Northern European Subset (NES) is a co-operative initiative between a group of countries and organisations. NES was formed in January 2006 with the objective to facilitate the establishment of a common platform for eCommerce in national and cross border trade. The initiative is based on openness and agility in developing just-in-time specifications, tools, business cases and best practice to national and international stakeholders in the public and private sector. A special focus is on facilitating eCommerce for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) by developing free of charge governance models and integrated process- and document specifications with associated tools.

Policy Context

NES (and CEN/ISSS WS BII) is contributing to i2010 in building the platform for an open and competitive digital economy. It contributes to a more efficient national and cross-border trade, thereby supporting free movement of goods and services. For the members in NES it has already moved eCommerce to a new level, and bringing it (through CEN/ISSS WS BII) into a cross-Europe initiative. This will give SMEs in Europe a more efficient eCommerce platform, that provides the basis for expansion i.e. growth and jobs. In the NES member states the initiative has already had a demonstrable impact on national eGovernment strategies, initiatives and implementations: Denmark The public and private sector has in partnership developed the OIOUBL specifications (www.oioubl.info), which is based on NES specifications. Several IT-and ERP-vendors are in the process of implementing OIOUBL. Sweden A catalogue working group within SFTI (Single Face To Industry) was established in May 2007 (http://www.eh.svekom.se/nyheter/nyheter.html). The NES order will be released as SFTI in autumn 2007. Iceland The government and private sector has in partnership developed guidelines for implementing NES. The Ministry of Finance has announced that NES is a recommended standard for eInvoices in Iceland. The goal is to enable all government institutions to send and receive invoices in NES format before the end of 2008. Finland In the call for tenders related to eProcurement, NES specifications are a requirement. The VAN operator companies in Finland have made a common decision about the usage of NES when transferring orders, order responses and delivery notes. Norway There is a process for inclusion of the NES specifications in the national reference catalogue for standards to be used in the public sector.When this is in place, the NES specifications will be implemented through the Norwegian Electronic Public Procurement Portal (www.ehandel.no).

Description of target users and groups

As a matter of principle the NES organisation itself is not directly involved in any implementation. Deliverables e.g. specifications, best-practice, business cases and tools are aimed at supporting stakeholders in their eCommerce projects. Typical stakeholders are national standardisation bodies, public organisations and enterprises. National standardisation bodies can use the deliverables from NES as a value-added European subset of the OASIS UBL. This secures top-level compliance between specific implementations at a National level. On the public organization and enterprise level, the NES specifications can be used directly for cross border eCommerce. A key objective of the NES work is to support SMEs in the adoption of eCommerce. Through the NES network, knowledge is shared between the public- and private sector and across sector boundaries.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The specification work has been governed by an agile approach where the goal has been to create just-in-time specifications. The specification work has been pushed by specific and urgent needs from members of NES. The organisation is made up of a steering committee and a technical committee. The steering committee focuses on strategy and has meetings every month (face-to-face or phone). The technical committee is responsible for coordinating and developing specifications, and has meetings every week. The technical committee consists of a set of core members from both the public and private sector, with a wide spectrum of both technical and business expertise. For specialised work, external specialists are brought in for shorter time periods. The work is based on close relationship between technology specialists and business specialists across borders, which creates fast solutions and deliverables with high quality. The main task of the steering committee is to outline the future work in accordance with needs in the participating countries. On every meeting strategy and goals are revised and new initiatives are evaluated based on potential impact in the participating countries. In the technical committee, goals, deliverables and issues are evaluated and decisions on urgent problems are prioritized. Multi-channel issues: NES has developed tools that ease the integration into an eCommerce community based on the NES work. Tools for checking validity i.e. syntax and business rules has been build, and tools for resistance to revisions are planed. For SMEs that doesn’t have the resources for integrating an eCommerce solutions with their own system, integration tools has been developed, based on NES specifications, where procurement information can be entered and read.

