Update 41: News from UKP.eb

News from UKP.eb

4th ASEM

Please note the 4th ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting) is being held in London on 21st & 22nd February at the Excel Centre. See http://www.asemec-london.org/

Development of BS 8463 * Utility Billing

Scope

This British Standard specifies the minimum generic requirements for suppliers of utility services for which periodic billing is made to domestic or small-scale commercial customers. The requirements pertain to both the billing process and to the billing document.

It can be applied to services that are unmetered, metered at the point of delivery or metered remotely (e.g. on the supplier's own premises). Design guidelines for billing documents are given in Annex A to the document.

Objectives

The purpose of this standard is to ensure that the customers of utility suppliers are provided with clearly comprehensible, accurate, timely and complete bills and billing related information.

Its stated aims are, to:

• set minimum standards of billing services for consumers;
• provide opportunities for innovation in billing;
• give consumers a clearer understanding and greater certainty of the billing process so as to engender consumer confidence in utility services;
• provide a fairer basis between the parties for their ongoing relationship;
• serve as a means of minimising complaints by addressing issues that have been the source of frequent complaints about utility billing;
• promote informed customer choice.

Commentary

The Utilities Billing Standard is being prepared in a manner that is intentionally non-specific as to the utilities that it can be applied to. The need to accommodate e-billing has been recognised and appropriate reference will be made to established procedures in this field. With the application of standards being essentially a voluntary matter, it will be for each particular utility to determine whether or not the eventual standard is appropriate for its purposes.

The committee's intention is to prepare a document that provides generic requirements for utility billing that will be broadly applicable to the billing process without being unduly prescriptive as to format and presentation, other than with regard to required content for the front page.

There will, however, be examples of recommended formats, presented in an informative annex

2 Structured Query Language (SQL) - ISO/IEC 9075

SQL:2007 has progressed to an early draft ballot closing in March 2005 followed by comment resolution. The committee would welcome suggestions for changes and enhancements.