General Notes from UBL TC Meeting, Stockholm 2007-09-24 (OpeningPlenary)

[Tim McGrath <tmcgrath@portcomm.com.au>]

General Notes from UBL TC Meeting, Stockholm 2007-09-24

Participants
Tim McGrath
G Ken Holman
Martin Forsberg
Peter Borresen
Mavis Cournane
Andy Schoka
Sunghyuk Kim
Ole Madsen
Michael Grimley
Thomas Lyons
Örn S. Kaldalóns

Agenda

Report from Vice-chair
------------------------
Thank UN/CEFACT Forum for arranging the facilities.
Major objectives are to forward the work on customization and to 
progress the collaboration with UN/CEFACT.

Report from HISC (By Ken Holman)
------------------------
Few volunteers for the moment. Ken is asking for assistance. There will 
be UBL2 Invoice Style sheet available this week. The SC is planning to 
priority the development of the same documents that exist in UBL1. 
Denmark has several style sheets that can be used as starting point.

KH needs input on what part of UBL to map to UN Layout Key.

Report from SBSC (By Ken Holman)
------------------------
PSC and TSC have been asked to review SBS, but nothing has yet been 
reported back to SBSC.

Report from TSC (By Andy Schoka)
------------------------
Andy Schoka is acting chair after Kama. TSC is working on liaise and 
cooperate with governments and companies to gather requirements and to 
test UBL in real-world scenarios.

UBL BITS (UBL Basic International Trade Process) describes an end-to-end 
process with sample data. The work is in progress.

Based on the work, new requirements have been identified that should be 
added/corrected in a new version. TSC is working with Danish Post and 
Parcel & Pallets to examine the customization process.

TSC is also working with Dansk Standard and is reviewing US DOT’s CEFM 
test and use of status message.

Report from PSC (Peter Borresen)
------------------------
Peter is acting chair after Mark Leitch.
PSC has a dialog with OASIS Tax XML regarding tax and customs related 
question.
PSC is intending to have phone conferences once a month or so. Lots of 
work will be done under the CEN workshop BII and the result from the 
workshop will be feed back to PSC.

Report from CEN/BII WS
------------------------
BII stands for “Business Interoperability Interface on Public 
Procurement in Europe” and is a CEN (European Committee for 
Standardization) workshop. A CEN workshop can be compared with a project.

NES (Northern European Subset of UBL) and CODICE (E-tendering from 
Spain) is submitted as input to BII.

The result from BII will (among other things) be profiles/customized UBL 
documents that can be used in the CIP i2010 roadmap pilot projects.

CEN/BII has four working groups
1. Message content and business processes
2. UBL – UN/CEFACT convergence
3. Toolbox
4. Pilot support

For more details, look here: http://www.en.ds.dk/bii and 
http://www.cen.eu/cenorm/businessdomains/businessdomains/isss/activity/ws_bii.asp

Report from NES (Peter Borresen)
------------------------
During the start up of the BII WS, NES will be further refined and 
developed to not loose time.

Iceland is in production with NES and is currently adapting internal 
processes.

Report from Danish localization SC (Peter Borresen)
------------------------
Translation should be finalized in the end of 207

Denmark will update the legislation to force the public sector to accept 
UBL2. In 2010 the old OIOXML (UBL 0.7) will not be allowed to use.

Report from Korean localization SC (Kim)
------------------------
The SC is working with funding for the translation of UBL but hopes that 
the translation will be finalized in the beginning of next year.

Ken Holman has a tool to generate multilingual documentation read more: 
www.cranesoftware.com --> free resources

Update package and UBL 2.1 release (Tim McGrath)
------------------------
There are two major types of changes – the editorial corrections in 
documentation, not affecting the schemas (in any other way than 
annotation), the other type will require update of schemas (extensions 
to UBL2).

Some time during 2008 an update package will be delivered.

UN/CEFACT relationship (Tim McGrath)
------------------------
Refer to "Status of Collaboration with UN/CEFACT" slides 
(http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/ubl/download.php/25562/Status%20of%20Collaborationversion2.ppt)
- ref: Para 2C of cooperation agreement
- five points were outlined, two related to UBL
- agreements are between OASIS (not UBL TC) and UN/CEFACT
- TC has no authority to represent UBL, OASIS does
- the perception of "need something now, use UBL" is not well received 
within UN/CEFACT
- comment on interpretation of "compatibility" w.r.t. customization 
definitions of conformance and compatibility
- UN/CEFACT doesn't work with a concept of minor versions
- Q: what is the UN/CEFACT perspective of UBL traction? Unknown.
- no clear vision in UN/CEFACT of a solution for contextualization, so 
each group is doing their own
- tempted not to express anything that promotes UBL as such activity is 
not well received within UN/CEFACT
- three-year sunset clause in March 2006 Vancouver agreement
- likelihood UN/CEFACT will not be ready
- probably due to the approach taken by UN/CEFACT creates documents in 
isolation and out of synchronization between groups e.g. Cross-industry 
Invoice released 3 months ago is based on a different library than the 
Cross-Industry Order released 3 months from now
- we wouldn't necessarily exercise the cancellation of the agreement but 
OASIS would reserve the ability to cancel any time after if OASIS 
perceives the need to move more quickly than what appears to be coming 
from UN/CEFACT

-- 
regards
tim mcgrath
phone: +618 93352228  
postal: po box 1289   fremantle    western australia 6160
web: http://www.portcomm.com.au/tmcgrath