The Information Superhighway:
Between the Dream and Reality

The standards community is working together through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to identify existing standards as well as unwritten standards that will be required to support the information superhighway. In an unprecedented spirit of cooperation, standards developers and industry representatives are working to identify requirements for standards. The body formed for this, the ANSI Information Infrastructure Standards Panel (IISP), will survey the existing cadre of standards to determine whether or not new work needs to be done. Industry representatives from the cable, telecommunications, and computer sectors are identifying critical interfaces that require standards. It is believed that many of the standards already exist; the task will be to identify these as well as to prioritize needs for new standards development work.

IEEE has formed Standards Coordinating Committee 33 (SCC33) on the Information Infrastructure to survey its standards program and respond to the ANSI IISP survey in a timely fashion. Jim Isaak of Digital Equipment Corporation, a Standards Board member and former Chair of the Computer Society Portable Applications Standards Committee (PASC), has been appointed Chair of the new SCC33. Judy Gorman and Karen DeChino of the IEEE Standards Department have been active contributors to the work of IISP.

The US national interest is mirrored by interest in other countries and regions around the world. Standards development will of necessity be global in nature and coordination with national and regional interests outside the US is already occurring. We no longer speak of a National Information Infrastructure (NII), a phrase coined by Al Gore several years ago; now we work to develop a Global Information Infrastructure (GII).

For more information on these activities, please contact Jim Isaak at (508) 486-2255 (phone) or (508) 486-2013 (fax) or isaak@csac.enet.dec.com (e-mail). Information on the Infrastructure can also be accessed via the SPAsystem internet address: http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/index.html [Updated URL -- the SPA team].