UPDATE 17: News from UKCeB

The first issue of the UKPeb Newsletter is now available – see below.

If you wish to receive an electronic copy of future issues, published twice a year, please contact John Jenkins of JJ Associates – email: john.jenkins@jjassociates.com

UKPeb Newsletter
January 2004
Key developments in e.business standards and best practice

EDITORIAL

e.business continues to roll forward steadily in the UK. The pace is much slower than predicted by the technologists in the 1990's; but, EDI rolled forward much more slowly than predicted by the techies in the 1980's, and for much the same reasons.

e.business "experts" have tended to imply that simply installing "e" would allow both public and private organisations to gain great benefits from new technology without having to bother sorting out their processes or their data. Whether it was the advent of EDIFACT in the 80's for EDI, or HTML, then XML, and now Web Services for the Internet, electronic business investments have too often been sold on the basis that technology can turn non-standard processes, data and identities into cost-effective communications across all key value chains. Many of us now know this to be impossible, or at least unprofitable.

It is interesting to observe that some of the latest developments involve taking EDI messages, which tend to be better structured than many Internet messages have been to date, and surrounding them with an XML package. (e.g. AS2 and certain software to pass EDI messages to government departments via the UK Government Gateway). I believe (hope)that these are interim solutions along the road towards getting processes, data and identities simplified and standardised.

I also feel that we have much to learn about the economics of e.business. There are many ingenious attempts to reduce the current costs in the near term, while there are too few efforts to take the fundamental steps which will both reduce longer term costs and also maximise benefits.

Many of the better developments are aiming to share common, technology-independent standards for processes, messages, data elements, identities, auto identities, master data and data bases.(UKPeb intends to publish a paper on this early in 2004). The UN CEFACT work with OASIS on ebXML and the Business Collaboration Framework are hopefully significant steps in the right direction, as are similar EAN/UCC and ISO developments. Wherever practicable, we need to use the same global standards for all industries and for both public and private sectors. After all, no value chain is an island. Today each is part of a global chain or network. Therefore, where functions or organisations are performing essentially the same roles, they should adopt the same processes, or at least employ the same data meanings, in order to achieve speed and certainty at the lowest practicable cost.

Adopting this approach will result in a sound evolution (not revolution) for e.business, and ensure that even if senior decision-takers do not fall in love with "e", they will give it due attention because it is delivering its full practical and profitable potential to them.

Tom McGuffog - Chair UKPeb

UN CEFACT Business Collaboration Framework

Seminars will be held on BCF on 28 January 2004 at 9-30am and 2-30pm, at the DTI Conference Centre, 1 Victoria Street, London.

Speakers include Tom McGuffog, Ray Walker, Kenji Itoh, Klaus-Dieter Naujok, and Dave Welsh, all of whom are actively involved in UN CEFACT developments. Over the years, these have included EDIFACT and ebXML, UN e.DOCS, and the UMM process modelling methodology.

For further information, please visit UN CEFACT’s web site - www.unece.org/cefact

EAN’s agreement with MIT on Radio Frequency Tagging

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has an Auto ID Center, which, for a number of years, has been developing a new standard for radio frequency tags which will support the identification of specific individual items along the supply chain without the necessity for line-of-sight scanning, as is required with laser beam recognition. More data can be both written and read to such RFID tags within MIT’s Electronic Product Communication system (EPC).

EAN/UCC have reached agreement with MIT for the former to run the EPC system worldwide, which will henceforth be based on EAN coding. In this way, investments in EAN numbering and scanning systems will be protected, in addition to supporting the more detailed identification of items where this is cost-effective.

For further information, please visit e.centre’s web site - www.e-centre.org.uk

Government Benchmarking

The government has instituted a Public Sector Benchmarking Service which aims to provide details of best practice and comparisons of performance which will aid public organisations in improving their operations.

Details are available for public bodies at: www.benchmarking.gov.uk

e-envoy publishes latest version of e.gif

Version 5.1 of the e-Government Interoperability Framework has just been published. This standard defines how public sector bodies will communicate electronically with each other and with the private sector. V 5.1 updates specifications and guidelines for messaging and security, Internet Protocols v.6, wireless LANs, information access, smart cards, and for certain business areas.

V 5.1 is available in an interactive electronic format, making it much easier to navigate and to select relevant standards. For more information, please visit - www.govtalk.gov.uk.

