Fwd: Industry Consortia Gather to Collaborate on Spec Development

[James Bryce Clark <jamie.clark@mmiec.com>]

Paul and group,
Could we put the announcement below on a future BP agenda of the informal 
BP discussion group for discussion?  The general topic is "interoperability."
It would also go with discussion of the new OASIS-CPPA subcommittee on 
interoperability with multiple BP-type standards, which I understand 
Karsten chairs.
Also, since this is apparently a CEFACT-partnered thing, I would be 
interested to hear if CEFACT or the nascent eBTWG has anything to say about 
it.  I am finding it increasingly difficult to guess where things will pop 
up, or whether we should pay attention to them when they do.

Best regards   Jamie

>Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 09:08:00 -0400
>From: Carol Geyer <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>
>Subject: Industry Consortia Gather to Collaborate on Spec Development
>To: xmlorginterest@lists.xml.org
>
>Industry Consortia Gather to Collaborate on Specification Development
>
>HR-XML, OASIS, OMG™, UN/CEFACT and XBRL.org Host Interoperability Summit
>Series
>
>Boston, MA, USA; 14 August 2001 -- Standards groups and consortia from
>around the world will gather in Orlando, Florida, 6-8 December 2001 for
>the Interoperability Summit, the first in a series of inter-consortia
>meetings aimed at identifying common ground and coordinating development
>of electronic business specifications. Hosted by HR-XML, OASIS, Object
>Management Group (OMG), UN/CEFACT and XBRL.org, the Interoperability
>Summit Series will identify intersections between major horizontal and
>vertical groups in order to promote acceptance of common models and
>approaches.
>
>"Duplication of effort and overlap of specifications are major
>deterrents to interoperability," said Patrick Gannon, president and
>chief executive officer of OASIS. "We believe that if everyone
>communicates and collaborates on common issues, we'll all be more
>productive in achieving our own specific goals. The summit series will
>provide a forum to identify and coordinate the work that affects us
>all."
>
>"Interoperability across platforms, languages and deployment
>technologies is of critical importance to CIOs today," said Dr. Richard
>Soley, chairman and chief executive officer of the OMG. "OMG's Model
>Driven Architecture(tm) is specifically designed to attain that goal,
>and lack of agreement on vertical-market models is the major roadblock
>to achieving the goal. OMG is proud to be one of the sponsors of the
>Interoperability Summit event and to act as one of the hosts for this
>first meeting."
>
>Each Summit in the series will focus on a specific modeling topic or
>business domain. The first meeting will target Human Resources (HR)
>management, with future summits dedicated to other wide-reaching,
>horizontal business functions. A second Summit on Procurement is planned
>for 2002.
>
>"Human resources is an excellent starting point for the Interoperability
>Summit Series, since HR shares many common components and has many
>external interaction points and dependencies with other standards
>efforts," said Chuck Allen, director of HR-XML Consortium.
>
>Allen cited an example of kind of overlap the Summit is targeting.
>"Recently, the National Association of Purchasing Managers (NAPM)
>decided to create an XML specification for the procurement of temporary
>staffing. That very same week, HR-XML announced a draft of our
>specification for temporary staffing. While it's clear both groups need
>to create specifications based on the unique needs of their
>applications, it is also obvious some of the objects, processes and
>models involved could be common to both. The Interoperability Summit
>will help us all identify this kind of overlap, so we can devote our
>resources to solving domain-specific requirements."
>
>Capt. Valerie Carpenter, USN program manager of the DIMHRS project (a
>Department of Defense-wide military personnel system) agreed. "The lack
>of cross domain standards has long been an obstacle to meaningful
>interoperability."
>
>The Interoperability Summit is open to all industry groups, standards
>bodies and consortia that have a vested interest in the modeling topic.
>In addition to HR-XML, OASIS, OMG, UN/CEFACT and XBRL.org, the Orlando
>meeting is expected to attract representatives from ACORD, BASDA, Health
>Level Seven, IDEAlliance, IFX, IMS Global Learning Consortium, Open
