GAT: ACTS Telework Chain
Draft Guideline GA-G1a

First-Time Interoperability across Extranets:
Developing European Competence and Confidence

Appendix A - State of the Art

This short state of the art paper is provided as background to the draft Guideline, providing evidence for the assertions made therein. It is not intended as a comprehensive or exhaustive summary of developments in the relevant fields. The structure of this paper (a) quotes an assertion from the draft Guideline, then (b) provides a short supporting argument, backed, where relevant with (c) supporting data or quotations from other sources.

The conclusions drawn regarding user perspectives on interoperability are based on direct experience working with and interacting with a broad cross section of users in Europe and elsewhere at the European Telework Online website (Note 1), together with input from other operators of successful public outreach websites and Extranets.

There is a second appendix providing a glossary of the terms used in the draft Guideline.

Successful exploitation of Extranet methods. . .

The term "Intranet" is now in widespread use, and reflects the use of Internet technologies and methods for internal communications, information sharing and transactions within an organisation. The term "Extranet" is more recent and less familiar. It has been used in two ways: either to mean the planned application of Internet methods by agreement within a group of organisations (eg in a retailer's supply chain with its manufacturing suppliers or a manufacturer's supply chain with its distributors), or (as it is used in this Guideline) the wider but still purposive use of Internet methods by an organisation to reach both existing and potential customers, suppliers and indeed any external audience in which the organisation has an interest. Our rationale for this preferred meaning is that planned and agreed Internet use among a particular set of organisations and/or people has the characteristics of an Intranet, the set of organisations and/or people concerned forming an extended enterprise or a virtual enterprise. The wider but still purposive use of Internet methods, including connection with as-yet-unknown audiences has quite different and distinct characteristics, making it appropriate to use a different term - Extranet.

. . . is central to Europe's future economic success . . .

The general case for this has been very widely argued, starting from the report "Europe and the global information society" (the "Bangemann report"), presented to the European Commission in May 1994, and followed by extensive study and reportage, all pointing to the same conclusion. As the Bangemann report says:
The first countries to enter the information society will reap the greatest rewards. They will set the agenda for all who must follow. By contrast, countries which temporise, or favour half hearted solutions, could, in less than a decade, face disastrous declines in investment and a squeeze on jobs."

. . . in the emerging Global Networked Economy

The term "networked economy" is used in preference to "information society" for two reasons:
  1. It focuses attention on the business and economic impacts, many of which can be expected to arise much earlier than the societal impacts;
  2. To a considerable extent, the societal effects and results will follow on from and be determined by economic success or failure, rather than vice versa.

Successful use of Extranet methods by public services and in citizen networks is central to Europe's future social cohesion . . .

Experience of "connecting citizens online" is already demonstrating how social cohesion can be enhanced by these methods (source, European Communities Online, unpublished papers presented at Milan, July 1997 and informal discussion at the same event and subsequently).

. . . and to the development of stronger links across national and other boundaries

The experience of the European Telework Online website is a direct example of this. A team embracing some twenty different nationalities, countries and cultures came together and works effectively on common and shared purposes on a mainly voluntary basis, with Extranet methods as the primary vehicle for initial contact.

Intranets assume some commonality of purposes and platforms across participants . . .

This is most obviously the case with an Intranet that is entirely internal to and managed by a single enterprise, but also the case with an Intranet that is developed by mutual agreement among a group of enterprises and/or people once they have agreed to work together. For example, the European Telework Development project - which comprises some thirty different organisations across the EU member states - established and published, at an early stage, "Intranet standards" for web sites and pages, mail and file exchange, published documents etc, to which all participants agree to conform for "internal" project purposes.

. . . Extranets can make no such assumptions

Given that the purpose of Extranets is to reach and communicate with external audiences, with no prior agreement as to methods or standards, this is a self-evident fact.

. . . significant but often hidden issues of interoperability . . .

