PR academics, practitioners and industry bodies have teamed up to
launch plans for common data standards across the sector in a bid to
boost efficiency and cut costs.
The initiative aims to create agreed formats for data interchange
between companies.
It is believed the format, called XPRL, will help dramatically reduce
the amount of information PR professionals need to retype or recreate
when planning, managing and reporting PR campaigns.
Those behind the programme hope the XPRL format will also create tools
to speed up the process of creating and distributing news.
The inaugural meeting of the XPRL Steering Group was held in London this
week, and was attended by PROs, PR agencies, software developers, news
agencies and PR evaluation firms.
The group has ten elected members on a committee, which has the full
backing of the IPR and PRCA.
The country's first professor of PR, Anne Gregory, who is based at Leeds
Metropolitan University, was elected committee chairman.
Committee member Mark Adams - co-founder of global technology PR firm
Text 100 - said a benefit for PR firms was in the preparation of
cuttings, where the author's name, publication, story outline and size
would be automatically listed.
'These new formats will come into effect in the first quarter of next
year and will go a long way to improve the levels of communication
between organisations,' said Adams.
The development of common standards in the PR industry follows last
year's creation of multimedia news format NewsML (PRWeek, 13 October
2000).
