based on existing standards and provide a good starting point for ever-improving interoperability.