The SDL Task Force was formed during the SDL'03 Conference following a series of comments from participants about how complex SDL had become.

At the SDL Forum SAM Workshop held in Wales 2002, it had already been discussed that there was a need to go 'back to basics'. As a result of the repeated interest, a task force committee was formed by interested society members.  A corresponding proposal 'to define the simplest, useful SDL subset' was submitted to the SDL Forum society and approved at the Annual General Meeting by 27 votes with 3 abstaining and no objections.

The scope of the task force also includes the necessary enhancements needed to address automated presentation, validation, ASN.1 support and methodology.

Membership of the SDL Task Force is open for anyone interested in contributing to the evolution of SDL & UML.

The committee was intentionally limited to 5 to allow it to focus on its mandate. There are two commercial organizations (SOLINET & TELETEL), two universities (Athens, winner's of the SDL'03 Design Contest, & Ottawa, the previous year's winner) and one SDL Forum board member (Andreas Prinz).

The role of the universities is to consider the theoretical issues and case studies. The commercial organizations are handling the requirements and tools. The SDL Forum board member advise the task force on the scope and prepare the way for standardization by the ITU-T.

The SDL Task Force was recognized by the SDL-Forum at the Annual General Meeting (AM) on July 2^nd 2003.

On 17th March, 2004 the SDL Task Force presented its interim results to the ITU-T Study Group-17.

Persons interested to participate in the task force are welcome to contact the committee at Info@SDL-Task-Force.org