Written submission from Sue Probert (EUT0018)

 

UK trade facilitation leadership and contributions to UNECE data exchange standards

Document contributed by Sue Probert former UN/CEFACT chair and 30+ year expert

October 2025

 

From the UNECE UN/EDIFACT website 2006 secretariat report

(https://unece.org/trade/uncefact/unedifact-part-1-introduction):

‘Much credit for the pioneering work in the field of interchange of international trade data must be given to the United Kingdom. As early as 1974, in a report to the Working Party on Facilitation of International Trade Procedures (document TRADE/WP.4/GE.l/R.38), the delegation of the United Kingdom described "proposals for providing standard ways of representing information in messages passing between partners in international trade".

Ray Walker was the Chief Executive and later Chairman of SITPRO (the Simpler Trade Procedures Board), a UK-based organization dedicated to simplifying and improving international trade processes. He was a prominent figure in trade facilitation, also serving as Chairman of the UN Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT). 

Here's a breakdown of his role:

Walker led the UK's Simpler Trade Procedures Board, working to streamline trade documents and procedures. 

He was involved in the UN's efforts to facilitate trade, holding a leadership role on the UN/CEFACT Steering Group for many years. 

Walker was known for generating significant interest in trade simplification, especially in Eastern Europe, and for his involvement in standards developments such as UN/EDIFACT. 

His work in trade facilitation was recognized internationally, with him acting as a session leader at UN conferences. 

Under the leadership of Ray Walker, SITPRO, the world renowned UK national trade facilitation body, led the next stage in the work towards a common universal set of interchange rules for trade data was a reconciliation, carried out by a joint European/North American ad hoc Group, known as UN-JEDI, commissioned by the Working Party on Facilitation of International Trade Procedures, to bring together the enhanced GTDI and a set of standards for Electronic Business Data Interchange developed in the United States. The recommendations of the UN-JEDI Group were agreed by the Working Party at its September 1986 session. They led to the development of the United Nations Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport (UN/EDIFACT) syntax rules, which are incorporated in Part 4 of the present Trade Data Interchange Directory (UNTDID).

The UN/EDIFACT standards developed over the next 30 years to encompass over 130 message standards and more than a million UN/EDIFACT messages are estimated to be exchanged daily around the world. It is still true that UN/EDIFACT remains the only data exchange standard covering semantics and exchange syntax. Today XML or JSON or REST APIs have no common semantics unless they adopt the international supply chain UN/CEFACT Buy/Ship/Pay reference data models. In addition these data exchange syntaxes are not interoperable unless they have no globally agreed standards for syntactic implementation except the UN/CEFACT naming and design rules.

The UK provided significant support to UN/CEFACT throughout the UN/EDIFACT development years representing SITPRO, HMRC or GS1 (then known as UK e-centre). I represented my interest as a SITPRO Board member and Top Form software partner and there were notable experts form trade, transport and academia (including Prof Tony Davies from Cardiff University who was out HoD for several years and also an active expert).

Before UN/EDIFACT emerged in 1989, SITPRO had been the oracle for providing traders especially exporters with information through an exporter helpline and the Top Form series of document layouts based on the UN Layout Key (Recommendation 1).

A white spiral bound notebook AI-generated content may be incorrect.  A notebook with writing on it AI-generated content may be incorrect.  A white paper with black lines on it AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Unfortunately despite paper remaining the predominant data exchange format for international trade documentation, since SITPRO was closed down by the coalition government in 2010, no work has been continued to support traders in this way.

During this exercise to find the history of the importance of UK input and of the benefits gained from UN/CEFACT for our UK international trade communities, I have become very depressed by the history from 2008 onwards which has seen a major downtown in the UK government trade facilitation support and guidance.

In the 1990s SITPRO played a leading role in developing electronic equivalents to the Top Form catalogue of paper forms as illustrated above. This was named ElecTra (Electronic Trade documents). The work of ElecTra was contributed to UN/CEFACT and merged with a UNECE secretariat somewhat parallel project named UNeDocs. ElecTra became UNeDocsUK. The UNeDocs project became a formally approved UN/CEFACT project in 2006 and attracted wide support from governments and registered experts. The work on the project continued apace with a draft BRS and reference data model completed in late 2007 (I was the main editor).

Unfortunately due to competing external standards being represented on the UN/CEFACT Bureau at that time, the project was put permanently on hold in 2008 which left the project team and its global supporters devastated.

I withdrew into the UN/CEFACT technical team to support the Core Component Library work to ensure that the early UNeDocs work was not lost. As a result of the contributions and support of the original experts, the Buy/Ship/Pay international trade reference data model eventually dared to raise its head to become a UN/CEFACT approved set of standards and is now also a fast-tracked ISO standard!

Unfortunately the unjustified ending of the project UNeDocs had a very detrimental effect on the UNeDocsUK project in SITPRO and was, I believe, a factor in the decision to close SITPRO in 2010.

Since 2010 our UK trade facilitation journey has been severely curtailed especially the support for our UK international trading communities although support from HMRC has continued in the global standards bodies of WCO and UN/CEFACT.

How to improve this situation is a very important question which is extremely critical right now due to the UNECE cutbacks.

The UN/CEFACT standards are now a very mature and valuable set of trade facilitation tools so I believe that what is needed is a) maintenance support and b) capacity building and implementation support. The UN organisation remains the uniquely neutral environment to achieve these invaluable goals which could significantly benefit the UK international trade communities but which part of the UN family could best provide the environment for this work to continue and flourish to the benefit of all?