Inter-organizational collaboration without integration: a transactional approach for electronic information sharing

As we proceed into the 21st century, the sharing of information between organizations, whether locally, nationally, or globally, is becoming the focus of increased attention. Numerous trends toward inter-organization information sharing are becoming the norm, often using socio-technical systems for adoption and implementation. Inter-organizational information sharing, however, supported by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), face challenges on many fronts. This workshop will describe the transactional approach to information sharing via an introduction of Transactions in Real Time© (TRT©), which enables information sharing in real time without systems integration or the construction of new databases. TRT is particularly relevant for the theme of the 2014 BAM conference: demonstrating supporting economic and social development. New research such as TRT directly addresses inter-organization collaboration, resulting in greater wellbeing for a vulnerable population, reduced costs, elimination of personal data loss risk, and the enabling of a way forward among organizations whose differing cultures find it difficult to communicate and collaborate. Further, TRT is scalable and applicable to a wider environment, as well as to other environments where organizations seeking to share information may find it difficult to collaborate due to the type of information to be shared, differing organizational cultures, lack of common goals, or any number of particular circumstances.