Content management and production processes in the media industry are becoming more complex, time-critical and integrated. In a bit world this puts new demands on management and creates new possibilities of intersystem integration. The necessary IT infrastructure is available today, but the mechanisms for interchange of management information are not standardized.

This paper presents the new XML-based IFRAtrack recommendation, a tracking information interchange mechanism for integrating production management systems in the media industry. IFRAtrack was developed jointly by representatives of newspapers, system manufacturers and research organizations.