CommerceNet, the global consortium promoting and building Internet-based electronic commerce solutions, five government agencies, and several leading technology companies officially launched a pilot project to ensure that online government catalogs can work together. The Catalog Interoperability Pilot will demonstrate how an interoperable catalog system reduces the enormous costs and inefficiencies inherent in operating multiple stand-alone electronic catalogs within the Federal Government. The Catalog Interoperability Pilot framework will not require vendors to write special software or present their products in a unique way for each agency, alleviating the need for agencies to generate specialized interfaces to each vendor. This pilot is a key first step in creating a truly extensible model for the highly distributed world of Internet-based commerce. With broad, easy access to online purchasing catalogs, Federal buyers can will find items from a variety of sources on the Internet at competitive prices.
Interoperability has the potential to slash procurement cycles and costs.
DLA, DISA and the Department of the Navy are working with the Department of Defense Joint Electronic Commerce Program Office to develop a single DOD E-Mall. The Department of the Navy is the lead Military Department in building the Information Technology Corridor of the DOD E-Mall. Lexmark is also set up as an external vendor catalog for this pilot. The technology making this possible is based on the CommerceNet eCo Framework and XML, the Extensible Markup Language that expands the utility of current Worldwide Web pages. The Catalog Interoperability pilot is the first demonstration of technology developed by Veo Systems with partial funding from the NIST Advanced Technology Program through a contract awarded to CommerceNet, Veo Systems, Tesserae, and BusinessBots.