I sent Kalleh a PM Thursday evening from Penn State University, where I was attending a two-day planning session of my state public relations association board. Down the hall from us in the conference building where we were staying was a roomful of men all carrying laptops and looking extremely grim. The tiny placard next to the door of their room said what I misread as "Inoperability Commission."

I wondered why any group of people would advertise itself as incapable of operating and asked one of my friends about it. She said she believed it was something to do with health care, so I wrote to Kalleh to ask if she had ever heard of it. Kalleh wrote back that it appeared to have something to do with computing, and suggested that I ask here.

Between then and now, I have discovered that the meeting was for the "Interoperability Conference," and even found a web page describing the meeting. Reading down in the text, I see that "interoperability" is apparently a word handed down by the Department of Homeland Security and that it applies to the ability of various systems and departments to communicate with one another, as our CIA and FBI famously did not before Sept. 11, 2001. At the bottom of the page is the logo for this "Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Statewide Interoperability Summit," but believe me, it was only 40 guys in a room all looking as if they had been unwillingly dragged there and that the whole experience actually was inoperable!

Why use such an awkward mouthful of a word? Why not just say systems "compatibility" or "integration" or "cooperation?" Or, oh gee whiz, why not just say "communication?"

Have any of the rest of you encountered "interoperability" where you live and work?

Wordmatic

Have any of the rest of you encountered "interoperability" where you live and work?

Yes. I work in IT, and the word is quite common in that context, though with a slightly more narrow meaning.

quote:

The IEEE defines interoperability as: "the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged."

It doesn't seem much of a stretch to its newer, governmental meaning.

And yet, both Kalleh and I got ghits looking it up as "inoperability," so it must be misread and misspelled quite often!"

WM

both Kalleh and I got ghits looking it up as "inoperability," so it must be misread and misspelled quite often!

When I google inoperability, I get ghits with two meanings quite different from interoperability. One, when something fails to operate (specifically something called the inoperability input-output model (IIM)), and, two, when something cannot be operated on (like cancer).

"Interoperability" applied to government is usually an oxymoron. I believe the proper acronym is "SNAFU."

As I had told Wordmatic, inoperable (unfortunately) is used frequently enough in medicine; but not inoperability. I only briefly looked it up on Google, but every site I found was about computer technology. It just goes along with my theory that those IT people are trying to write their own language.

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It just goes along with my theory that those IT people are trying to write their own language

What do you mean, "trying to write"? I reckon they've already written it!

Yes, they've got their own jargon just like every other sub-culture!

WM