Abstract
Open information interchange (OII) is an initiative to promote the improved use of encoding standards in the exchange of information in an electronic form. Whilst standards for telecommunications are being pursued in Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) programmes and the exchange formats for structured business data in Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) programmes, less attention has been paid so far to the problems of the general transfer of information (documents, images, drawings, sound, etc.) from one application or environment to another. Standards exist or are under development to support such information interchange, but consistent strategies for their use are missing. The idea of initiating European Community action arose from work in the IMPACT 1 programme, and will be actively pursued in the new four-year IMPACT 2 programme. The actions will cover coordination in the use of standards, application stimulation and awareness.