10.00 am - Noon, Friday 1^st June 2001

Phone link between the Tradegate ECA, Sydney and Melbourne offices together with Garry Grant, Barbara Toohey & George Szuty (Australian Customs, Canberra), Kevin Thorpe & Frank De Sa (eCentric Innovations, Melbourne), Trenn Sayer (Telstra, Melbourne), Chris Tsilomanis (Infosys, Adelaide) and Tim McGrath (TEDIS, Fremantle).

In the Sydney Office: Keith Finkelde (BT Financial Group, chair), John Pemberton (Diskray Pty Ltd, Secretariat), Stephen Gould (Open Interchange Consortium), Anthony Pfrunder (Telstra), Richard Bickle (Standards Australia), Bala Balakrishnan (Standards Australia), Andrew Komli (Online Advantage), Stephen Webb (Xlon Pty Ltd), Chris Madden (Electronic Trading Concepts), Ian Hung (C&W Optus), Peter Blanchard (SuperConnect), Margaret Pemberton (Diskray Pty Ltd), Alan McNamara (Vodafone Australia), Norman Cai (Telstra).

In the Melbourne Office: Barry Keogh (Tradegate ECA), Cathy Thawley (Tradegate ECA), Brian Garner (Deakin University), Wavell Cole (GEIS), Robert Galofaro (Bass Software), Steven Periera (EAN Australia), Rajeev Arora (SystemsSmiths), Ron Bowes (SA Ports Corporation).

Apologies: Andrew Robertson (Tradegate ECA), Paul Garner (Tradegate ECA), David Dobbing (Data Logistics), Stewart Carter (Ecommerce Network), Phillip Walsh (Philma Enterprises), Helen Cairns (Bass Software), Keith Cunningham (Chep Australia), Jordi Robert-Ribes (C&W Optus), David Botherway (Coles Myer), Ian Russell (SuperReality).

Keith welcomed all to the meeting and noted the growing interest in ebXML in Australia, which was emphasised by the large and increasing number of participants at ebXML - AWP meetings.

Keith reminded all interested parties to register on the yahoogroups Web site -www.yahoogroups.com/group/oz-ebxml

The minutes of the previous meeting were accepted.

John confirmed that several items from the previous meeting would be discussed in item 9.5.

Tim reported that the final ebXML Initiative meeting in Vienna marked the end of 18 months intense development by the world's leading software houses and the International EDI Standards community. The work resulted in a suite of documents including technical specifications, technical reports and white papers as well as a series of "work in progress" reports (see www.ebXML.org under "technical reports").

There were also extensive Proof of Concept demonstrations (35 organisations) of a wide variety of industry-based projects at the close of the meeting. Tim will provide a copy of the PofC documents from the Vienna meeting.

The document is attached as Report No. ebXML7. It describes the Proof-Of-Concept Working Group's interoperability demonstrations.

Barry noted the following statement by the Initiative chair Klaus-Dieter Naujok.

"Statement from the CSG on the forward direction for UN/CEFACT's E-Business standards.

Following the successful completion of the development stage of ebXML on time in Vienna on 11 May, and the conclusion of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between UN/CEFACT and OASIS, the CSG has been considering the forward direction and organisation of UN/CEFACT's standards development in e-business.

Under the MoU, responsibility for the maintenance and further development of ebXML specifications has been allocated between OASIS and UN/CEFACT. UN/CEFACT will be responsible for Business Processes and Core Components.

Taking this into account, and the e-business strategy approved at UN/CEFACT's March 2001 Plenary, the CSG believes that the most effective way forward is to bring together the expertise and
resources of the UN/EDIFACT Working Group (EWG), the Business Processes Analysis Working Group, (BPAWG) and the Business Process and Core Component work arising out of the ebXML initiative, and to integrate them into a new Working Group which will be able to address the needs of all of its users.

The development of this new Working Group - the E-Business Working Group - will require considerable planning and consultation and the CSG have mandated a special team to undertake this task which includes the Chairs of all the relevant groups. The CSG also believes that the September Rotterdam EWG meeting (10-14 September 2001) provides the perfect platform for starting the moves to the new structure and, therefore, will be organising concurrent meetings of the various groups so as to finalise the details of the terms of reference, work programme, organisation, resource requirements and launch date of the new group.

Notes - UN/CEFACT is the UN's Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (www.uncefact.org); OASIS is the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (www.oasis-open.org); The CSG is the Steering Group of UN/CEFACT; ebXML is the joint initiative between UN/CEFACT and OASIS to develop a framework for the exchange of e-business information using XML."

Barry reported that the CSG Special Team members to report to the Rotterdam meeting will be Klaus-Dieter Naujok, David Dobbing (ebXML - AWP), Peter Wilson (E-Centre UK), Harry Featherstone (LMI) & Pierre Georget (Chair - EWG).

