The standards and policy oriented activities of the NMIS Project encouraged
the national deployment of commercial services and public networked
information. In addition, the working relationship among technology and policy
researchers at MIT and CMU continues to support decision-making by NSF program
managers, government agencies such as the Department of Health and Human
Services and the Department of Defense, corporate partners, and colleagues at
educational institutions. More generally, the success of efforts like the
component of NMIS which collaborated in the Header/Descriptor for Multimedia
Project can serve as an example of how to influence standards and policy in a
productive way in the future.