Reference Data Model Guideline

This document describes and specifies the use, creation and maintenance of Reference Data Models (RDM).

The advantage of the RDM approach is that an RDM draws on the overall available Aggregate Business Information Entities (ABIEs) within the UN/CEFACT Core Component Library (CCL), creating a complete and focused subset specific to the needs of a segment, examples being the UN/CEFACT Supply Chain RDM (SCRDM) covering the contract for the supply of the goods, and the UN/CEFACT Multi Modal Transport RDM (MMT RDM1) covering the contract for the supply of transport and related services.
Further, in this example, given both of these RDMs are drawn from (subsets of) the CCL, interoperability between the RDMs is ensured.
The benefits of RDMs is that they provide business process modellers and business process analysts and software designers a base To-Be architecture to be achieved.

Starting from a base To-Be architecture, rather than attempting independently to understand and harmonize numerous disparate As-Is situations will commence to address the long and well-understood problem of lack of information interoperability between applications in the e-business arena, traditionally adversely impacting supply chains.
Company Boards and Government Agency heads should move to embrace To-Be RDMs as a means of increasing efficiencies, productivity and growth, simultaneously reducing the waste of technology applied to As-Is existing disparate non-interoperable, non-standardized information flows.
Work by the International Network of Customs Universities, the World Customs Organization (WCO), the European Union (EU) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) describes “seamless integrated data pipelines”. The concept of “seamless integrated data pipelines” enables the actors to build up data progressively, with trade data input only once by the data originator, all of the business and trade data required to progress trades.

The Union Customs Code (UCC) supporting legislation requires that global trade address transparency and accurate business and trade data to precede the movement of physical trade goods. This legislation allows for transition until 2020.
UN/CEFACT standards based RDMs provide the base To-Be understanding to be delivered over seamless integrated data pipelines servicing supply chain traders and service providers at the level of interoperability and flexibility required and specifically by 2020. Due to the evolving nature of the UN/CEFACT RDM, the guideline includes material that focuses on the business community doing further discovery and analysis work. Some of the contents of this guideline are not typical of this type of technical document. However, they are critical for successful adoption and standardization in this area to move forward.