Terms of Reference for EEG6/WG5 – Foreign trade statistics

Status of this document

This is a working draft of Terms of Reference for EEG6/WG5. It was reviewed and discussed by its members at the EEG6/WG5 meeting in Eltville before being presented to the EEG6 group for approval.

Delegated authority

WG5 is a sub-committee of EBES Expert Group 6 (EEG6). It works on behalf of EEG6 on matters related to the standardisation of electronic messages in foreign trade statistics.

Before submission and dissemination to other EDI standardisation bodies or other structures of EBES, standards produced by the group must be agreed by EEG6.

Membership

Every interested member of EEG6 is invited to participate. Experts may also be invited for specific topics.

Activities and responsibilities

The scope of WG5’s involvement in foreign trade statistics reporting covers standardisation of electronic data exchange in:

· the Intrastat system relating to statistics of trading of goods between Member States;

· the Extrastat system relating to extra-Community trade statistics.

This includes issues such as application responses, provision of feedback, security and others that the group may identify.

The activities of WG5 are:

· Analysing needs for new standards, or changes to existing standards, relating to foreign trade statistics.

· Proposing new standards, or changes to existing standards, via official standardisation procedures.

· Promoting standards for electronic foreign trade statistics.

This embraces work on existing message formats (e.g. EDIFACT CUSDEC/INSTAT, CUSDEC/EXSTAT and CUSRES/INSRES messages), new data models and formats (e.g. UML, XML), electronic questionnaire design (e.g. XForms), extraction of data from existing sources (e.g. XBRL), and so on. It will also require close co-operation with the relevant expert (Intrastat and Exstrastat Committees) and standardisation groups (e.g. CoRD, ebXML, OMG).

WG5 establishes and maintains a work programme describing the concrete activities to be undertaken.

Working procedures

For the working procedures of WG5 please refer to EEG6 Terms of Reference.

Review

The continuing need for the working group should be reviewed by itself every two years or sooner if necessary and a recommendation should be made to the EEG6 on whether to continue with it or not.