The CENR is one of nine committees of the NSTC, a standing, cabinet-level body established by President Clinton in November 1993. It is chaired by the President and composed of the Vice President, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, the cabinet secretaries and agency head with responsibilities for significant science and technology programs, and other White House officials. The NSTC is managed by the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology through the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The principle purposes of the NSTC are to: 1) define clear, national goals for Federal science and technology investments; and 2) ensure that science, space, and technology policies and programs contribute effectively to the national goals.

The Federal Geographic Data Committee is a 19 member interagency committee composed of representatives from the Executive Office of the President, Cabinet-level and independent agencies. The FGDC is developing the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) in cooperation with organizations from State, local and tribal governments, the academic community, and the private sector. The NSDI encompasses policies, standards, and procedures for organizations to cooperatively produce and share geographic data.

The Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) is a partnership of U.S., Canadian, and Mexican agencies, other organizations, and taxonomic specialists cooperating on the development of an on-line, scientifically credible, list of biological names focusing on the biota of North America. ITIS is also a participating member of Species 2000, an international project indexing the world's known species.

With an initial set of six sites selected in 1980, the National Science Foundation established the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program to support research on long-term ecological phenomena in the United States. The Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network is a collaborative effort involving more than 1100 scientists and students investigating ecological processes over long temporal and broad spatial scales. The Network promotes synthesis and comparative research across sites and ecosystems and among other related national and international research programs.

On September 30, 2001, President Bush signed Executive Order 13226 to form the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). On March 28, 2001, President Bush named Floyd Kvamme PCAST's Co-Chair. PCAST was originally established by President George Bush in 1990 to enable the President to receive advice from the private sector and academic community on technology, scientific research priorities, and math and science education.

The organization follows a tradition of Presidential advisory panels on science and technology dating back to Presidents Eisenhower and Truman. Since its creation PCAST has been expanded and currently consists of 23 members plus the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy who serves as the Council's Co-Chair. The council members, distinguished individuals appointed by the President, are drawn from industry, education, and research institutions, and other nongovernmental organizations.

The Natural Science Collections Alliance is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit association that supports natural science collections, their human resources, the institutions that house them, and their research activities for the benefit of science and society.

Natural heritage programs manage standardized information on endangered plants, animals and ecological communities. What animals, plants and ecological communities are rare? Where do they occur? How are they faring? These are all questions that natural heritage programs answer every day. As society makes decisions on developing our world, good decisions depend upon good information. Natural heritage programs provide this key information on our biodiversity to developers, corporations, conservationists, government agencies and researchers.

Using a common, standards-based methodology, natural heritage programs share information on endangered plants, animals and ecological communities that make up our planet's biodiversity. Collectively these programs are known as the Natural Heritage Network. In the early 1970s The Nature Conservancy conceived of the idea of natural heritage programs. Since that time, working in partnership with many independent public agencies and other organizations, individual biodiversity data centers have been setup throughout much of the Western Hemisphere. The Association for Biodiversity Information was formed by and works to benefit the the Natural Heritage Network.

The Association for Biodiversity Information was established to unify, support, and represent the network of Natural Heritage Programs and Conservation Data Centres in the mission of collecting, interpreting, and disseminating ecological information critical to the conservation of the world's biological diversity.

The Association for Biodiversity Information (ABI) advances the goals of the Natural Heritage Programs, Conservation Data Centres and associated organizations whose mission is to provide information on the distribution, abundance, and conservation needs of rare species and natural communities to governments, industries, researchers, NGOs, and individuals. ABI assists its members to operate as a network by sharing technologies, facilitating the exchange of knowledge and experiences, and facilitating the development of multijurisdictional information products and services.

The San Diego Supercomputer Center, a national laboratory for computational science and engineering, was founded in 1985 by the National Science Foundation. SDSC hosted the U.S. Organization for Biodiversity Information (US-OBI) Workshop April 11-14, 1996, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The US-OBI will facilitate the dissemination of collections data for use by the nation's policy makers, environmental managers, scientific and educational communities, and the public to sustain terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in harmony with land use and meet the informational needs of society at large.