Interoperability issues are often "hidden" in the Extranet context because of either a lack of data about members of the target audiences or a lack of understanding of audience expectations, behaviours and/or know how. An example of this is the website that proclaims "best viewed with XXX browser version YYY" and "You may download XXX version YYY here" with a link to a download site. The assumption is that users will upgrade to the relevant version or switch from their existing browser to one of those for which the website is optimised. This makes two further assumptions - the user will be motivated to "upgrade" as recommended and will be able to do so. But there are many circumstances in which one or both of these assumptions is ill founded. For example, a business user may be constrained to applications of the make and version provided by his or her employer. Or the user may have an access speed that precludes easy downloading of the (say) 4 megabyte file required - may indeed make it infeasible to download such a file. Or the user's system may be one that won't successfully run the suggested application (Windows 3.1 with 8 Mb of memory when the application needs Windows95 and 16 Mb, for example).

as much to do with market awareness and understanding, coupled with management and operational decisions, as with technical barriers

From a technical perspective, its open to users to upgrade their systems, and to obtain higher access performance etc. But it may not be practical for them to do so, or they may not be motivated to do so. The factors relating to this can best be understood by examining three main stages of user practice in making new connections across the Internet, taking website access as the particular basis for illustration. Note that there are many ways to attract target users to a website, user-initiated search is used here purely for purposes of illustration.
  1. User choice sites to "visit"

    In many situations, the Internet presents a very wide choice of alternative sources of information, services and products, as can readily be demonstrated by a search using particular search terms, which often yields many thousands of possible options. Typically, a user will not search all these possible options. Rather, he or she will adopt (often unconsciously) some kind of search strategy. Generally, the user "visits" a sample of the sites/pages that appear in the first ten or twenty choices offered by the search engine. If these are disappointing the user will typically vary the search terms, hoping to get a more appropriate set of options, rather than search more deeply through those already surfaced. So for a site to be interoperable - or even for its interoperability to have a chance of being tested by relevant users - it needs to make sure its within the first sites offered by popular search engines against relevant search terms - with the "relevance" relating to user perceptions. Achieving and maintaining this is a managerial and operational matter, relying on know how, techniques and market data not on technology or protocols.

  2. User decisions on whether to explore a site beyond the first page encountered

    Having "arrived" at a particular page of a particular site (which may well be an "internal" page suggested by the search, rather than the carefully crafted and welcoming "home page" of the site, the user has two choices:

    The state of the art of both search engines and user search skills makes it unlikely that the first page encountered actually includes material wholly relevant to the user's interests. So the characteristics of each page in a site must be such that users within the target audience are attracted to and find it easy to search more deeply in the site for information relevant to their needs. Again this is a managerial and operational matter, not a technical one. It entails a difficult balance between providing sufficient navigation aids and clues to attract, inform and help the user, against the risk of cluttering pages with content that will be seen as unnecessary by regular users and will increase the file size of each page that has to be downloaded to the user.

  3. User decisions about whether to interact with the website provider

    Although the simple, one-way provision of information to any and all available audiences may be a legitimate aim for some websites, in general a site's success can only really be judged when users add value through some kind of active contribution or interaction. This can take many forms, for example the actual purchase of a product or service with an online payment by the user; or a user's decision to join an online discussion at the site; or the completion of a registration form that provides the site operator with information about the user; or the user's decision to make a link to the site from the user's site; or a comment from the user about the site and its contents. Only when the user adds value in these kinds of ways can the site operator start to collect and analyse meaningful information about the extent to which an impact is being made on the target audience, and therefore the extent to which the site is justifying the effort and costs of developing and sustaining it. This is also the opportunity for the site operator to discover and correct interoperability problems that target users encounter. If there is no "active feedback" of this kind from users there is no way to judge whether the site traffic is productive for the operator and users or a waste of time and cost. A user's decision to interact with the website provider is determined by:

    Once again, although technical capability is needed to provide these, their presence or absence, effectiveness or otherwise are very much matters of management and operational judgement and decisions.

