### Challenges: Fragmentation, Silos, and the Lack of Harmonisation
Despite widespread recognition of the benefits that digital solutions can yield, countries are facing challenges to fully realise them. While social protection programmes follow a common set of processes, fragmentation and the inability to communicate among themselves hinder their full utilisation. This absence of harmonisation and interoperability not only impedes the attainment of social protection outcomes, but also results in the inefficient use of public funds.
The healthcare sector has interoperability architecture and standards, such as OpenHIE 5 and FHIR standards. However, no such standards exist for the social protection sector. The DCI aims to address this gap.
### Solution: A Framework for Interoperability Standards
To create an interoperable social protection delivery system, a framework for interoperability—with standard processes, standard data elements and code directories, and standard application programming interfaces (APIs)—is required. This framework must provide common terminology and a common structure for use across various social protection domains. With a well-designed interoperability framework, systems can be made interoperable and scalable for future transaction volumes, ensuring a smooth flow of information between different parts of the social protection information system, beneficiaries, private sector players, and governments.
The DCI aims to create such a framework in a consensus-built manner. The result is what you are reading now, documented on this DCI [GitBook](https://standards.spdci.org/standards/dci/readme) and more technically on [GitHub](https://github.com/spdci).
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