ELECTRONIC COMMERCE AND THE NII

                                    

                         Summary of Comments





                Committee On Applications and Technology

                  Information Infrastructure Task Force

                         September 8, 1994



                     Chuck Chamberlain, USPS



                     David K. Jefferson, NIST







Comments on the Scope of Electronic Commerce





Comments indicated that Electronic Commerce must support other

applications. For example, these comments suggest that Electronic

Commerce must support the Manufacturing and Government Services

applications:





"Design and development of products should get more attention in

this section (page 26). It is a manufacturing issue as well, but

this is a significant opportunity and it is tied to Electronic

Commerce and the NII. . . . Many of the technologies required (such

as distributed simulations, networked virtual environments, high

performance computation, large scale storage management, interactive

visualization systems, and virtual reality presentation) are

addressed by other sections for different applications but could be

coordinated here. . .  . Technology . . . could also eliminate

proximity as an element of the traditional office working

environment for all the application arenas.  The notion of a virtual

workplace probably deserves more focus."





"The Government oversees vast quantities of data that are not

readily accessible by the public. An objective of the NII should be

to make these data available. Private use of these data using data

mining tools, future parallel search engines and other tools could

enhance service delivery. . . ."





"In the introduction it discusses Business to Business

communications.  It does not identify that the same basic capability

can be applied to link Business to Consumers and the reverse. The

same applies to linking government to individual citizens."







Comments on Issues Raised in the Report (quotations in bold are from

page 39 of the Report)







Security/integrity





The Report proposed that "Government and industry cannot accept

Electronic Commerce unless electronic transactions are secure. There

are clear requirements for authentication of the source of a

transaction, verification of the integrity of the transaction,

prevention of disclosure of the transaction to unauthorized users,

and verification of receipt of the transaction by the intended

trading partner. . . ." Many comments supported the importance of

the issue; some comments mentioned specific solutions, such as

"Premenos, a value-added EDI services provider, is now offering in a

test mode with several Fortune 500 clients, public key services for

securing electronic transactions."







Interoperability/scalability





The Report proposed that "We must develop technologies, measurement

tools, testing services, interoperability demonstrations, etc., to

ensure that components satisfy the current and future requirements

of government and industry. . . ." Most comments supported the

importance of the issue (i.e., interoperability), but did not

propose specific programs for achieving that goal. The CALS-ISG,

among others, has this as a major thrust of their national and

international mission as well as the creation and publishing of

business cases. The comments included the following:







"How can NII accommodate requirements for reliability, response

time, interoperability, and security of EC?"







"Need cost-effective security combined with cost-effective

interoperability, plus performance matching existing proprietary

and/or private networks"







"Concerns about interconnectivity and information discovery are

being replaced by concerns about interoperability and security"







". . . how can its widespread use be facilitated. We feel that the

best way is for the government to be a role model to industry by

educating its own managers on the technology and processes, and

implementing electronic commerce for its own purposes with as broad

a constituency as possible, both within the government and with

affinity groups. By doing so, the government, because of its size,

and the number of affinity groups with which it works, can provide

important seed money required by vendors and businesses to build the

infrastructure and transaction volumes necessary to achieve critical

mass for this market."







Non-technical issues





The Report proposed that "Successful resolution of technical issues

will be insufficient to ensure the widespread use of Electronic

Commerce; economic, cultural, regulatory, and legal barriers to

Electronic Commerce must be identified and removed. . . ." The

comments expressed general concerns related to problems of providing

universal access to Electronic Commerce, and specific concerns about

how small business can economically participate in Electronic

Commerce.





One comment stated that "As the sophistication required to compete

increases, the cost to compete will also rise. This could

potentially put small businesses with limited investment capital at

a disadvantage. Some consideration should be given to the NII impact

to the competitive balance in the marketplace. There should be a

discussion of potential undesired effects and ways that these can be

mitigated without slowing the collective competitiveness of American

Industry. One approach might be an expansion of the Electronic

Commerce application discussed on page 32 to provide a forum for the

use of small business to post its services, qualifications,

availability and other relevant information. Such a service could be

accessed by other small businesses, prime contractors and the

agencies themselves. This could become a forum where small

businesses might use the NlI to broker their services."





Another comment suggested additional services related to the

Government Services application: "Reduced time in accessing

government statistics and information such as regulations which

assist businesses in decision making and manufacturing. Ability of

small businesses or companies in accessing and transferring data

which is currently limited to well funded corporations."







Important questions raised in the comments included the following:





"How will EC affect small business?"





"How will small business input their EC requirements into the

builders of the NII?"





"How will use of the NII for EC affect urban and regional

development?  Do urban and regional planners discuss EC requirements

with small business and builders of the NII?"





"How will EC in the NII coordinate requirements and progress with EC

in the GII?"

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