Universal Business Language (UBL) is a royalty-free model of business document information in XML syntax. UBL was developed by Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) to be as an entry point to electronic commerce for small and medium-sized business.
UBL is gaining popularity in Europe and Asian country’s fast enough, but where does acceleration comes from? Probably the most influencing party in this thing is Denmark and it’s government. Since 2003 when the law was released describing electronic invoicing to government entities in UBL standard as the only way. The law didn’t give a choice for business sector in Denmark but yet it was successful decision – in the first year of use Danish government counted more then 100,000 EUR savings. So Danish example initiated work on developing NES subset of UBL 2.0 documents. Representatives from Denmark ,Sweden ,Norway ,Finland ,UK and Iceland have set up a working group for developing a NES subset of UBL 2.0 documents. The focus of NES is to define the specific use of UBL 2.0 electronic procurement documents domestically and between the member countries. The definition covers semantic interoperability within and between all business sectors, public and private. NES members are also closely involved in the international UBL 2.0 process. Further deployment of NES UBL is taken by CEN/ISSS. NES UBL is also used in e-PRIOR and PEPPOL projects in EU.
