5

Maintaining Guidelines

5.1

Maintaining UIG Guidelines

The Utility Industry Group implementation guidelines are prepared by the Guidelines Task Group and are reviewed and approved by the UIG membership. The update of published implementation guides is the responsiblity of the UIG Guidelines Task Group. Updated guidelines will be prepared as new versions or releases dictate, as experience with the standards dictates, or at intervals adopted by the UIG Guidelines Task Group.

5.2

Maintaining X12 Standards

ASC X12 is the domestic EDI standard recommended by the UIG. The maintenance of Xl2 standards is the responsibility of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) Xl2. The ASC Xl2 Committee is the committee established by ANSI to develop national standards for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Changes, modifications, additions and new standards required by the Utility industry are submitted to ASC Xl2 as the result of requirements developed in the UIG Guidelines working meetings. However, any participant or member of ASC X12 may submit maintenance items or requests for new transactions to the appropriate Xl 2 subcommittee.

5.3

Version/Release Timing

The timing for implementing new versions/releases of standards is left to the discretion of the individual company and its trading partners.

In addition to the timing for implementing new standards, the number of previous standards which will be supported should be specified. Although this may not present a problem initially, as more trading partners are brought into EDI applications and as additional versions/releases are published, the maintenance of the different standards for different trading partners presents an administrative and programming bottleneck. It is suggested that agreements should specify that only the current and two previous releases of standards will be supported.