[ubl-lsc] DRAFT UBL liaison press release

[Jon Bosak <Jon.Bosak@sun.com>]

LSC members,

Here's a draft of the press release announcing our new UBL
liaisons.  I believe we now have everything except a quote from
SWIFT.  Please look this over and send me any changes or
additions.  I'm trying for a 19 August release.  I have this on
the agenda for Friday's LSC meeting in case there's anything we
need to discuss.  Note that the new members are listed throughout
in the order in which they were formally approved by the UBL TC.

Jon

==================================================================

DRAFT: HL7, SWIFT, VCA, e.centre join UBL Liaisons

Boston, MA, USA; 19 August 2002 -- Data standards organizations
representing health care, banking, prescription eyewear, and
supply chain management have become the latest industry groups to
appoint representatives to the OASIS Universal Business Language
(UBL) Technical Committee. HL7, SWIFT, VCA, and e.centre join
liaisons from a broad group of industry standards organizations in
the subcommittee that provides guidance to UBL, the initiative to
define standard XML business forms for electronic commerce.

"HL7 is not looking to UBL to replace our already existing XML
schemas for medical records," said Wes Rishel, chair of HL7.  "But
healthcare companies such as hospitals and clinics are major
consumers of supplies from a wide variety of vendors.  Using the
UBL supply chain documents for these ordinary procurement
transactions makes practical sense -- we can concentrate on the
data standards that require our knowledge of healthcare without
reinventing basic business schemas for supply chain management."

[***swift quote goes here***]

"Prescription eyewear is produced and distributed by a highly
specialized web of businesses" said Bill Thomas, CEO of VCA. "Each
pair of eyeglasses must be custom made to exacting standards to
meet the wide range of prescriptions and the many product
options. Prescription eyewear is a regulated medical device and is
often covered by health insurance plans. All of this results in a
vast quantity of very detailed and often vision-specific business
transactions. We believe that UBL can help us improve the
industry's efficiency in handling these transactions."

"e.centre, on behalf of EAN.UCC, welcomes the opportunity to work
with UBL and hopes that this effort will further the cause of
convergent XML data transfer standards based upon the principles
of ebXML," said James Whittle, Consulting Services Executive for
e.centre.  "As EAN.UCC move to implement ebXML based solutions, it
is vital, on behalf of our one million users worldwide, that we
promote a spirit of co-operation and openness to facilitate
effective and efficient standards development."

Organizations that have already appointed liaisons to UBL include:
ACORD, representing the insurance industry; ARTS, representing
retail sales; ASC X12 and the UN/EDIFACT Working Group,
representing U.S. and international EDI standards; EIDX,
representing the electronics industry; NACS, representing
convenience stores; RosettaNet, the information technology
consortium; and XBRL, the accounting industry standards
organization.  UBL liaisons provide input to UBL and coordinate
the review of standard XML business schemas as they become
publicly available.  Information about the UBL Liaison
Subcommittee and its members can be found on the LSC web page at
http://oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lsc/.

"Input from industry data exchange organizations ensures that UBL
reflects the needs of the marketplace," said Jon Bosak of Sun
Microsystems, chair of the OASIS UBL Technical Committee and
organizer of the working group that created XML. "Our goal of
defining a common XML library for basic business documents like
purchase orders, invoices, and shipping notices crosses all
industries. Contributing to the development of our library of UBL
schemas allows industry groups to pool their resources in the
design of common business documents and to focus their special
expertise on the development of XML schemas for the documents that
are specific to their own domain."

About UBL (http://oasis-open.org/committees/ubl)

The OASIS UBL (Universal Business Language) Technical Committee is
an open, publicly accountable, nonprofit initiative to define a
common XML library for basic business documents like purchase
orders, invoices, and shipping notices.  UBL provides a standard
set of XML building blocks together with a framework that will
enable trading partners to unambiguously identify and exchange
basic e-commerce documents in specific business contexts.

The OASIS UBL effort builds on the Electronic Business XML (ebXML)
infrastructure developed by OASIS and the United Nations.  The
ebXML specifications provide for XML registry services, reliable
XML messaging, standardized trading partner agreements, a standard
data dictionary, and a business context methodology.  However, UBL
documents are usable in a wide variety of other ecommerce
frameworks as well.

UBL unites and harmonizes a number of currently existing XML and
EDI business libraries into a set of internationally recognized de
jure standards. Designed to solve major interoperability problems
for both vendors and users, UBL will speed the entry of small and
medium-size businesses into the electronic marketplace. UBL is
freely available to everyone without legal encumbrance or
licensing fees.

About HL7 (www.HL7.org)

Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven, Inc. is a not-for-profit,
ANSI-accredited Standards Development Organization (SDO) dedicated
to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for
the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic
health information that supports clinical practice and the
management, delivery and evaluation of health services. In
addition to its widely used messaging standards, HL7 published, in
2000, the first XML-based health care standard, the Clinical
Document Architecture (CDA), a framework for clinical document
exchange.  Other HL7 publications include the Clinical Context
Management Specification (CCOW), a standard enabling visual
integration at the front-end, and The Arden Syntax, an
ANSI-approved standard for representing and sharing medical
knowledge for clinical decision support.  HL7 has established
international affiliates in 20 countries around the globe, and its
2,200 members represent over 500 corporations, including 90
percent of the largest information systems vendors serving
healthcare.

About SWIFT (http://www.swift.com/)

SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial
Telecommunication, is the co-operative supplying secure messaging
services and interface software to 7,000 financial institutions in
190 countries.  SWIFT's global network carried over one billion
messages in 1999. The average daily value of payment messages on
the SWIFT network is estimated to be above USD 5 trillion.  SWIFT
provides messaging services to banks, broker-dealers and
investment managers, as well as to market infrastructures in
payments, treasury, securities and trade. These services help
customers reduce costs, improve automation and manage risk.  SWIFT
is also leading convergence initiatives in the finance industry,
collaborating with over 30 different organisations involved in
financial standards.

About VCA (http://www.visionsite.org) 

Vision Council of America is the U.S. prescription eyewear trade
association representing 2,000 supplier companies and 80 leading
manufacturers. VCA member companies do business in more than 40
countries around the world.  The U.S. eyewear industry, with over
30,000 stores across the country, posted sales of $15 billion for
2001.

About e.centre (http://www.e-centre.org.uk)

e.centre is an independent, not-for-profit association providing
guidance and support for its 16,000+ members on supply chain
efficiency through the use of the EAN.UCC System for bar coding
and business-to-business communications such as EDI (electronic
data interchange).  e.centre is the UK authority for the EAN.UCC
System, which is used in 129 countries worldwide and forms the
basis of interoperable solutions such as asset tracking,
traceability and collaborative planning.

About OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org)

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information
Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the
development, convergence and adoption of e-business
standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda,
using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote
industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces
worldwide standards for security, Web services, XML conformance,
business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and
interoperability within and between marketplaces.

OASIS has more than 400 corporate and individual members in 100
countries around the world. OASIS and the United Nations jointly
sponsor ebXML, a global framework for e-business data
exchange. OASIS operates XML.org, a community clearinghouse for
XML application schemas, vocabularies and related documents. OASIS
hosts The XML Cover Pages, an online reference collection for
interoperable markup language standards.