27 December 2023: UNECE Secretariat has released the 2023-2 UN/LOCODE directory.
27 September 2023: The UN/CEFACT secretariat is pleased to announce that the UN/EDIFACT directories version D.23A has been validated by the Validation Focal Point and officially published. It is now available for browsing in the UN/EDIFACT section of the UN/CEFACT website and can be downloaded from the UN/EDIFACT Directories
19 September 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Business Requirements Specification for Digital Product Conformity Certificate Exchange". The purpose of this project is to define a functional architecture, capable of operating across different stages of product supply, that would enable digital access to valid and current product conformity attestations containing linkages to substantiating data. The project will identify and define the business scenarios and transactions involved in accessing product conformity attestations, as well as relevant operational and legal aspects necessary to enable process mapping. This project will help to ensure UN/CEFACT standards can be integrated into emerging digital product conformity systems. The strength and integrity of product conformity systems has significant implications for digital trade. This project complements existing UN/CEFACT standards and recommendations by addressing constraints relating to the paperless movement of goods reliant on underpinning attestations of product conformity. At the same time, this work will benefit the development of other UN/CEFACT standards involving exchange of data regarding product attributes and will support efforts of governments implementing digitised trade facilitation solutions via eDATA Verifiable Credentials for Cross Border Trade. If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: Brett Hyland.
19 September 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project "Check IBAN Open Finance Use Case". The purpose of this project is to develop an information exchange standard for the Check IBAN open finance use case, to enhance cybersecurity and fraud detection measures within electronic business and international trade by immediately verifying the correct association between a given IBAN code and a certain Tax Code/VAT number. The project will benefit businesses and Public Administrations speeding up administrative procedures within the International Supply Chain. If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: Fabio Sorrentino.
19 September 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Guidelines on establishing Regional Single Window”. The primary aim of the project is to provide a Comprehensive Guide that effectively supports Trade Facilitation Initiatives within the Single Window framework, specifically addressing the new challenges that arise with the establishment of a Regional Single Window. If you would like more information, please contact the project leads: Alejandro Rinaldi and Neelima Pamulapati.
3 August 2023: The Core Component Library (CCL) D23A and XML Schema D23A have been validated by the Validation Focal Point and published on the UN/CEFACT website
2 August 2023: The UN/CEFACT standards publication process is currently in progress, with several updates at various stages:
- The UN/EDIFACT D23A is pending validation, undergoing careful review to ensure accuracy.
- Simultaneously, the UN/CCL D23A has been completed and awaits uploading to the ECE website for public access.
- Additionally, we are pleased to announce that the UN/LOCODE 2023-1 publication is now complete, providing valuable location code information. We are dedicated to delivering reliable and up-to-date standards, and we appreciate your patience as we finalize these crucial publications for the benefit of the global trade community.
2 August 2023: UNECE website issues: broken links: UNECE Trade Facilitation publications may be experiencing unavailability issues due to broken links or URL redirects. We understand the inconvenience this may cause, and we apologize for any difficulties in accessing the necessary resources. Rest assured, our technical team is actively working to resolve these problems, and we anticipate a full resolution by the end of August. We appreciate your patience and understanding during this period, and we are committed to ensuring seamless access to the publications moving forward.
31 July 2023: UN/CEFACT's bi-annual newsletter highlights the activities, key milestones and achievements in the first two quarters of 2023.
26 July 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Travel agency and DMC API RDM”. The project enables replacing the current emails and spreadsheets used to exchange tour package data between Travel Agencies (mostly SME’s) and Destination Managing Company (DMC) and Destination Managing Organization (DMO) with harmonized data and comments. The purpose of this project is to design a set of API standard for exchanging “Itinerary”,“Quotation”, “Package Tour”, “Traveler”, and “Review” data between for travel agencies (including traditional travel agencies and OTAs), between travel agencies and DMCs, and between DMC to DMCs.
If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: Tunghua Tai.
26 July 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “API transformations of EPS technical artifacts with sustainability claims”. Experience Programs Technical Artefacts Project was completed in October in 2022, and tourism industry raised the need to transform the artefacts into API formats based on the newly constructed technical specifications of UNCEFACT to trade Experience Programs (EPs), which are much lighter and easier for the use on smart phones. Therefore, this project is proposed to make API applicable to the use of the trade of EPs, which will support the facilitation of their trade.
If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: Sachin Mehta.
25 July 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Parcel good traceability in the last mile delivery”. The project scope is to define and create white papers on the best practices in implementing service framework for seamless traceability in last-mile delivery with a view to examining: 1)Design Service framework required for seamless traceability in last-maile delivery, 2)Design interface and message standard to exchange information between human (manned transport means) and machine (unmanned transport means), 3)How the existing UN/CEFACT deliverables could be used by the service framework for seamless traceability. New deliverables could be considered to support the service framework for seamless traceability-based trade-facilitation-related applications.
If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: Kyeongrim Ahn.
