The National Institute of Informatics (NII) is a national-level research and services institute focusing on informatics in Japan. NII was formally established in 2000 by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT). Located in downtown Tokyo, approximately 80 permanent researchers conduct computer science research in various fields. In addition, NII provides networking and information services for more than 1,000 research and educational institutions in Japan. This article describes NII's activities in these two complementary missions: research and services that support research (as illustrated in Figure 1).

This report stems from a workshop that was organized by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and cosponsored by the Information Technology and Organizations Program of the National Science Foundation. The purpose of the workshop was twofold: first, to increase awareness among the artificial intelligence (AI) community of opportunities presented by the National Information Infrastructure (NII) activities, in particular, the Information Infrastructure and Technology Applications (IITA) component of the High Performance Computing and Communications Program; and second, to identify key contributions of research in AI to the NII and IITA. The workshop included a presentation by NSF of IITA program goals and a brief discussion of a report aimed at identifying important AI research thrusts that could support the development of twenty-first century computing systems. That report, as well as the full set of initial suggestions for it from AAAI fellows and officers, was circulated to attendees prior to the workshop. Workshop attendees identified specific contributions that AI research could make in the next decade to the technology base needed for NII/IITA and the major research challenges that had to be met.

The National Information Infrastructure (NII) will have profound effects on the lives of every citizen. It promises to deliver to people in their homes and offices a vast array of information in many forms, changing the ways in which business is conducted, offering new educational opportunities, bringing geographically dispersed library resources and entertainment materials to everyone's doorstep. It will connect people to people, and help them with their jobs and tasks. For the NII to be useful, however, people will need easy and efficient access to its resources. Today's computers are complex and difficult to use, even for experts. The NII will be orders of magnitude more complex than current systems; it could easily become a labyrinth of databases and services that is inconvenient for experts and inaccessible to many Americans. The field of artificial intelligence (AI) can play a pivotal role in meeting major challenges of the NII. AI uses the theoretical and experimental tools of ...

This report stems from a workshop that was organized by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and cosponsored by the Information Technology and Organizations Program of the National Science Foundation. The purpose of the workshop was twofold: first, to increase awareness among the artificial intelligence (AI) community of opportunities presented by the National Information Infrastructure (NII) activities, in particular, the Information Infrastructure and Tech-nology Applications (IITA) component of the High Performance Computing and Communications Program; and second, to identify key contributions of research in AI to the NII and IITA.