Margaret reported that she was attending the X12 meeting in St Louis (3 - 8 June) to formally discuss the new E-Business WG and that X12 representatives will attend the UN/CEFACT Technical Assessment Group Interim meeting in Wollongong from 25 - 19 June. Margaret noted that the first drafts for the procedures of the E-B WG would be available for the Rotterdam meeting and that the first set of jointly published Core Components was scheduled for December 2001.

Margaret mentioned that the joint work of the EWG & X12 is ongoing and it is planned to have the first draft of the joint approval process ready at the end of June for review by the X12 Technical Committee in August.

Should/Can the ebXML - AWP become an OASIS member? Discussion centred on voting vs non-voting membership and the cost of the former. It was decided to further discuss in the future if the ebXML - AWP meeting was in deed to correct forum to act as conduit for OASIS.

Tim discussed his recently distributed document "An Action Plan for ebXML in Australia" (Report No. ebXML8).

Tim proposed three key opportunities emerging from the ebXML Initiative.

• Establish an Australian ebXML Registry supplying e-commerce trading partner information.
• Develop additional ebXML Business Process definitions for publication in the Registry.
• Contribute Australian business knowledge into the development of a global XML business language.

There was considerable discussion regarding the ebXML - AWP's role in standards education and awareness and suggested future directions involving commercialisation of products. Barry, Keith & Tim will discuss the future role of the ebXML - AWP with TECA CEO Andrew Robertson in the near future.

9.5 Australian projects involving ebXML

1. The Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business [DEWRSB] has issued an Expression of Interest 2001/10 for an E-commerce Initiative http://www.oic.org/CPK/cpkabbs1.

This EoI has 4 separate requirements:

1. Directory physical and technical infrastructure and operations.

2. Marketing, promotion and recruitment of clients and service providers.

3. Development of products and services.

4. Issuance of ABN DSCs and other digital certificates.

The EoI has a closing date of Fri 08/06/2001. The EoI can be reviewed on http://www.dewrsb.gov.au.

Stephen Gould noted "as DEWRSB is seeking responses from un-incorporated Consortia for EoI 2001/10 are ebXML Australia members interested in submitting a response as the ebXML Australia Consortium ?"

It was suggested that an ebXML - AWP submission could influence Government thinking on this project as well as influence Government to promote the use of Industry set e-Commerce standards.

The meeting agreed that Stephen Gould co-ordinate a response to the EoI from responses received from a Sub Committee (Keith, Barry, Anthony, Tim, Peter & Rajeev) for submission before the 8^th June deadline.

The response is included as Report No. ebXML9.

2. Keith reported on a number of projects.

eBOM - electronic Business Oriented Method. eBOM is a full life-cycle method that uses enhanced UML representations, and forms an extension to the Rational/RUP method. It includes a set of processes to follow to proceed from Industry Business Modeling, through Solution Development to Technical (XML) Message Specification. A grant for converting the current proforma eBOM into a product, for other industry use has been received from NOIE/ITOL. (Contact KF)

SuperEC - Superannuation EC (see www.superec.org ). SuperEC is a whole of industry programme to develop an infrastructure permitting peer2peer exchange of XML messages, between all role plays in the Superannuation Industry. There are 3 major projects - Rollovers, Registrations & Contributions, Regulatory. The Rollovers project is in final test exchange, with production exchanges expected within the month.

MFundEC - Managed Funds EC. MFundEC is a whole of industry programme for development of standards and evaluation on an infrastructure for the Mutual Funds Industry. It is in formation stage, with the first set of standards (Wholesale Applications & Redemptions) due for release by end June. MFundEC will use the same common Business Semantic dictionary (ozFINRIM) as SuperEC, leading to similar XML tags.

Insurance Industry: A recent NOIE report Insurance@Risk (http://www.noie.gov.au/publications/index.htm#INSURANCE@RISK) has highlighted the need for extensive improvement in the electronic exchange of Insurance information. Since the publication of the report, NOIE have initiated 4 sub-projects to address the General, Life, Health & Statutory Insurance areas, where different industry consortiums will be formed to define areas of common need. Tradegate are conducting an EC Scoping reports for the ICA in the area of General insurance. There is a proposal to unify the Insurance specifications into the extended ozFINRIM.

3. Chris Madden provided an update on the Australian Communications Industry Forum project described at the previous meeting. "The initial architectural recommendation for the ACIF Electronic Information Exchange initiative was that the ebXML messaging services specification (MSS) should be considered as a reference framework for resilient secure messaging between telecommunications operators. The ebXML MSS met EIE requirements well, however, it's adoption by vendors such as WebMethods and Microsoft will be a key determinant if large and medium operators are to participate using standard messaging integration products.

As a closed group with defined processes there is less need to adopt the ebXML registry and repository framework however it was recommended that these be considered."

1. The next meeting of the ebXML - AWP group is scheduled for Friday 13^th July at 10.00 am to noon with meetings in the Tradegate ECA offices in Sydney and Melbourne with requested phone links.

Keith Finkelde

Chair