BCIS is a consortium of ten international conservation organisations and programs of IUCN—The World Conservation Union, BCIS Members collectively represent the single greatest global source of biodiversity conservation information in the world. BCIS is a framework within which the Members’ networks work together toward a common goal: to support environmentally sound decision-making and action by facilitating access to biodiversitydata and information.

Biodiversity Data Management Project was initiated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and WCMC to facilitate the building of national capacity for biodiversity data management and exchange as required by the CBD. One of the outputs of the Biodiversity Data Management (BDM) project (which is funded by the Global Environment Facility) is a set of documents designed to raise the profile of biodiversity information in decision-making processes and help countries produce the necessary information for biodiversity strategies and action plans.

Convention on Biological Diversity site maintained by the convention Secretariat.

GELOS is an inititiative of the G7 Group of Nations Environment and Natural Resource Management project ( G7 - ENRM ); its main objective is to create a global virtual distributed library of ENRM data and resources.

ETI is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in operational relations with UNESCO. ETI's mission is to develop and produce scientific and educational computer-aided information systems, to improve the general access to and promote the broad use of taxonomic and biodiversity knowledge worldwide.

The Action Plan for the Santa Cruz Summit for Sustainable Development committed countries to establishing an Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN), primarily through the internet, building upon existing initiatives. The US has identified IABIN as a high priority for Summit followup. Brazil, the US, and Mexico were the primary countries involved in pre-Summit discussions; US civil society representatives also provided input.

The Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme is an interdisciplinary programme of research and training intended to develop the basis, within the natural and the social sciences, for the rational use and conservation of the resources of the biosphere, and forthe improvement of the global relationship between people and the environment.

The ANU BioInformatics Facility is a small group of researchers and programmers located within the Research School of Biological Sciences. It is affiliated with ANU's Centre for Molecular Structure and Function (CMSF), Centre for Information Science Research (CISR), and Supercomputer Facility (ANUSF).

BIN21 is an international initiative. Its purpose is to support the Convention on Biological Diversity, helping to link relevean information and making it available electronically.

Studying the applications of IT and multimedia to all aspects of the biosciences, especially to undergraduate teaching. Much of our work is discipline independent however, and likely to be of interest to anyone involved in computer based learning or educational multimedia.

The Canadian Biodiversity Informatics Consortium Inc. (CBIC) was formed in 1993 to assist Canada and developing countries meet their biodiversity management needs. Using the most advanced and cost-effective technologies available today, CBIC brings extensive experience in strategic planning, environmental and socio-economic analyses, biodiversity data acquisition and analysis, and presentation.

Environment Australia is the Environment Program of the Australian Environment Portfolio

Founded in 1992, the LIFE Page is Australia's first information service on the World Wide Web. The main focus is on biological information, especially the environment and biodiversity. However, many other topics are covered as well.

The Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) is a scientific institution with social orientation. It is non-profit and for the public good. Our mission is to promote a new awareness of the value of biodiversity, and thereby achieve its conservation and use to improve the quality of life.

CONABIO's fundamental task is to promote and coordinate the efforts that are currently being made by numerous institutions and groups in Mexico along three main lines: 1) knowledge of the country's biodiversity, specially through inventories, databases and networking; 2) sustainable use; and 3) diffusion of knowledge about biodiversity to the society.

CERES is an information system developed by the California Resources Agency to facilitate access to a variety of electronic data describing California's rich and diverse environments. The goal of CERES is to improve environmental analysis and planning by integrating natural and cultural resource information from multiple contributors and by making it available and useful to a wide variety of users.

The mission of the Center for Biodiversity is to acquire and apply information pertaining to the diversity of life in order to protect, manage, and develop the biotic resources of Illinois in accordance with long-term environmental goals. Major research programs in the Center are statewide inventories of native and introduced organisms, long-term monitoring of natural and disturbed communities, studies on exotic species, and systematic studies of organisms for which we have taxonomic expertise.

The University of Kansas Biodiversity and Biological Collections Web Server hosts information about specimens in biological collections, taxonomic authority files, directories of biologists, reports by various standards bodies (IOPI, ASC, SA2000, etc), an archive of the Taxacom, MUSE-L and CICHLID-L listservs), access to on-line journals (including Flora On-line) and information about MUSE and Delta.