Early on, the United States realized a need for common EDI standards, an agreed upon set of customs that tells users how their electronic data should be structured. Standards allow electronic trading partners to exchange data in a manner that makes the information realizable by any partner, regardless of the specific format in which any particular user may view his documents. In 1979, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) chartered the Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12 to develop uniform standards for electronic interchange of business transactions. ASC X12 had to develop the structure, format, and content of business transactions conducted through EDI. That meant defining ANSI X12 standards for all types of business transactions: shipping and receiving information, invoicing, placement and processing, and payment processes.

The result of the ASC X12 committee's efforts are the ANSI X12 standards and the ability to electronically conduct nearly every facet of business-to-business operations. The committee's first version was released in 1983 and there are new releases every year. The latest is 3060 (which stands for version 3 release 6), although a new release, 3070, is expected soon.

The ASC X12 body comes together three times each year to develop and maintain EDI standards. New versions are created by the committee to include information needed by business. As the scope of business transactions increase and more and more industries become involved, some changes to the standards may be required.

ANSI X12 standards define transaction sets. A transaction set is often described as the EDI equivalent of a business document. A purchase order, invoice, or price catalog would each be a transaction set. The ASC X12 committee has created more than 275 transaction sets. As new business requirements are added, the committee refines its standards and releases a new version. The new release may make simple changes like changing a section of a transaction set or it could add an entirely new transaction set. This allows the ANSI X12 standards to stay vital and useful. But it also means that anyone involved with EDI needs to be aware of any changes in the X12 standards. New versions are not backward compatible. That means if you use version 3060 in your EDI software, you may not be able to handle a transaction set in 3050 format.

Because ANSI X12 standards are broadly defined so that they may be used for many different industries and businesses, it is sometimes necessary to develop a subset of the X12 standards known as implementation conventions (IC). ICs are an agreement among EDI trading partners on how a specific standard will be used in a particular industry or business context.

The Government has chosen to use and endorse ANSI X12 standards. The ANSI X12 standards have been used successfully by industry for many years. Rather than abandon this accomplishment, the Government decided to build on industry's success. The use of ANSI X12 standards by the Government also means that those trading partners that want to do business with the Government will only need to support a single set of EDI standards. The Federal Government has endorsed the use of ANSI X12 standards for EC/EDI with the U.S. Government through Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) publication 161 (copies can be obtained from the Government Printing Office). The DoD and the Electronic Commerce Acquisition-Program Management Office (ECA-PMO) have published implementation conventions (2003, 3010, 3040 and 3050) that describe how the standards should be used for exchanging EDI documents with the Government.