Re: UNSPSC - whose in charge anyway?

[Frank Olken <olken@lbl.gov>]

David,
    In North America we now use NAIC industrial classification codes,
replacing the previous SIC codes.  See
http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html
The new codes were adopted as part of the NAFTA treaty.

                Frank Olken

David RR Webber wrote:

> These industry classification codes http://www.unspsc.org were
> originally designed for governmental statistical gathering on
> GNP and productivity measuring - stemming from the US NAICS
> codes and similar.
>
> As with other things they are being pressed into service for XML
> based business transactions.  This appears to be a classic case
> of 'close enough for government use' - but needs more for really
> robust business use.
>
> Being a 2 digit pair means everything has to fall into one of
> 99 value slots in the bucket.  This is just not reality.
>
> I'm seeing switching to alphanumeric pairs at least buys you
> a ton more bandwidth.
>
> But who makes this decision?  Do implementors just go there?
> RosettaNet now has Rosetta UNSPSC codes, and then they
> map those back to UNSPSC codes.  Clearly there's a better way.
>
> The whole issue here that is not being addressed is code tables
> generally.  Plenty of focus on Schema - but now we moving closer
> to a use model right there, we need to solve this bottom layer
> question definitively - particularly so industry groups evolving
> XML based exchanges have a reference point of contact.
>
> Maybe we need an ebXML WG on code tables?  Liaison to
> OAG and ISO would make sense - or maybe a joint effort
> between sich bodies?  Its not really a question of
> re-inventing anything - there are plenty of ISO and other
> standards out there - but we do need a central point - and also
> XML'ized versions of these reference tables.  ebXML will provide
> the API - but how is the secretariat?
>
> Thoughts?
>
> DW.

--
 Frank Olken

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
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