But we still believe itwill be of significant benefit when it is more complete and considerablylarger. The use of electronic commerce and EDI across the government isgrowing each month. The expected volumes may not be reached forseveral reasons. A significant increase will occur in othertypes of transactions from other functional areas that will counterthe decrease in EDI use that I just spoke of. Medical, logistics,personnel, education, and transportation are all candidates forusing the existing infrastructure to pass EDI transactions.
Many people talk about usingthe Internet for commerce.
I'm not sure that will be the transmissionmedia of choice. Many of the efforts today are determining how we can do that now. Learn as much as you can about EDI, VANs, and features that VANsoffer. The smalland medium-sized companies can participate and gain by the useof electronic commerce and EDI in their business processes. Iwould recommend they carefully evaluate how to change the businessprocesses to take advantage of such automation.