Main results, benefits and impacts

The initiative has already inspired other European countries and several has requested to become members of NES and/or shown great interest in the work. As a result NES took the initiative in May 2007 to form CEN/ISSS WS BII (http://www.cen.eu/cenorm/businessdomains/businessdomains/isss/activity/…). The CEN/ISSS WS BII has already members from both the public and private sector in many EU member states. The work in CEN/ISSS WS BII will use the experiences gained in the NES cooperation in creating third generation eProcurement specifications for Europe. Denmark is already using NES as platform for the national OIOUBL 2.01 specifications (www.oio.ubl.info), this has created the platform for a national procurement infrastructure (OIOSI), targeted at SMEs (http://www.oio.dk/arkitektur/soa/infrastruktur/english), that is currently being developed and tested. OASIS UBL has gained traction as a state-of-the-art international standard that builds on flexible and extensible technology and contains the necessary business requirements (http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ubl). Both impact and resources used are difficult to measure, since some work is done in relation to and integrated into national initiatives and the impact has to be measured on national initiatives, where the NES platform is only a part of these initiatives. From all participants in NES it is a common agreement that the impact of the NES work is very high in comparison with the resources put into the cooperation. The NES cooperation will continue as an organisation dealing with eCommerce in an agile fashion. Only the future can tell if some work will be moved to CEN/ISSS WS BII or other organisations, and thereby change the strategy and work in NES. Innovation: Traditionally eCommerce has been based on static document standards, where two participants had to agree on processes and related document subsets at design time, and afterwards needed to implement, and test the integration solution. NES has analysed procurement processes and identified 8 archetype processes i.e. profiles. A profile is characterized by a flow of documents and context specific document content. Systems can make online negotiation on the choice of profile and create runtime integration. This constitutes a first step toward creating a static and dynamic ontology for an eCommerce semantic web. Further, profiles make it possible to create applications in advance that can control document flow and validate syntax and business rules in documents. NES has adopted the state-of-the-art XML based UBL standard from OASIS, that has shown to be flexible and extensible. NES cooperation is based on agile development of specifications and tools (see management approach) Currently work in NES and OASIS UBL is establishing a version and revision strategy with both forward and backward compatibility for revisions. Backward compatibility is reached by securing that document instances are valid in a new specification. Forward compatibility is reached by securing that instances of a newer revision can be pruned to an older specification, with the effect that a sender can send an instance of a newer revision to all its partners and both partners on the same or older specification can receive the instance. This creates an eCommerce environment with minimum maintenance and maximum flexibility in moving from one revision to another.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

The NES organisation and specifications has gained widespread acceptance in Europe and woldwide. NES is an open organisation, where everyone can follow the work and the specifications can be used free of charge. Work and specifications can be followed on www.nesubl.eu. NES has taken the initiative to form CEN/ISSS WS BII, which will move the NES work into a cross-Europe context. Further the NES participants are participating in relevant forums in order to create knowledge transfer. A specific influence in a participating country is the Danish OIOUBL 2.01 specifications (www.oio.ubl.info), that has created the platform for developing a national procurement infrastructure (OIOSI), targeted at SMEs http://www.oio.dk/arkitektur/soa/infrastruktur/english). NES has worked in closed partnership with OASIS UBL, which has proven very valuable, since UBL specifications have been tested in a Northern European perspective. The time from publishing new UBL specifications by OASIS through NES specifications to national implementations has been short, and response has been swift in responding back to OASIS UBL TC. This has given NES highly influence on priorities, content and momentum in new UBL specifications and in adding new technology to UBL.

Lessons learnt

Traction of standards is based on just-in time specifications. Based on specific needs it creates momentum in the analysis and specification work and a short time period between publishing of specifications and real world testing. Agility in specification work is possible if it is based on common needs and flexible management and development. Focusing on the requirements from SME’s creates new and innovative solutions. Scope: International