With close to 500 attendees at the most recent Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12’s Feb. 5-10 meeting in Seattle, 2006 looks to be another great year for this organization that establishes cross- and inter- electronic data exchange standards for such business domains as finance, government, insurance, supply chain, transportation and many others.
The X12 Finance Subcommittee initiated work on three new project proposals enabling messaging between banks and their customers on paid and issued checks, business-to-business usage of credit cards as a payment method, and delivery of bills and statements from a variety of providers to consumers. These new messages are being developed using Context Inspired Component Architecture (CICA), ASC X12’s framework for developing data exchange message formats in reusalble syntax-neutral components.
The X12 Communications and Controls Subcommittee, the committee’s technical branch, is formalizing its guideline for the exchange of CICA metadata. This guideline specifies an XML-based format for exchanging CICA metadata constructs between software applications such as the standards developer workstation and the CICA data store. This group is also evaluating the use of W3C Recommendations OWL (Web Ontology Language) and RDF (Resource Description Framework) languages as they are directly aligned with overarching CICA objectives.
With almost 200 ASC X12 users, the tools for members program - including highly regarded software contributions from Altova, GEFEG, Edifecs, and Sparx Systems - is helping members model their business processes, work with schema, and develop new messages. This program continues to mature as evolving internal X12 processes reflect greater agility.
The newly formed ASC X12 Marketing Task Group is forging ahead engaging additional marketing resources and key stakeholders to develop and deploy programs to increase awareness of ASC X12. Charged with expanding ASC X12’s reach into new markets via creative and comprehensive communication vehicles, this new task group will project the collective work of ASC X12’s new and existing collaborations, X12 standards, X12 XML schemas, and related products and services.
Freely downloadable and available for runtime validation, W3C-compliant XML schemas based on X12 CICA can now be accessed via www.X12.org. The available X12 XML schemas represent finance, government, insurance and transportation industries.
At the upcoming NEECOM Annual Spring Conference on March 29 in Westborough, MA, ASC X12 Chair Daniel I. Kazzaz will speak on these and other ASC X12 initiatives alongside an impressive gathering of domestic and international standards organizations.
Accredited since 1979 by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), ASC X12 is a member organization comprised of crack business process content experts committed to the development of robust electronic data exchange standards. With more than 2,500 individuals representing 360+ organizational members, ASC X12 is using its open, consensus-based standards process to create in cooperation with complementary standards and industry organizations a new generation of e-business messaging, once again revolutionizing domestic and international trade and commerce.
Mark your calendar for the next face-to-face ASC X12 meeting June 4-9 at The Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, and visit www.X12.org to learn more about ASC X12 membership, meetings and standards activities.
Julia O’Brien works for Data Interchange Standards Association, the secretariat for ASC X12. She can be reached at jobrien@disa.org.