16:48 Thu 08 Jul 2004						REF: 611BEBC1 
						Y/R: Aus-USA Free Trade Agreement 
TO:	Senator Jeannie FERRIS MP		cc	Senate FTA Inquiry 
	Member - Senate FTA Inquiry			Minister Trade 
	AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT 				Minister Foreign Affairs 
							Minister Health 
							Senator LUNDY 
Dear Senator FERRIS

CONFLICT WORDPERFECT v MICROSOFT WORD BETTER EXAMPLE

Further to the Senate FTA Inquiry Public Hearing on Thu 08 Jun I thought it may be helpful 
to assist with the preparation of the final report to provide further information on the 
importance of standards for Chapter 16: Electronic Commerce.

A better example of the conflicts between E-commerce Standards would have been WordPerfect v 
Microsoft Word rather than Pal v Beta video analogy discuss at the Senate hearing.

The Market eventually resolved the issue in favour of Microsoft when Word was included as part 
of the Microsoft Office Suite rather than a stand-alone word processing package like 
WordPerfect

However the Market will not be able to decide this issue on e-Commerce Standards it has to be
Governments.

A reason is that Government Procurement is part of the Aus-USA FTA. All 7 Government speakers 
stated that Chapter 15: Government Procurement is a major incentive for Australia to sign
the Agreement.

Australia's major trading partner is Europe where the Governments are committed to the ISO 9375 
EDIFACT Standard where as the US is only the third rank trading partner.  

However the country trade deficit is the largest with the USA.  THe USA exports Au$30 Billon to 
Australia whereas Austrlia only exports Au$17 Billion to the USA.

The US Government appears to be committed to ANSI-X12 hence this is where Australian business 
will be caught in the middle with having to comply with both Standards and there is not a 
simple resolution to that issue.

I will explain further

In 1998 we were involved with developing a Web based Y2K Due Diligence process for Small and 
Medium size Enterprises [SME].  This process was to provide regular reports for trading partners
on Y2K remediation progress.

As part of this web-based application we were using the ISO 9735 EDIFACT standard when we 
found that the name and address formats were inadequate.  

We researched and developed a name and address format that would enable any SME in any 
country could use the Y2K Remediation process {A}.

In 1999 this process won the "IT for SME" Category of the prestigious Global Bangemann 
Challenge against 68 competitors

The King of Sweden presented the trophy to Guy BLOMBERG the head of the development team.

When we returned to Australia the XML Development team started to develop the Tender 
Information Management Service [TIMS] for published Government tenders using the same name 
and address format.

In 2002 TIMS was submitted to ebXML Australia as an Australian XML E-commerce standard for 
Electronic Tenders.

At the time I pointed out to Keith FINKELDE the Chair of ebXML Australia and the Director of 
the development of the Australian Superannuation Board E-commerce System the deficiencies with 
the ISO 9735 EDIFACT Standard.

Keith agreed with me as they had found exactly the same problem when the Australian 
Superannuation Board developed their E-commerce platform !

I then discussed another problem that we had encountered with the ISO 8601 Standard for 
Electronic Time and Dates.  

There were so many varieties available that it was virtually impossible to use as a Standard 
format.  

This has been verified by an e-mail from a member of the ISO 8601 Special Interest group who 
listed over 330 different time and date combinations !  
(I will provide a link to that e-mail when I can find it.  This letter will be circulated to 
the ISO 8601 SIG for their response.)

Date and Time are very important for Government Procurement as there are at least 6 key date 
and time schedules with many tenders. 

NEXT STEPS

Electronic Information Interchange [EII] rather than just Electronic Commerce will be involved 
with many aspects of the Aus-USA-FTA (Government Procurement, Intellectual Property Royalty 
payments, Committee Information Interchange, Pharmaceutical invoicing and delivery, Financial 
Services, Dispute Settlement). 

A case could be argued that there are vested interests on the Electronic Information Standards 
Bodies that ensure that there are so many combinations to guarantee that Disputes will be 
inevitable.

Please see the letter to the Prime Minister explaining the deception in 1988 on the Australian
EDI Standards Committee as a reasons for the proposed e-Commerce Governance Committee

Hence your support for an Australian EII Governance Committee for the benefit of Australian
Small and Medium size Enterprises without IT Departments would be appreciated.

Yours sincerely


Stephen GOULD
Chair - Management Committee
XML & E-commerce Special Interest Group
OPEN INTERCHANGE CONSORTIUM