Throughout the month of March, the focus of the project has been on the development of the functional specifications for the first components of the Announcement Capture phase.  In addition, a number of sub-components for the subsequent phases that include downstream processing (Entitlements, Payments, etc.) have also been analyzed and functional specification documents have been completed.

Concurrently, an initial draft of the screen design for internal user core Announcement Capture Event Maintenance has been completed and is under review.  Once the internal screen design has been completed, DTCC will engage the Participant community on the design of the customer facing screens. 

As part of the external deliverables for 2008, DTCC will modify the release date of the next version of the message specifications to align this release with the ISO / SWIFT cycle which typically releases changes in the third quarter for implementation the following November.  DTCC will align its Corporate Actions annual publication releases to allow us to properly support the ISO release revisions as input to our releases.  As a result, the Corporate Actions annual technical documentation release will be in September 2008.