United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) Recommendation No. 2 was originally approved at the same time as ECE Recommendation No. 1: United Nations Layout Key for Trade Documents to underline the importance of unambiguous definition of the information in documents and to recommend the use of code lists to the extent possible. It was later integrated into the United Nations Layout Key for paper documents and no longer existed as a stand-alone recommendation. However, today’s digitalized environment the definition of information remains an important issue for electronic data exchanges.

Ensuring that all parties understand the same information in the same way is even more pertinent as multiple data exchange methods emerge. The semantic meaning—or base meaning—of each individual data element, whether it be in a paper document or within an electronic message, needs to be clearly defined to avoid errors, miscomprehension, misalignment or non-interoperability.

Alignment to international standards is important to ensure interoperability and effective data exchange, especially in an electronic environment. The importance of international standards is further accentuated by the World Trade Organization Trade Facilitation Agreement in its article 10.3 use of international standards.

This publication (ECE/TRADE/473) is also available in French and Russian.