State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company is the first insurance company to become certified under the new Collision Industry Electronic Commerce Association (CIECA) Certification program. 

The purpose of the CIECA Certification program is to validate the consistent use of current CIECA XML standards in the collision repair industry and to ensure that the implementation of the software application's interchange documents is in compliance with CIECA standards and implementation guidelines.

Only CIECA members are eligible for certification. "CIECA certification ensures to all trading partners in the collision repair industry that the company's certified application/product follows CIECA's XML standards," said Fred Iantorno, CIECA's executive director.

"We support the standardization of document interchange. It simplifies the process and provides a consistent data flow among companies," said Ed Weidmann, property and casualty consultant at State Farm.

The CIECA seal of approval assures the end customer of interoperability of the application's interchange documents with other applications that also bear the CIECA Certified logo. More information about CIECA and the certification program can be viewed at www.cieca.com.

CIECA assists the Collision Industry in the effective use of electronic commerce and the National Information Superhighway. It is directed by a Board of Trustees and has offices in Illinois. Its members jointly work on Standards Development Committees (SDC) addressing standards for Electronic Data Interchange, Interoperability, XML and Imaging. CIECA addresses Electronic Commerce issues on a national scale. It has developed processes for identifying and prioritizing industry issues, establishing SDCs to design solutions, and then working these solutions through the broadest base of acceptance mechanisms possible, such as the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).