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Maritime transport data are still mainly collected in paper format: ship agents or carriers provide port authorities with cargo manifests, and customs with customs manifest; transport operators or port authorities send forms to their regional or national statistical office; national administrations send statistical information to Eurostat.

Now more and more of this paper is replaced with electronic forms, and transmitted via EDI using the UN-EDIFACT standard. Examples:

• in Spain, about 60% of import consignment information is sent from ship agents to the port authorities via EDI (usage of the IFCSUM message). This figure raises to almost 100% in the ports of Barcelona, Valencia and Bilbao. The information still sent via paper is entered into the EDI system by port authorities or by PORTEL, the national EDI service provider in the maritime sector. This means that at the level of port authorities, 100% of the information is processed automatically.
• in UK and Germany, ship owners and carriers are gradually switching from proprietary systems to standardised UN-EDIFACT exchanges (usage of the CUSCAR message). ITIGG is in charge of the standardised implementation of such operational messages.