HR-XML Continues Growth, Targets Initial Demonstration Projects.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 25, 2000

Industry Consortium Targets Key Data Interchange Challenges

Affecting Recruiting, Staffing, Compensation, and Benefits

The HR-XML Consortium(TM), Inc., continued to attract broad participation from industry leaders at its recent Fort Lauderdale meeting, the second meeting since the Consortium's incorporation as a non-profit, technology standards body. Over 100 individuals from the Consortium's more than 70 member organizations participated in the meeting held April 6 and 7.

"Now that the Consortium's creation and charter is solidified, the Consortium can move forward to define the standards that will shape data interchange in the HR space," said Lon Pilot, President of HR-XML. "Our current activities reflect a commitment to acting with all due deliberativeness and with all due speed. The Consortium is working to develop durable models of common objects that will be shared across a diverse range of process-specific schemas. At the same time, our recruiting and staffing workgroup and compensation and benefits workgroup are moving aggressively to prototype XML messaging frameworks that solve today's key data exchange problems," Pilot added.

At the meeting, the Consortium's Recruiting and Staffing workgroup unveiled a draft messaging specification (Staffing Exchange Protocol) that can enable dynamic, real-time staffing transactions over the Web using open, non-proprietary XML standards. Among the transactions supported by the Staffing Exchange Protocol would be posting job announcements to job boards, updating and recalling job postings, supplying contact information for job candidates where only partial information was initially supplied, the updating and recalling of resumes by job seekers, and the provision of employer feedback to job boards regarding positions that have been filled.

"Today, Internet-based recruiting often is characterized by batch, point-to-point data exchanges of job postings and resumes between the employers and job boards," said Chuck Allen, HR-XML Director. "The vision is for HR-XML to provide standards that enable a much more flexible and responsive environment for employers, job boards, and job seekers."

The Compensation and Benefits workgroup similarly is prioritizing and defining the business processes most in need of standardization. Benefits plan enrollment and the maintenance and verification of employee benefits eligibility information are among the processes on which the workgroup is focusing. The workgroup also is planning to deploy this summer a demonstration of how standardized XML can streamline the transfer of Defined Contribution and Defined Benefit (DC/DB) data between a plan sponsor, such as an employer, and a plan provider. "Standardized XML for employee benefit plan transactions eliminates the need to write custom data feeds between employer systems and the systems of benefit plan providers," according to Allen. "Standardized XML also can enable the creation of flexible and efficient on-line marketplaces for employee benefits," Allen added.

The meeting featured technology briefings on Microsoft BizTalk(TM) and on XML security technologies being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium and the Internet Engineering Task Force. Kevin McCall, product manager of the BizTalk Initiative at Microsoft(TM), noted that the "HR-XML Consortium's provisional resume schema is the most widely used schema in the BizTalk.org business document library, which currently contains over 400 schemas." IBM's Doug Tidwell, Senior Programmer, presented the latest on the security technologies being developed for XML. "These technologies are a natural choice for securing sensitive HR information," Tidwell said. "When used with the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), they give XML documents an additional level of security."

The Consortium has gained more than 30 new member organizations since its January meeting in San Jose. The current members of HR-XML are: Adecco Corporation(a), Aetna(a), AppliedTheory(a), Authoria(a), Best Software, BISNet, Business Engine Software Corporation, CareerBuilder, Inc., CareerPath.com, CDI Corp/MRI(a), ChangePoint.com, CIC Applicant Background Checks(a), ComputerJobs.com, Concur Technologies, Crestone International(a), Cross Current Corporation, Deploy(a), Digital Discoveries, Inc.(a), Directfit.com(a), E-Cruiter.com Inc.(a), Employease, Inc.(a), EmployeeMatters(a), Enwisen.com(a), Eployment, Evolve, Ex-tra-net.com(a), Fidelity Investments(a), HeadHunter.net(a), Hewitt Associates, LLC(a), Hire.com(a), IBM(a), Icarian(a), Industry Canada, Interactive Search, Inc.(a), Interim Services, Inc.(a), International Association for Human Resource Information Management (IHRIM), iTango Software, J.D. Edwards(a), jobs.com(a), Kelly Services(a), kforce.com(a), Korn/Ferry(a), Lawson Software(a), Liquid Software, Main Sequence Technologies, Manpower, Inc.(a), MDTSC, Meta4, modis, Inc.(a), Monster.com, Nitorum Corporation, Novient, Inc., Online-Benefits, Inc(a), Opus360, Oracle(a), Pentawave, Inc., PeopleClick.com, PeopleSoft(a), Personic(a), ProBusiness Services, Inc., Randstad Holding(a), Raymond Karsan Associates, recruitsoft.com, Resumix(a), Robert Half International Inc.(a), SAP(a), Simpata, Inc., SkillsVillage.com(a), SmartChannels.net, Society of Professional Administrators and Recordkeepers (SPARK), techies.com(a), Towers Perrin, Ultimate Software(a), Vivant! Corporation, Volt Services Group(a), Watson Wyatt Worldwide(a), Webhire, Inc.(a), and WorkLife Solutions, Inc.

((a) indicates "Charter Member" status).

About The HR-XML Consortium

The HR-XML Consortium is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development and promotion of standardized human-resources-related XML vocabularies for enabling e-commerce and inter-company exchanges of human resources data worldwide.

The Consortium is open to all interested parties, but membership is targeted to software vendors, employers, HR service suppliers, non-profit HR-related associations, and human resource professionals.

For additional information, contact Chuck Allen at [e-mail], or by phone at 919-247-6881, or visit http://www.hr-xml.org.