Networks of SLGOs: from systems interoperability to organizational cooperability

E-Government doesn’t concern only technological innovation in Public Administration, but most of all organizational innovation through the adoption of organizational models enabled by the use of ICTs. One model of this kind, that in countries characterized by a high number of Small Local Government Organizations (SLGOs) can be adopted also to reduce the administrative fragmentation, is inter-organizational cooperation among SLGOs. This is the model the Italian National Center for Information Technology in Public Administration (CNIPA) adopted in the action plan to promote E-Government in Local Public Administration in Italy. However, inter-organizational cooperation requires the partners to interoperate, at least in the areas which are the object of the cooperation. One possibility which guarantees interoperability of different organizations consists in the adoption of a shared cooperative environment. Depending on how binding are the conditions which define it, the cooperative environment can determine different levels of interoperability, up to organizational interoperability (cooperability). In the case of cooperation among organizations which can be heterogeneous, one of the conditions defining the cooperative environment is the sharing of an “enterprise model” for the cooperation. In the paper we describe some of the conditions that define a cooperative environment and introduce a system for the description and the classification of different forms of intercommunal cooperation for services provision.