Re: UN/CEFACT response to UBL

[jon.bosak@sun.com]

Ray,

Thank you for your response.  The UBL negotiating team has
scheduled a meeting 30 July in Montreal to discuss this further.

| Therefore, to clarify our position we are now proposing the
| following text for your consideration:
| 
| “UBL will be the foundation for the UN/CEFACT XML
| document-centric approach.  In addition, subject to your
| agreement, the brand UBL will be formally recognized in the
| official UN/CEFACT naming of this product.”

I won't go beyond my authority by appearing to speak for the team,
but I thank you very much for this proposal.

| The extension in the UBL timeline concerns us. Is there anything
| that we can do together, between now and Seoul, to mitigate the
| impact of this delay?  You are well aware that the global user
| community is anxiously awaiting the conclusion of our
| deliberations, and the incorporation of UBL into UN/CEFACT during
| the Seoul Forum in September 2003.

There are really two things to schedule here: the transition of
the UBL committees to ATG and the announcement that we have agreed
to make that transition.

As I indicated in a previous message, it is now clear that the
physical transition (i.e., the actual movement of bodies from a
UBL TC meeting schedule to an ATG meeting schedule) can't take
place before January at the earliest because we won't have
completed UBL 1.0 before that time.  And if we decide in Montreal
to schedule a 0.9 implementation review, which we haven't
discussed in the TC yet but which I am increasingly inclined to
recommend, then the earliest we could safely guarantee completion
would be in time to start formally meeting on the ATG schedule at
the Barcelona UN/CEFACT Forum session in March.  It is for this
reason that we are suggesting that we might co-locate the January
UBL meeting in Wollongong without actually meeting as an ATG
group.  It would take a change to our TC charter to do this, but
it is something we could recommend to the TC as a way to begin the
merger process without perhaps actually having reached the UBL 1.0
milestone by that time.

An announcement of our intention to make the transition to
UN/CEFACT following completion of UBL 1.0 can come much sooner
than the actual transition, however.  I believe that it is this
announcement of a clear path forward that the global user
community is looking for.  If we can agree on the terms, then I am
quite hopeful that we can make such an announcement in time for
the Forum meeting in Seoul.

Best regards,

Jon