After briefly describing trends in management of Federal funding for information infrastructure technology and applications, I will turn to describing ARPA's growing interest in collaboration support technologies. Successful execution of rapid-response collaborations -- from crisis action to industrial alliances -- is crucial in areas ranging from health care to manufacturing to military task forces. This requires the means to reach out over the information superhighway to rapidly form and manage distributed groups: tiger teams, task forces, or industrial consortia. This creates a need for intelligent information services and infrastructure that make it quick and easy to:
Locate: Identify individuals, software and organizations for
candidate components of a new enterprise;
Integrate: Negotiate and specify how those components will work together;
Operate: Link the components' information systems into an
overarching information system that allows components to exchange information
while maintaining a global picture of the status of the enterprise.
This talk will provide an overview of current ARPA-supported work in these three areas and describe new directions now under consideration (with the intent of stimulating discussion and gathering input rather than announcing official positions).