The Eighteen Character Problem

Metadata, Electronic Document Management and the Digital Library for E-commerce

Tom Worthington FACS

Visiting Fellow, Department of Computer Science, Australian National University, Canberra
For: Computing 3410 Students, The Australian National University
This document is Version 1.1 22 July 2000: http://www.tomw.net.au/2000/ecps.html
Accompanying text: http://www.tomw.net.au/2000/ecp.html
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Introduction

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Definitions

Metadata (Data about Data) is essential for e-commerce, as it provides standard data items to allow parties to communicate about their organisations, products, terms and conditions. Also the actual payment and the "money" itself consists of data in an agreed meta-data format, in an electronic transaction.

Electronic Document Management allows legally recognised documents used in e-commerce transactions to be created, transmitted and stored. Without electronic document management, fast and efficient e-commerce transactions would be buried under mounds of paper documenting the transactions. The Digital Library has the potential to allow access to electronic documents, while respecting the intellectual property right of the author.

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Commonwealth Electronic Procurement Implementation Strategy

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Online Strategy

The e-procurement strategy is part of the Government's overall Online Strategy:

Origins can be traced back to: Network Services ( Clarke 1994 )

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Three projects under this strategy are:

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Getting paid on the Internet

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Eighteen Character Problem

The Commonwealth Electronic Procurement Implementation Strategy proposes use of the Direct Entry system to pay all suppliers electronically by the end of 2000.

The banking system only provides an 18 character description field sent with the payment in which to record what the payment is for.

BPAY electronic bill payment service, uses check digits to detect transcription errors in the reference field. However, the standardised finanacial system has no such checking.

How to fit a standard, complete and reliable description of the payment into this small field can be termed the Eighteen Character Problem.

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Proposed payment process

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Electronic remittance advice will be provided in one of the following ways:

  1. the agency sends an electronic remittance advice to the supplier either directly or through a third party who delivers the advice in a format acceptable to the supplier (e.g. EDIPOST, FaxPOST, Lettergram); or
  2. the agency's bank transmits the electronic remittance advice on the agency's behalf (allowing for consolidation of payments and respective remittance advice).

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Postscript: The Zero Character Problem

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Further Information

Acknowledgments:

Material from the Office for Government Online , Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts and the Business Entry Point Management Branch , Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business, is Copyright (Commonwealth of Australia) and is used by permission.

References: See accompanying text: http://www.tomw.net.au/2000/ecp.html

Comments and corrections to:webmaster@tomw.net.au

Copyright © Tom Worthington 2000

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