UN CEFACT TBG5

UN CEFACT TBG5 is the standards organization responsible for financial services under the United Nations Centre for Trade facilitation and Electronic Business, (UN/CEFACT) under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). As an International Trade & Business Processes Group (TBG), TBG5 is the working group specializing in the Finance Domain. UN CEFACT is the global standard setting body for Electronic Business using Extensible Markup Language (ebXML) and is intended to establish the standard for all Extensible Markup Language(XML). Therefore UN CEFACT TBG5 is the global standard setting body for XML for the financial services industry worldwide.

The mission of TBG5 is to enable end-to-end straight-through processing (End to End (E2E) Straight Through Processing (STP) of financial services data and to establish standards and requirements for the exchange of such data. As financial services involve the movement of money and the movement of money occurs in every industry, financial services standards can impact every industry in the world. Therefore, requirements must be identified from all the parties involved in each business transaction, as viewed in its entirety rather than in the distinct phases through which it may be carried out.

Past standards created by TBG5 include such important items in everyday use such as the EDIFACT standards for the payment domain. UN/EDIFACT is the international EDI standard. The acronym stands for United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce, and Transport. The work of maintenance and further development of these payment standards is done through TBG5. EDIFACT has been adopted as a global standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ISO 9735.

Other standards created by TBG5 include CREMUL, DEBMUL, DIRDEB, FINCAN, FINSTA and PAYMUL.

Working Groups of TBG5

Corporate Reference Group

The Corporate Reference Group subcommittee of TBG5 has a membership of corporations which use TBG5 standards. The Corporate Reference Group (CRG) mission is to identify requirements of industry for new standards and required improvements of existing standards. A primary mission of the CRG includes standardisation of the EDIFACT messages relevant for the STP information exchange between corporates and banks to save costs for implementation and maintenance by precise and unambiguous definitions and publication of the EDIFACT subsets.

Maintenance Task Force

The Maintenance Task Force develops new standards and edits existing standards as industry requirements change or new requirements are identified.

History of EDIFACT and UN CEFACT TBG5

The cross-sectorial project which is now called UN CEFACT started in 1987 under a multitude of nick-names such as EDI, JEDI, etc. Around 1988 UNECE formally sponsored the ISO recommendation aimed at achieving a universal common syntax and the acronym became EDIFACT (Electronic Data Exchange For Administration Commerce and Transport). The word "transport" was adopted over the originally proposed "trade" which – in Oxford English – is synonym to Commerce).

In 1989 the concept of EDIFACT, the cross-sectorial messaging destined to permit end-to-end STP communication between banks and their corporate customers was introduced to the financial sector during the SWIFT SIBOS conference held in Stockholm through a joint corporate and bank panel presentation. Attendance at this session was overwhelming (remote television screens had to be installed outside the packed meeting room) however incompatibility between EDIFACT and SWIFT syntax prevented any further progress until XML syntax enabled stakeholders in the standardisation process to resume contacts.

The EDIFACT organisation was initially based on separate, autonomous regions around the globe, ie. Western Europe, the Americas and Australasia, with Eastern Europe being a non-voting participant. Each approval and amendment had to okayed by the three regional communities, each officially represented by a distinct Rapporteur. Frequent disputes had to be discussed and sorted out during the semi-annual meetings called JRT (Joint Rapporteur Team) meetings. With the advent of email the EDIFACT organisation was centralised, especially the technical assessment working group, and the Regional Rapporteurs’ role was eventually reduced to nothing. Over time the EDIFACT organization was constituted by UNECE under its current name UN CEFACT TBG5.

External links

• UN CEFACT TBG5 website

References

Muus, Hendrik. "TBG5 Finance". Retrieved 2006-11-21. Note: Citation of copyrighted material used by permission of author.