A System of Systems Framework for Health and Human Services

A system of systems is characterized by the properties of operational and managerial autonomy; belonging to a system collective; connectivity; diversity of operational characteristics, location, infrastructure and capability; and evolutionary development. It is also characterized by emergent synergistic behavior: the system of systems functionality is greater than the sum of the component functionality. This article offers a new framework for inter-agency health and human services systems as a system of systems. We discuss how the system of systems framework provides a new way of understanding the interoperability of health and human services – spanning multiple organizations – in the context of complex inter-agency relationships