The impetus for this collaboration went back at least to the 1980s. At that time the U.S. economy was spending over a billion dollars a year ($400 million by the EPA alone) to collect data for environmental reporting. Data then -- as states printed reports to be subsequently edited and re-keyed by the EPA into national databases -- was very expensive. It was also as much as several years late before publication, with embarrassing and contentious errors.

In response, EPA began working with states and later with tribal leadership to arrange for direct data entry and the construction of feeder systems to translate and transmit data from a variety of dispersed computers into national EPA databases. This was an improvement. However, it also raised new problems, especially as systems modifications by any of the parties required costly and frequent interface reprogramming and maintenance.

More recently, the development of Internet XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and web services have opened new possibilities. Once XML and web services standards for environmental data are defined, the states, tribes, and the federal government can use them to simplify and loosen the coupling between their systems. The EPA can then make systems changes as long as they continue to accept XML data flows. Similarly, states and tribes can do the same. This means that participating parties can change independently without requiring expensive adjustments by the others.

Perhaps more important, the web services approach facilitates holding data on a distributed basis while at the same time facilitating ready assembly into national reports, and also into reports and analysis initiated by states or tribes. Instead of rigid centralization, the result is extensive and yet flexible and efficiently maintained decentralized databases.

For the last several years, the states and tribes have been working with EPA to create such standardized yet decentralized capabilities. Funded largely through EPA grants, they have worked to develop standards, to design agreements for data sharing, and to get servers operating for what they have called the National Environmental Information Exchange Network (Exchange Network, for short).

Much has been accomplished. Agreements have been created. Data is flowing. Yet it's still just the warm-up. Some fundamental governance issues remain to be resolved.

As the Exchange Network grows into high volume data sharing, how will it handle the demand for operating decisions? What happens when essentially voluntary staff seeking near-unanimous consensus lack the focus, speed, or expertise required to keep things moving? As volume grows, what staff will be assigned for the work required? Who will have what levels of authority to make decisions? Who will fund the work?

For the next phase of its growth, the Exchange Network has responded by creating two new governance groups: the Exchange Network Leadership Council and the Network Operations Board. But how, exactly, will these groups work? Where will they get their funding? How and to whom will they prove the business value of their activities? How much value will come from efficiencies on mandated reporting versus - as they have been hoping for some time - dramatically new and better data and analysis? Will the Exchange Network make serious progress on the logical (and political) challenges of measuring not only environmental enforcement activities, but their impacts on environmental quality?

Stay tuned. No firm answers yet. But the Exchange Network is further along than most cross-boundary e-gov initiatives. These people are pioneers who are pushing the frontier forward on the following governance issues that will soon become center stage for us all:

1. Organization and staffing: Who does what and with what level of authority? Who plays what roles in the networked governance game?

2. Funding: Who pays? How does the new approach get capitalized? How does it handle ongoing operations? What funding should come from taxes and traditional budget allocations? What should come from fees?

3. Standards: To what extent will new standards make coordination substantially easier, promoting sharing without the need for each communication to be pre-approved or handled by a central authority? If standards exert huge leverage in freeing up subsequent transactions, how should we govern the standard-setting process itself?

The big-picture story here is that computer networks have opened up new patterns of interaction, with huge volumes of transactions penetrating the geographically-oriented boundaries of traditional organizations and jurisdictions. As a result, most of us will soon be facing the governance issues now being worked on by the Exchange Network.

Pay attention, class, and let's wish them well. And let me know if you've got one of these going too.