A lot of research and development has been done on how gateways can be made to interoperate and this has highlighted the areas where standards are needed to make this possible. No matter what the user's information needs, skill level or educational background, they all face a number of similar problems in relation to using the Internet as an information searching and retrieval tool. Searching issues - the sheer volume of information makes searching difficult. They offer browse facilities as well as search. They only point to resources deemed to be of high quality by subject experts.
Users know that if they find something via a gateway, the chances are they can trust it.
The project is partially funded under the EU Telematics Application Programme as well as various national-level funding initiatives.