The Commission alone is indicated as having 266 links with other intergovernmental bodies, and a further 558 with NGOs. Hypertext media thus contribute significantly to the transparency of institutional systems. A separate CD-ROM database is under consideration for 1997, based on the International Congress Calendar , which would provide information on tens of thousands of past and planned international meetings through to the year 2010. Many are organized by international organizations to which hyperlinks would be provided for supplementary information. Also cross-referenced, through hyperlinks to the organizations, is a Who's Who in International Organizations with biographical information.
Language barriers are a major issue in international organization information.
A very rich multilingual thesaurus has been developed to enable users to interact with the data according to their language preference. For example, German users can use German words to access information only available in English or other languages. Linguistic variants in geographic terms are reconciled through the same device. The database on world problems covers over 12,000 world problems with 164,000 hyperlinks between them. The problems are those recognized by international organizations and other constituencies.