The eProcurement Forum, the DG Internal Market and Services and IDABC e-Invoicing and e-Ordering project of the European Commission and the CEN Workshop on Business Interoperability Interfaces for Public Procurement are inviting European organizations to complete their eProcurement online questionnaire.

June 12th 2008

The Swedish National Financial Management Authority has published a press release regarding status for e-invoicing in Swedish government. Sweden's Svefaktura is a profile of UBL.

 

Most important is that 205 out of 221 agencies can send and receive e-invoices today. Workplans are in place for adopting new routines, connecting suppliers and preparing for the entire be-procurement business process.

 

The Electronic Freight Management (EFM) initiative is a US Department of Transport sponsored project that applies Web technologies that improve data and message transmissions between supply chain partners.

EFM uses UBL documents and a federated set of web services to create an exciting new platform for tracking freight through a supply chain.

The CEFM (Columbus EFM) project is a test recently concluded using an existing supply chain. For details see the web site below.

The OASIS UBL Technical Committee is currently working on the next point release, UBL 2.1.

Due out in April 2009, UBL 2.1 will feature improvements to transportation documents, new document types for etendering, and expanded support for data input and reporting. Significantly, it will also include a mapping to the UN/CEFACT Core Component Library (08B).

UBL 2.1 documents will be backward compatible with UBL 2.0 documents. This means there is an opportunity to add information requirements from other contributors (such as you?).

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced a new release of the XML Schema Quality of Design Tool (QOD) from the Manufacturing Engineering Lab. "QOD assists in consistently using XML Schema for the specification of information. QOD is intended for both people developing guidelines for writing high quality XML schemas and those writing XML schemas. The purpose of QOD is to improve the quality of the XML schemas. The system allows users to define rules for writing quality XML Schemas and to test schemas against those rules.

Members of the OASIS UBL Technical Committee approved UBL 2.0 Errata 01 after completion of the required public review. The consortium congratulates all those who contributed to this accomplishment.

Read the complete announcement from OASIS.

Exchanging electronic documents involves much more than just choosing a technology. In fact, as when introducing any new business processes, successful implementation requires professional and experienced management and resourcing.

Document Engineering Services is an international consortium of experts supporting universal business interoperability through the use of open standards.