An Analysis of the Work of the National Information Systems Task Force

This article contains a summary of the history of the National Information Systems Task Force (NISTF; 1977-82), a statement of the primary products of NISTF's work, and an assessment of the progress made in information exchanged since 1982. The history of NISTF's changing view of its mission is more than past history. Many readers will find that their view of information networks is similar to NISTF's naive starting point. It is hoped that these readers will follow the development of the NISTF mission and gain insight into what is happening now, based on the MARC format and other results of NISTF's work.