Europe . . . is at a disadvantage compared with the United States, where there is a much larger critical mass of users, suppliers and advisers

A comparative study undertaken for the UK Department of Trade and Industry in February 1997 (Note 2) indicates that 51% of companies in the USA provide Internet access for their employees as a standard practice, compared with 35% in the UK, 27% in Germany and 13% in France. Given the relative market size of each country (based on Gross Domestic Product), this suggests that a USA-based company works in a "home" online market whose scale is some 15 times that of the UK, four times that of Germany, and 19 times that of France.

Other leading trade areas, particularly Japan, are accelerating their adoption of networked economy methods much faster than Europe

The same study found that Japan is adopting Internet access as a normal business tool at an even faster rate than the USA, with 63% of the businesses surveyed reporting that they provide Internet access for employees.

Urgent action is needed

The quite sharp focus reflected in the original "Bangemann Report" has been softened in subsequent discussion and reporting. There has been a reaction against what some have regarded as a technology-centred perspective ("Bangemann" having been produced by a committee formed by technology suppliers), leading to calls for a distinctly "European" approach, which generally has been interpreted as a more cautious and slower approach. But one third of the "decade" cited by Bangemann has already elapsed at the time of publishing this draft Guideline (September 1997), and all the market evidence suggests that the USA is indeed already reaping rewards from its leadership in this field. A study for the Dutch Presidency of the Union, published in January 1997 (Note 3), confirmed that:
Information and communication technology (ICT) industries are critical for the Information Society . . . Europe is consistently falling behind competitors in most ICT sectors . . . ICT reform has to be dramatically accelerated.
Packaged software is the first market sector to shift from mainly offline to mainly online marketing and distribution. The Dutch report shows that Europe consumes some 40% of all packaged software, the same proportion as the USA, but the USA produces no less than 80% of the total. In an industry that is relatively young, rapidly growing, and already valued at $100 dollars, Europe's share is only 15%. The USA also dominates the new distribution channels - AOL and CompuServe (in the process of merging) between them provide access for well over 1 million European users, an order of magnitude larger than the largest European-based access provider.

. . . to raise European awareness of Interoperability issues across Extranets

Given that it will take at least several years (possibly a decade or more) for Europe to catch up with the USA in terms of usage levels and market scale, it becomes critical to make sure that European market participants are able to make up in skills and know how what they lack in home market economies of scale. Fortunately, USA-based participants appear at present as likely as any others to be unaware of the Interoperability issues raised in this Guideline, giving European participants an opportunity to score.

. . . to improve access to relevant information and competence

This is a more difficult aspect to address, since rapid market growth from a small base inevitably breeds shortages in skills and know how. However, the technology itself presents opportunities to address this problem through the creation of skills and know how networks "online" and the provision of online advice and guidance in ways that leverages limited resources.

. . . and to devise and disseminate best practice approaches and guides

The success of the European Telework Online (Note 1) and other "know-how-providing" websites in attracting a large regular audience of users and contributors confirms that European individuals and enterprises areopen to good advice and useful guidance if it is well presented and readily and freely accessible. Although such methods only reach the existing "online" audience, that audience is in turn in contact with many peers and colleagues who are not yet online, creating a strong trickle-down effect.
Note 1: The European Telework Online website (http://www.eto.org.uk) was established in November 1995 and in July 1996 became the host site for the European Telework Development initiative and the GAT Chain. During 1996-1997 it has attracted a continually growing audience (average growth being of the order of 30%-40% monthly) and as at September 1997 has an estimated 8,000 regular users. This figure is high for a site that has "business to business" as opposed to consumer content, no links with mass market publications or corporate networks, and a near-zero promotional effort and budget. It has been achieved by a combination of strong interoperability factors and continuing interaction with users, coupled of course with content that is designed to be useful to the target audiences. A very high proportion of traffic growth is believed to come from word-of-mouth (or word-of-email) and other user endorsements.

Note 2: Moving into the Information Society: an International benchmarking study, UK Department of Trade and Industry, August 1997. Available online at http://www.isi.gov.uk/isi/mitis.htm.

Note 3: Enabling the Information Society: supporting market-led developments, Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs. January 1997.