Metadata allow sharing of information with other communities. Another aspect is that the information that people want to see on the Internet should be current. Data and information change constantly, and they are not of value if they are not current. Another problem we are trying to solve is that we want to ask a question once and receive the information from different places. People want the answer to pop up on their desktop, so this means being able to broaden the question.
Metadata allow for a common interface and uniform access to distributed resources.
Also, metadata are driving open nonproprietary standards. People who have closed systems are publishing information, but it's not as valuable, because people are going to tend to go to those places where they can ask that one question and get broad exposure or broad answers coming back. Finally, metadata allow for the capability for intelligent postprocessing. People want the information coming back to be in a format that their desktop applications can actually work with and do analysis on. In framing the problem as it exists, the access strategy for the metadata is very important.