The United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) has been developing, for several decades, base semantic standards to ensure end-to-end supply chain facilitation. These include the United Nations Trade Data Element Directory (UNTDED); the United Nations Electronic Data Interchange for Administrations, Commerce and Transport (UN/EDIFACT); the UN/CEFACT Core Component Library (UN/CCL); and a series of code lists, business process models and message schemas. UN/CEFACT aims to be the semantic hub for all electronic data requirements in the international supply chain. The UN/CCL and code lists cover activities in all sectors including materials management, commercial transactions, logistics, transport, agriculture, health, insurance, finance, payments, customs, etc. They are truly useful tools and provide an encyclopedia of semantic information that anyone can use free of charge.
However, like an encyclopedia, it may not always be easy to find the exact information needed for a single procedure. UN/CEFACT has therefore created subsets of this information (similar to individual volumes in an encyclopedia set) dedicated to single sectors of activity, called Reference Data Models (RDMs).