Cross-domain interoperability exists when organizations or systems from different domains interact in information exchange, services, and/or goods to achieve their own or common goals.
Two examples of activities that can benefit when information systems are interoperable across domains are disaster response work (such as the 2013 typhoon relief in Philippines) and multi-national peacekeeping missions (such as the Allied Forces support of France during the 2012–2013 conflict in Mali).
Affordable Care Act, in which federal and state governments, insurance companies and healthcare providers perform their individual functions using a variety of networks and divergent computer platforms – an interoperable environment will enable participants in these different domains to effectively exchange information and perform their essential services, while protecting the privacy and rights of individual patients during the exchange.
Eliminating technological barriers and enabling information sharing and collaboration involves not only designing and building computer programs and environments so they interoperate, but also having cooperative agreements in place regarding management and administrative policies governing issues such as security, user identification, trust and information assurance.
To establish cross-domain interoperability, there needs to be a spirit of cooperation among the different participants, and domains must have agreed-to standards, translations and other interface conversions that enable each entity to exchange information and extract the data it needs in order to perform its role and to contribute knowledge that adds value to the overall mission.