Service descriptions in Digital Ecosystems: based on standards and converters

This paper focuses on the description of services and the application of the two concepts standardization and conversion as key aspects to enhance interoperability in Digital Ecosystems. Firstly we elaborate the nature and properties of services and then we discuss how approved international e-Business standards like BMEcat and eCl@ass may be used to define, describe, exchange and classify services. Here we also adress aspects like building service variants, configuring services and service-bundles. The conversion concept we analyze in more detail based on experiences from the innovative German e-Government project D115. This project aims to exchange public-service descriptions between all public authorities and to harmonize them by use of ontologies. The main statement of this paper is: Both concepts, standardization and conversion, are suitable for the description and the exchange of services and offer an unemployed but remarkable potential to enhance interoperability in Digital-Ecosystems.