>Applications Group and the NAPM XML Initiative. Other groups are welcome
>and may register at http://www.omg.org/interop/.
>
>"The opportunity to agree on cross-consortia models benefits everyone,"
>added Klaus-Dieter Naujok of IONA, member of the UN/CEFACT Steering
>Group. "Participants in the Interoperability Summit Series will learn
>and share information about modeling tools, methodologies and approaches
>to meta-data management. The Summit will give us all the opportunity to
>disseminate information about our own models and modeling goals and work
>proactively with other consortia representatives to ensure capability
>across industries and business functions."
>
>About HR-XML
>HR-XML (http://www.hr-xml.org) is a global, independent, non-profit
>consortium dedicated to enabling e-commerce and inter-company exchange
>of human resources (HR) data worldwide.  The work of the Consortium
>centers on the development and promotion of standardized XML
>vocabularies for HR.  HR-XML's current efforts are focused on standards
>for staffing and recruiting, compensation and benefits, training and
>work force management. HR-XML is represented by its membership in 17
>countries.
>
>About OASIS
>OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org) is the international, not-for-profit
>consortium that advances electronic business by promoting open,
>collaborative development of interoperability specifications. With the
>United Nations, OASIS sponsors ebXML, a global framework for electronic
>business data exchange. OASIS operates XML.ORG, the non-commercial
>portal that delivers information on the use of XML in industry. The
>XML.ORG Registry provides an open community clearinghouse for
>distributing and locating XML application schemas, vocabularies and
>related documents. OASIS serves as the home for industry groups
>interested in developing XML specifications. OASIS technical work
>embraces conformance, security, business transactions, repositories and
>other interoperability issues.
>
>About OMG
>With well-established standards covering software from design, through
>development, to deployment and maintenance, the Object Management Group
>(OMG) supports a full-lifecycle approach to enterprise integration.
>Based on the established Object Management Architecture (OMA) and
>emerging Model Driven Architecture (MDA), OMG's standards cover
>application design and implementation. OMG's Modeling standards include
>the UML (Unified Modeling Language) and CWM (Common Warehouse
>Metamodel). CORBA, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture, is
>OMG's standard open platform. OMG also issues the CORBAservices and a
>rapidly-growing set of industry-specific standards in vertical markets
>including healthcare, telecommunications, biotechnology, transportation
>and a dozen other areas. The OMG is headquartered in Needham, MA, USA,
>with an office in Tokyo, Japan as well as international marketing
>offices in the UK and Germany, along with a U.S. government
>representative in Washington, DC.
>
>About UN/CEFACT
>UN/CEFACT (www.uncefact.org) is the United Nations body whose mandate
>covers worldwide policy and technical development in the area of trade
>facilitation and electronic business. Headquartered in Geneva, it has
>developed and promoted many tools for the facilitation of global
>business processes including UN/EDIFACT, the international EDI standard.
>Its current work programme includes such topics as Simpl-edi and Object
>Oriented EDI and it strongly supports the development and implementation
>of open, interoperable global standards and specifications for
>electronic business.
>
>About XBRL.org
>XBRL.org (www.xbrl.org) is an international group developing the
>eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), an XML-based framework
>for the preparation and exchange of business reports and data. The
>initial goal of XBRL is to provide an XML-based framework that the
>global business information supply chain will use to create, exchange,
>and analyze financial reporting information including, but not limited
>to, regulatory filings such as annual and quarterly financial
>statements, general ledger information, and audit schedules.
>
>For more information:
>Carol Geyer
>Director of Communications
>OASIS
>carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
>+1.941.284.0403

James Bryce Clark
VP and General Counsel
McLure Moynihan Inc.
Chair, ABA Business Law Subcommittee on Electronic Commerce 
jamie.clark@mmiec.com,  jbc@lawyer.com
1 818 597 9475