20 July 2023: UNECE Secretariat has released the 2023-1 UN/LOCODE directory.
14 July 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Transparency at scale: Digital solutions for trust, resilience and sustainability - verifiable credentials in supply chains”. As regulatory and consumer pressures drive up demand (and justify premium prices) for sustainable goods, so the commercial incentive to make fake sustainability claims will increase. This project will deliver a new UNECE recommendation document that will provide guidance to nations on the implementation of scalable supply chain traceability, transparency and trust frameworks that will enhance sustainability and resilience. If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: Steve Capell
05 July 2023: On-line registration to the UN/CEFACT 41st Forum is open now. Detailed information is available in the Forum website
23 June 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Methodology to subset RDM messages”. This project aims to develop a methodology to assist business process automation specialists to easily create a subset of the RDM based master messages for their own supply chain or sector specific requirements. This would tailor a master message to the target industry-specific elements and produce a message subset (and children subset) that could be used as a basis for international trade operations. It is expected that this methodology would make it easier for organizations to implement and exchange with others within a specific sector or group of trading partners. If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: Edmund Gray
8 June 2023: This is to announce a 60-day public review until 2023/08/08 concerning the Recommendation on Encouraging Private Sector Participation in NTFB project. Please use the Public Comment Log provided to facilitate the preparation of a Disposition Log by the Project Team.
30 May 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Geofencing facilities”. The purpose of this project is to review current practices, document and outline the recommendations to geofencing for BIC and SMDG facilities. The scope of the white paper will cover the facilities such as Ocean Terminals, Container Depots, Repair Yards, Freight Stations, Rail Yards, etc. The project will outline the rule sets for different ‘families’ of geofences and how to define them, demonstrate examples with quality markers, and explain acceptable shapes, provide guidance for a process to support a review panel in evaluating geofences. If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: David Roff.
15 May 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Critical minerals traceability and sustainability”. The purpose of this project is to uplift verifiable critical raw materials supply chain resilience and sustainability through digital standards for data and trust. Both goals are met through traceability and transparency measures that this project will support through standardization. There are already many supply chain traceability platforms on the market. None will dominate the world’s supply chains and so must improve their interoperability so that supply chains can be traced across multiple independent platforms. This is the primary purpose of this project – namely to focus on the exchange of supply chain information between platforms. If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: Nancy Norris.
15 May 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Buy Ship Pay data exchange structures for trade finance facilitation”. This project will be focused on developing, maintaining and publishing the semantic foundation to support the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR) implementation by reducing existing trade finance barriers caused by the continued reliance on the exchange of paper documents. In order to support the implementation of MLETR for title transfer, this project will develop data exchange structures as subsets of the Buy/Ship/Pay Reference Data Model (BSP RDM) to support key trade finance data exchanges as part of the UNECE “digital and green transformations for sustainable development in the ECE region” strategy. If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: Sue Probert.
6 April 2023: This is to announce a 30-day public review until 2023/05/05 concerning the White Paper on the technical applications of Business Standards for Sustainable Tourism project. Please use the Public Comment Log provided to facilitate the preparation of a Disposition Log by the Project Team.
15 March 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Data Governance for Trade Facilitation”. Data Governance facilitates smooth movement of data across entities and borders. In the light of the increased cross border data flows in the context of domestic and cross-border trade along with data localization, privacy issues and guidelines, it becomes imperative to have governance related guidelines and controls in place. The purpose of this project is to look at Data Governance especially in Trade Facilitation (TF) in the context of UN/CEFACT’s mandates and create a whitepaper that focuses on studying existing Data Governance and presenting best practices for existing systems that can act as a guide for future implementation. If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: Sray Agarwal.
8 March 2023: UN/CEFACT is pleased to launch a call for participation for the project “Digital Identity Standardization for Trade Facilitation project launch”. The purpose of this project is to evaluate how legal entity and asset identification is managed in cross border paperless trade. The project will evaluate entity-level trust services and the advantages given mutual recognition across entities involved in the supply chain. It will test the hypothesis that the current lack of a consistent identifier for the many actors involved in cross-border movement of goods and related service hinders the development of effective IT-support systems and limits digitalization efforts by trade standards organizations. If you would like more information, please contact the project lead: Clare Rowley.
17 February 2023: UN/CEFACT would like to remind users that the cut-off date for submissions of new DMRs for the CCL D.23A and EDIFACT D.23A as 10 March 2023
17 February 2023: Registration to the 40th UN/CEFACT Forum is open now.
31 January 2023: This is to announce a 60-day public review until 2023/03/31 concerning the White Paper Digital Product Conformity Certificate Exchange project. Please use the Public Comment Log provided to facilitate the preparation of a Disposition Log by the Project Team.
11 January 2023: The UN/CEFACT secretariat is pleased to announce that the UN/EDIFACT directories version D.22B has been validated by the Validation Focal Point and officially published. It is now available for browsing in the UN/EDIFACT section of the UN/CEFACT website. and can be downloaded from the UN/EDIFACT Directories.