Information services and group activities in a national information infrastructure

Collaborative working and groupware has three traditional families of services: dialogue support (e.g. bulletin boards and e-mail); shared editors; and information search and retrieval. However, these are augmented with the following services for enhanced collaborative information networking: information trading and procurement services which includes free market trading environments, information brokering, information navigation and information rights and revenues; support for virtual organisations including educational networks, community-networks, telecommuting services, and computer supported cooperative services (CSCW). Their use, relevance and characteristics are discussed