The breadth and scope of the DEWRSB EoI E-commerce initiative is one that will affect every 
Australian Business.

The EoI does not pose any technically difficulties with the registry systems {A} or issuing
Digital Signature Certificates {D}.  

The key issue for this EoI is {B} Marketing, promotion and recruitment of clients and service 
providers and to a lesser extent {C} Development of Product and Services. 

This is where the Open Interchange Consortium has considerable knowledge and expertise and 
many of its members have vested interested in providing resources to ensure that this initiative
is successful.

These members have had many years experience in developing EDI and E-commerce applications and 
promoting their acceptance to business trading partners hence the inclusion of a 5 year plan for 
consideration as part of this EoI.

This initiative by DEWRSB provides the catalyst to harness this experience in a proactive 
long term strategy to promote E-commerce to their respective trading partners.

This strategy includes a long term education/awareness program across multiple industry sectors.
This education/awareness program will explain, demonstrate and engender confidence with Small 
and Medium size Enterprises in the value of the directory services to reduce the cost of business
while providing more business and new clients.

This long term education/awareness program could be based on a series of surveys commissioned 
by the DEWRSB Business Entry Point [BEP] with members of the OIC.

This series of surveys from Feb - May 2001 was with 173 NSW Local Government Agencies. 
There were 3 surveys conducted:

1	name liaison contact and manager for Internet policy issues

2	Internet applications of interest with interest rating and priority levels 

3	current computerised applications by years of installation

The 2nd survey achieved a 56% completed survey Web forms.

These surveys would be applicable to other industry sectors.