ISO maintain the momentum of e.engineering

Most people are unaware of the great developments taking place in e.engineering. It is now practicable to design ships, planes, machines and factories electronically and also to simulate their operation in virtual form well before cutting the first piece of metal. This ensures that there will be the maximum operational effectiveness and the minimum of re-work, as projects move from concept to use. The better the shared electronic design and simulation environments used by engineers across the globe, the better the quality of work that that can be completed before projects become too committed.

The key STEP standard for product information exchange and sharing has been developed under ISO, covering CAD, PDM, CAE, drawing and tolerancing information, and is being extended to cover parametric modelling, systems engineering, shipbuilding and other applications.

PLCS extends STEP to support all the complex information transfers required for through life support of a product. Developed by a consortium in cooperation with ISO, PLCS was recently launched in the UK at a major event in Warwick, with combined endorsements from the Chiefs of Defence Logistics and Procurement, and from BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce to an audience of 160 invited guests. Other launch events have been held in Scandinavia and the USA.

For more information, please visit - www.ukceb.org or www.plcsinc.org

Digital product catalogues

ISO and IEC have jointly developed a new standard for defining component libraries in digital form, sweeping away the need for costly and cumbersome paper catalogues for engineering components. The PLIB standard, originally developed using European R&D funds, provides an open framework for defining classes of products with different sets of dimensions. In December, Germany hosted a meeting to launch the development of guidance material to ensure that PLIB can be deployed to deliver digital libraries based on the entire range of ISO product standards, and work is already under way to develop the first such databases.

See: http://www.plib.ensma.fr

e.business volumes

The latest information from e.centre indicates that EDI continues to grow both in the UK and worldwide. This is because organisations wish to communicate their key messages, such as orders and invoices, in a form which is going to be automatically processed and actioned without human intervention to correct errors or to add data. They also welcome the security provided by Value Added Networks, which ensure that you only receive an expected, well-structured message from a known source.

For example, there are about 10,000 users of the TRADACOMS standards (now 21 years old) in the UK and around 80,000 users of EANCOM worldwide, each sending and receiving substantial daily volumes of actionable value chain data. It is estimated there are around 30,000 EDI user companies in the UK.

Whilst EDI over the Internet is growing only very slowly, the value of web-based "e-trading" is moving positively upwards. UK businesses sold £23.3 billion over the Internet in 2002 - a rise of 39% on the previous year’s £16.8 billion according to figures published in early December by the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

According to ONS, 59% of UK businesses had access to the Internet in 2002 compared with 51% in 2001.

Nevertheless, the quality of information is inadequate about which types of organisation use which type of e.business for specified purposes. Also relative cost information is poor, particularly when the total cost of providing reliable, secure and economic communication is needed.

For more see http://www.statistics.gov.uk/press_release/TitleSearch.asp?Title=e-commerce&B1=Begin+Search

NSSF: Framework for the future

The NSSF was designed in response to the recognition that the UK’s competitiveness, productivity and ability to innovate were hampered by the lack of an infrastructure that makes the most of benefits of standardization in British industry and government.

On October 6th 2003 senior figures from British businesses met to discuss the importance of standards to UK Plc. Its partners, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and BSI, launched the framework.

Digby Jones, CBI director general, Lord Sainsbury, Minister for Science and Innovations and Sir David John, chairman of the UK’s national standards body, BSI, delivered keynote addresses.

There were calls for standards to meet consumer needs, such as the improvement of billing services. The clamour of developments within the IT sector in particular had given rise to a huge increase in the number and range of standards developing organizations. It had also led to a proliferation of types of "standard", and greater competition from other countries to define new standards. Also, fresh approaches to standards were being sought by dynamic new industries such as biotechnology.

During the course of the meeting progress on a number of NSSF initiatives was reported. Amongst these were: the CBI were setting up a Business Forum to ensure that standardization was business driven and responsive to business needs; economic research at a macro and micro level was underway; an initiative on the relationship between patents and standards was being developed.

For more information on the NSSF, please visit the website: www.nssf.info

For more information on e.business, visit the UKPeb web site www.ukpeb.org and the sites of the Partners and our Associates APACS, BSI, e.centre, e-envoy, DTI, SITPRO, UKCeb, CIPS, CILT

Newsflash

NHS Purchasing and Supplies Agency (PaSA) has very recently announced that it intends to adopt e.centre’s EAN.UCC System of identification, bar coding and electronic commerce messaging standards.

Looking forward to 2004

On a final note, from all members of the UKPeb Team, all best wishes for 2004. May it be a great year for standards and best practice in e.business!