At the time the project began, the emerging vision of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) placed a heavy emphasis on the delivery of networked multimedia information services to a broad variety of new critical or underserved audiences. However, a multitude of obstacles stood in the way of this vision. Rather than waiting for the technologies, infrastructure, standards and policy to mature to a level ready to support the desired services, the NMIS Project promoted the early availability of services by supporting their development and delivery while concurrently addressing the other components of the system.

The primary goal of NMIS Project has been to conduct research and development on the broad system of interrelated issues which surrounded making a new set of critical multimedia information services widely available over the emerging National Information Infrastructure (NII). The following were the three major areas of concentration:

• Developed and delivered prototype multimedia information services for K-12 education, continuing education and the health-care community.

• Employed prototype services as a context for creating solutions for multimedia production and delivery using live, subscription, on-demand, and interactive service delivery models, while also analyzing local access technologies for high bandwidth NII services.

• Used prototype services and technology as a foundation for conducting related research on multimedia and NII standards and policy, including issues such as intellectual copyright, security, electronic commerce and interoperability.

This report describes each of the individual initiatives that were conducted by NMIS and proposes future directions identified to address some of the remaining challenges to the widespread production and delivery of networked multimedia information services. This information can serve as a useful guide for future efforts of NMIS Project participants and supporters, as well as others pursuing related efforts.

• 1.1 Background

• 1.2 Approach

• 1.3 Collaborators

• 1.4 Accomplishments