The European Union Framework Programmes for research and technological development (RTD) are the European Union's main instruments for the implementation of its common science and technology policy. This policy, which is set out in the treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam, aims to make research a transnational activity everywhere in Europe where it is appropriate, either on account of costs and the extent of the research or because it deals with the solution of problems which affect the whole of Europe.

ABILITIES is an European RTD Project under the FP6/IST Programme. ABILITIES project will provide the messaging platform for information exchange between SME's to support a typical order-to-invoice procurement cycle.

One of the goal of the project is to provide messaging standart for the SME's in the Agro-food industry in Turkey and integrated platform of the order-to-invoice procurement cycle between SME's.

UBL, the Universal Business Language, is the product of an international effort to define a royalty-free library of standard electronic XML business documents such as purchase orders and invoices. Developed in an open and accountable OASIS Technical Committee with participation from a variety of industry data standards organizations, UBL is designed to plug directly into existing business, legal, auditing, and records management practices, eliminating the re-keying of data in existing fax- and paper-based supply chains and providing an entry point into electronic commerce for small and medium-sized businesses.

The exchange of order and order response messages with mobile devices

The main purpose of UBL is to develop a free global standard that can bridge existing sector specific eBusiness standards. Another important purpose is to provide a limited set of eBusiness messages that can easily be implemented in existing off-the-shelf business software and ERP-systems. Manual registration and re-keying of invoices is a considerable and unnecessary cost in the public sector as well as in the private sector. UBL lowers the barriers to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The potential for rationalization is enormous in both sectors.

The purpose of ABILITIES project is to develop a platform which will make UBL suitable for Enlarged Europe industrial SMEs and will change, extend, and adapt UBL where necessary for this purpose. The mobile devices will be used for the SME's in the agro-food industry in Turkey to exchange UBL messages for eBusiness.

ABILITIES project has partners from different EU countries. One of the partner from Turkey called Innova IT Solutions will be responsible for the integration of SME's in the Agro-food industry. An e-marketplace working for Turkey’s agriculture industry called Tarimsal Pazarlama (http://www.tarimsalpazarlama.com/) will provide the sector-specific information and test environment as a business partner of Innova IT Solutions.

The project is a first initiative to provide eBusiness standards for agriculture sector in Turkey. For this reason, it enables the further development both in the agro-food industry and other industries to support electronic commerce in Turkey and EU.

The project is scheduled for 2 years starting from 1st of January 2006 and the coordinator of the project, TXT e-Solutions hosted the kick off meeting in January 11-12 at the headquarter of the company - Milano Italy. The partners from Italy, Germany, Lithuania, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and Turkey participated this meeting. This was an occasion to discuss the main technical and financial aspects of the project and co-ordinate actions to be undertaken by each of the partners in the near future. All partners agreed on the joint activities, project schedule and plans.

Photos of the kick off meeting in January 11-12, 2006 in Milano: