Attempts by the federal government and Standards Australia to establish a registry of industry-specific standards for e-commerce interoperability are failing due to a lack of industry participation.

Standards Australia IT and e-commerce standards group manager Alastair Tegart said industry needs to get on board to ensure the national B2B application integration portal BizDex is adopted.

BizDex is a national library and registry of industry-specific standards for e-commerce interoperability and a joint venture between the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) and Standards Australia which was launched in 1992.

To date two pilot trials of the system have been conducted - for the wheat industry and Steel Online - demonstrating savings of up to A$300,000 (US$228,000) per industry.

Addressing the South East Asian Regional Computer Confederation (SEARCC 05) in Sydney Wednesday, Tegart said it is an opportunity for industry players to contribute to something bigger than their own supply chain.

"The long-term vision today of BizDex is three components - a governance layer, standards layer and technology layer. We currently have a library of core components based on agreed international and local standards, the vision for risk component framework and a third-party directory," Tagart said, adding that a core component of the third-party directory is complete visibility.

"There is a further need for industry-specific supply chain data; these components are reusable and have strict change management controls for variations across the platform.

"We have also developed a risk component framework to re-use software adapters to talk between different software and programs ... we also have a library of plug-ins allowing an SAP or PeopleSoft application to integrate with another piece of software or a service."

IDG is the official organizer and media sponsor of the SEARCC 05 conference.