The Australian Superannuation industry handles citizen's retirement benefits, with ~1.3T$AU under management and contribution being mandatory. Following a review of the industry, the government has decided on a number of reforms, including the moving to electronic data and payment exchange (as opposed to the current cheque and paper). It is thus mandating data, messaging and payment standards which will be introduced in a three year staged rollout.

When complete it will involve B2B interactions between employers(800,000) and Funds (~4000), as well as fund to fund interactions for rollovers. In addition, it involves B2G reporting from funds to government.

The Superannuation Data and Payment Standard is made in order to establish superannuation data and payment standards. It establishes certain requirements that must be adhered to by trustees of superannuation entities, Retirement Saving Account (RSA) providers and employers. The standard is based on the OASIS ebXML Messaging Services version 3.0 and its AS4 profile. The draft is now available for public review from:

http://www.ato.gov.au/superfunds/content.aspx?doc=/content/00335171.htm&....

Schedule 5 covers ebMS3/AS4 (with some linkage information (service/action/conversationID, partProperties) in schedule 4).

The Australian Taxation Office welcomes comments on these draft documents.