NIST's (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Role in Electronic Commerce

• What are the measurements and standards needs?
• What are the technology development needs?
• How can we get the needed technology to our small businesses?

NIST is well positioned to help industry to resolve critical technical issues so that diverse electronic commerce applications can be based on a system of widely adopted open standards and measurement methods. The Institute has a unique statutory role in computer security and authentication standards, and it holds leadership roles in key electronic commerce standardization efforts. NIST also has singular networked testbeds building on a state-of-the-art computing and communications infrastructure. NIST has established strong working relationships with leading-edge development and broadly based user and technology-provider industry groups, and it has extensive links with the 385,000-plus smaller U.S. manufacturers through a nationwide extension network.

Measurements and Standards for Electronic Commerce

Electronic commerce is much more than simply the buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet. Market competition is driving the demand for intensive sharing of complex technical information across business enterprises and with their suppliers, and industry has begun to use the Internet to satisfy this need. In areas critical to industry’s advancement in electronic commerce, such as manufacturing research, NIST plays a unique role in measurements and standards. Some key examples follow.

Product Data Exchange Standards

NIST has worked with scores of industry groups to create unambiguous, computer-readable formats for presenting a wide variety of technical information about products throughout their life cycle—from design through maintenance and service. By using these standards, manufacturing has begun to progress beyond the age of the blueprint.

Standards for Internet Commerce and Manufacturing

In today’s environment the entire supply chain is being challenged to respond quickly to fluctuating demand for products with shrinking shelf lives. NIST’s Internet Commerce for Manufacturing project is working with industry to develop and demonstrate a suite of web-based standards to enable the electronics manufacturing supply chain to meet current time-to-market demands.

Web Research

NIST is engaged in a variety of research efforts focused on Web usability and Webmetrics. The results of this research are expected to provide information and products important to the expansion of e-commerce. They should reduce the challenges associated with performing web-based transactions and increase the ease with which the general public adapts to this new technology.

Turning the Page on E-Book Standards

Electronic books are hybrid products that combine the printed word with the versatility of computer, touch-screen display technology, and software enhancements including font-resizing and an on-board dictionary. The Open Electronic Book Standards Forum is working on a common specification in a move that is expected to accelerate the availability of e-books by providing publishers a single format for electronic content. The group was formed at NIST’s Electronic Book ’98 Workshop, the world’s first conference for the e-book industry. Participants included more than 100 major software companies, book publishers, and electronic book manufacturers. NIST plays a key role in the standards group. Common standards are particularly important in emerging industries because they free consumers from the fear of investing in new technologies that could become obsolete.

Delivering Government Expertise via Cyberspace

NIST is using Internet technology to deliver government measurement services and support, both internationally and nationally, especially in areas of electrical, radiation, and gas flow measurements and microscopy. One such effort aimed at enabling reliable, high-quality measurement capabilities is known as SIMnet. Configured by NIST, SIMnet is an Internet-enabled, interactive system intended to support real-time comparisons of measurements performed at laboratories throughout the Americas. Scheduled for two years of pilot testing, the new system is designed to accelerate efforts to establish measurement equivalence among nations.

Securing Electronic Commerce

Electronic commerce transactions for business and other applications must provide for confidentiality and integrity, protections provided by digital signature technology. This means that the receiver of an electronic commerce message must be assured that the message came from the actual sender, that no part of the message has been altered during transmission, and that the contents of the transaction have been kept confidential. Tests on encryption and digital signature technology, developed by NIST, are being used today in electronic transactions, and new technology approaches are being developed. Public Key Infrastructure Interoperability testing and the development of the Advanced Encryption Standard are important NIST efforts.

Developing a Biometric Interface

The field of biometrics develops ways of identifying or authenticating a person by using distinguishing physical traits or behavioral characteristics such as fingerprints, iris structure, voice identification, and keystroke dynamics. NIST and an industry group recently completed development of a Biometric Application Programming Interface, which will assure biometrics application developers, service providers, and users that require interoperable biometric solutions that the specification will receive broad industry input and review and will emerge as an international industry standard. NIST co-chairs the Biometric Consortium, which serves as the federal government’s focal point for research, development, test, evaluation, and application of biometric-based personal identification and verification technology.

Technology Development: Electronic Commerce and the ATP

By sharing the cost of R&D projects, including those applicable to electronic commerce, the Advanced Technology Program augments industry’s ability to pursue these promising technologies, often accelerating their development for the highly competitive world market. More than 1,000 organizations—including both small and large companies—have participated directly in ATP projects in areas such as electronics and semiconductors, manufacturing technology, information technology, computing, chemicals, biotechnology, and advanced materials. Many additional companies, universities and laboratories serve as subcontractors and as informal partners. Several ATP focused programs aim directly at the infrastructural technologies that will help to make electronic commerce a reality: Information Infrastructure for Healthcare, Technologies for the Integration of Manufacturing Applications, and Component-Based Software.

Electronic Commerce and Smaller Manufacturers

NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership is working with its network of more than 400 centers and field offices across the country to assist small manufacturers in their quest to effectively tap the electronic commerce revolution. The challenge is especially urgent for these firms, which increasingly discover that suppliers are insisting on electronic exchange of manufacturing and product information—and that buyers are eager to arrange for purchases over the Internet. Yet these smaller manufacturers typically do not have access to the technical resources needed to deal with electronic commerce technical issues. The program integrates manufacturing extension center services into a national system with features such as connections to the World Wide Web, field staff training, development of extension enabling tools, and development of uniform performance measurement systems.