The World Wide Web Consortium has created a new Web Services Activity, including a new Working Group for Web Services Description.

In their announcement, the W3C outline the purpose of the Activity:

Initially composed of three Working Groups and a Coordination Group and folding in the former W3C XML Protocol Activity, the new Activity will develop a set of interfaces for application to application communication on the Web. Chartered to build three Recommendations, Web services work is conducted publicly.

Followers of web services technology will be particularly happy to see the new Working Group chartered to pursue service description, something currently covered by the WSDL technology.

WSDL has been criticized from several quarters, leading to a growth in demand for a dedicated Working Group.

As well as the Description WG, the new Activity takes on the XML Protocol WG from the XML Activity, and charters a Web Services Architecture Working Group whose responsibility is to produce "an architecture document identifying the technologies that the Activity needs to design, their scope and how they relate to each other."

The new Activity additionally comprises a Coordination Working Group with the role of coordinating the Activity's groups, as well as coordination with the Semantic Web Activity.