Particular embodiments described herein provide for an electronic device that can receive data from an operating system in an electronic device, where the data is related to hardware that is in communication with the electronic device through a multimodal interface and communicate the data and/or related data to a local policy manager, where the local policy manager is in communication with the multimodal interface. The multimodal interface can be configured to support power transfers, directionality, and multiple input/output (I/O) protocols on the same interface.