Foreword

The United Nations, through its Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT), supports activities dedicated to improving the ability of business, trade and administrative organizations, from developed, developing and transitional economies, to exchange products and relevant services effectively. Its principal focus is on facilitating national and international transactions, through the simplification and harmonisation of processes, procedures and information flows, and so contribute to the growth of global commerce.

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out through ISO technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical committee has been established has the right to be represented on that committee. International Organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work.

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this International Standard may be the subject of patent rights. ISO shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

International Standard ISO 7372 was prepared jointly with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and adopted by Technical Committee ISO/TC 154, Processes, data elements and documents in commerce, industry and administration, as the Trade Data Elements Directory (TDED); and is maintained by a joint ISO-UNECE Maintenance Agency (see section 2).

This third edition cancels and replaces the second edition (ISO 7372:1993).

This International Standard adopted by the technical committee has been circulated to the member bodies for voting and formally adopted by ISO and by the UN compliant to the procedures of each.

When producing this edition of the Trade Data Elements Directory, the Maintenance Agency has delivered a directory that is:

• supporting the UN Layout Key for Trade Documents (ISO6422) by registering data elements that can be conveyed in such documents
• fully consistent with the set of UN/EDIFACT directories supporting electronic data interchange, especially with the EDIFACT Data Element Directory (EDED) and the UN Codes Library (UNCL).
• multimodal (all means of transport); (uni)modal requirements are satisfied by using business terms or synonyms, and not by specific entries; multimodal requirements are satisfied by generic entries
• multisectoral (trade/transport/Customs/etc.)
• technology and syntax independent
• ebXML Core Components Technical Specification compliant, providing the core component dictionary entry name with 1) object class, 2) property term and 3) representation term, and support the Controlled Vocabulary with list of permissible words
• backward compatible wherever possible and allows a migration path from previous editions; when an element (a duplicate) has been marked for deletion a preferred element is recommended.

Achieving the last point was crucial to ensuring consistency among the directories and also with the data elements of other international organizations. Developments in international trade since the publication of the previous edition of the TDED in 1993 resulted in some incompatibility with other UN publications. This current revision of the TDED has eliminated the inconsistencies and again secured the bi-directional references by the use of round and square brackets in the UN/EDIFACT UNCL code list, and similar notations in the TDED. Changes made in the TDED, for example the removal of duplicate data elements, are fully reflected in the EDIFACT Directories and Code Lists.

This approach should provide the framework that reduces the risk of divergence between the publications in the future.

The main resources used in this revision were: UN/EDIFACT D.02A edition, UN/CEFACT TBG3 (Transport), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the World Customs Organization Customs Data Model Version 1 (2002), UNCTAD ASYCUDA and the joint UNeDocs SITPRO project team. In summer 2004, at the time of the finalisation of the draft for this new edition of TDED, the targets as listed above have been met within the framework of the resources and time available.

During the revision process, the Maintenance Agency has developed data element names which fully comply with the naming rules defined by ISO 11179, and required by the ebXML Core Components Technical Specification (also ISO/TS 15000 part 5). The Maintenance Agency will submit these compliant data elements to UN/CEFACT for Core Component harmonization.

Throughout the production process the Maintenance Agency continually updated the revision drafts and performed numerous quality checks and public reviews.

Additionally, the Maintenance Agency reviewed and revised the procedures for submitting Data Maintenance Requests (DMRs). The MA recognized that its work must be as universal as possible; and consequently cooperated closely with the following bodies:

• UN/CEFACT Forum: TBG, ATG, ICG and their Regional Entry Points: UN/EDIFACT and XML DMR procedures
• UN/CEFACT Forum TMG : ebXML CCTS WG DMR procedures
• OASIS UBL TC DMR procedures
• ISO9735 JSWG Joint Syntax WG DMR procedures
• WCO Customs Data Model DMR procedures
• UNCTAD ASYCUDA DMR procedures
• As well as other Maintenance Agency members’ DMR procedures as UIC for CIM, IATA for CIMP and IMO for FAL.

Management and registration of aggregates, composites and other combinations of single TDED entries are outside the scope of the Maintenance Agency; this work is the responsibility of standardization bodies such as JTC1/SC32 and UN/CEFACT TBG17 (Harmonization).

Last, but not least, all members of the Maintenance Agency kept clearly in mind that the best is the enemy of the good, and that some revisions and improvement to the TDED could have a significant migration cost for some users. To assist users in migration, explicit paths have been provided, especially for the deleted entries. Items in the previous version which were inconsistently tagged (e.g. wrong Group, or wrong even/uneven tag) have not been corrected, except when an explicit business requirement had been identified. In this way, the Maintenance Agency did its utmost to meet the needs of members and TDED users.