Earl, a better question might be - Why would anyone join X12? For the most part (with some exceptions) the vast majority of members are from health care. For other industries and other transaction sets, very little new transaction set development is occurring. Rather, it's just maintenance (adding a code here and there, adding a data element to a segment, etc.) to existing standards. While X12 is trying to get into the XML standards development game I suspect that they are a day late and a dollar short (or could one say a dollar much too high!) Almost all development of XML-based standards is taking place in other fora and venues. Total membership in X12 has steadily fallen over the years from a high in the 700 +/- to just slightly over 356 today. Nearly 10% of today's membership is with individuals (called an Individual Member). Furthermore, the membership mix in terms of type of company and size of company has dramatically changed from X12's heyday of large companies to small companies. Of the total number of corporation/company membership of 261, only 16 of them have total revenue in excess of $500MM. There are only 9 financial institution members. So, for the life of me I don't see this as a **new** business model - just more of the same with higher fees and higher prices. Quite frankly, X12 should be thinking outside the box to see where it could draw new members - if that's still possible - and try to achieve greater relevance in the 21'st century of internet-based web services type architectures for electronic information exchange. Gosh, even the new federal health care IT guru, Dr. David Brailer, says that health care needs to rapidly adopt information technologies and better exploit the internet in order to drive down health care costs and improve health care outcomes. The relationship between Washington Publishing and X12 and DISA is highly incestuous. Washington Publishing has the exclusive right to publish the federally-mandated HIPAA implementation guides (don't know how this happened or whether it was achieved through an open bidding/solicitation process or not). Additionally, WPC apparently also has the exclusive right to publish the newest member of X12 documents: Technical Report Type 3 - more commonly known as implementation guides. I'm glad that these guides are now official X12 documents since it means (I hope) that they will receive a more thorough and objective scrutiny by X12's Technical Assessment Subcommittee. On the other hand, the owner and founder of Washington Publishing also sits on the DISA Board of Directors....which certainly should raise eyebrows about conflict of interest. I'm not at all inferring any lack of quality, etc. about the publishing of these documents - just curious about the process and mechanism by which WPC got exclusive rights to publishing, etc. So many XML documents to choose from? How is that any different than today when a supplier to Wal-Mart, or J.C. Penney or any of the automotive manufacturers (should I say automobile assemblers?) still has to obtain each company's unique specification of their use of an X12 (or UN/EDIFACT) transaction set/message? And lest anyone think that HIPAA has truly standardized some electronic transactions, just think about the pre and post HIPAA situation: pre-HIPAA health care was dealing with about 450 different health care claim formats. Post-HIPAA health care is now dealing with almost 1,000 different companion documents to the **standard** X12 health care electronic claim. No wonder health care administrative costs have not been reduced over the last 10-plus years but still remain fairly steady at about 25%....that is, for each dollar spent on health care, 25-cents is for administrative costs. That's what the accountants call G&A expenses (general and administrative.) I can't imagine any large successful non-health care company - perhaps even Wal-Mart - tolerating an operating expense of 25% G&A, can you. If this is progress....well?? Rachel
Rachel Foerster & Associates, Ltd. 39432 North Avenue Beach Park, IL 60099 Voice: 847-872-8070 Fax: 847-589-8081 _____ From: Earl Wertheimer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 9:39 AM To: William J. Kammerer; EDI-L Mailing List Subject: Re: [EDI-L] DISA and X12 standards formats William > It may very well be changing - and soon, Earl. Take a gander at the > proposed new X12 revenue model at Washington Publishing's WebBoard at > http://webboard.wpc-edi.com/upload/X12%20RevModel%20102204.pdf. Thanks for the link. > This draft is scheduled for vote during the November X12 Steering > Committee meeting. Note that the price (to X12 members) of the X12 > table data is going up from $1650 to a whopping 10 grand! Ouch! Basically they are increasing the Table Data prices by between 3.8 to 6 times their previous price. It's interesting to see that all numbers assume that everyone will renew at the new rates. Previously, the member vs non-member difference was 3 times ( $1,650 vs $4,950). Now it's only double ($10,000 vs $20,000). Why would _anyone_ not join X12 and save thousands of dollars. All other prices are only increasing by 15%. I'm sure that the people whose products depend on these updates will be overjoyed to see these prices jump up. What is the relationship (if any) between Washington Publishing & DISA? I see that WPC only seems to have HIPAA stuff for sale. Fortunately? I don't do HIPAA work. If WPC can sell these specs, then other companies should be able to do the same.. > At this point - assuming you need a machine-processable set of X12 standards > it becomes a no-brainer to just get someone to sit in front of XML Spy > with an X12 book and manually code them up in some kind of XML form. Of > course, the first version will be tough sailing, but after that, the > relatively small incremental trimester changes will be a snap. Absolutely. I'm sure that there are lots of unemployed EDI people who would be interested in that job <vbg> If anyone knows of a standard XML format for Retail stores (Walmart, JCP, etc.), I would be glad to provide a 'generic' file that covers ALL the outgoing documents for the retailers that we do.. > On the other hand, machine readable XML schemas for XML-based e-business > standards are almost always freely (i.e., free for the taking) available. but there are so many to choose from ;-) Earl Wertheimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.spe-edi.com . Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Access the list online at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT <http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12979b3l5/M=294855.5468653.6549235.3001176/D=gr oups/S=1705005582:HM/EXP=1098801250/A=2376776/R=0/SIG=11ldm1jvc/*http://prom otions.yahoo.com/ydomains2004/index.html> click here <http://us.adserver.yahoo.com/l?M=294855.5468653.6549235.3001176/D=groups/S= :HM/A=2376776/rand=792544744> _____ Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/> . [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/OIFolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> . Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Access the list online at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
