Denmark has formally adopted the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) as a standard for e-Commerce in the public sector. EBizQ reports:
With a public sector procurement of goods and services for approximately DKK 100 billion per year, even modest improvements in efficiency will be of great value for Danish society. By virtue of the public sector’s purchasing volume, increased use of e-commerce will furthermore contribute to the penetration of e-commerce in Denmark in general. The suppliers will get accustomed to e-commerce and an infrastructure will be established. Particularly favourable arrangements have been made to secure access by small suppliers.
Following a public hearing, the Danish XML Committee decided to use UBL 0.7 to enable integration between systems controlled by state authorities and our newly implemented portal for public procurement. When UBL 1.0 is stable, a transition is already planned for, my collegue Michael Bang Kjeldgaard, and chair of our National XML Comittee, told me.
Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems, chair of the OASIS UBL Technical Committee and organizer of the working group that created XML agrees:
“In adopting UBL, Denmark takes the lead in establishing an open, non-proprietary e-commerce environment equally suitable for both governments and small businesses. UBL’s vendor-neutral development process and free licensing makes it a natural choice for government procurement, and I believe that this announcement will jump start UBL adoption by governments across Europe.”
Anyone technically interested can look up the schemas we use.
The OASIS e-Government Technical Committee has launched egovernment.xml.org. Not much there yet. They could add a link to our OIO.dk XML-section, but it’s mainly in Danish. We’re working on material in English.
