UN/LOCODE: making a public good even better

With more than 100,000 entries and a community of users from 249 countries, dependent territories and special areas, the United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations (UN/LOCODE) is a public good that needs to be preserved, maintained and improved.

UN/LOCODE is used to identify ports, airports, inland clearance depots, inland freight terminals as well as other transport related locations and plays an essential role in international trade transactions. For example, its use is either recommended or required by several international organizations/agreements, such as the World Customs Organization (in their data model), the International Maritime Organization Global Integrated Shipping Information System (GISIS) and by the European Maritime Safety Agency. In 2014, the UNECE website dedicated to UN/LOCODE counted some 800’000 hits from non-duplicate users.

The UNECE secretariat develops and maintains UN/LOCODE as a service to governments in the framework of its trade facilitation efforts. Since its first release in 1981, UN/LOCODE’s entries have increased significantly. In 2014 alone, the secretariat received more than 8’000 requests for new location codes and modifications to existing location codes.

Handling this large number of requests is a very resource-intensive activity and with the limited resources available within the UN, it is a real challenge to maintain good data quality and to manage communications with the more than 4000 registered users from both the public and private sectors.

In order to response to these and other key challenges for UN/LOCODE maintenance and use, more than 40 countries, international organizations and private sector organizations met in Geneva on 24 April 2015.   Resulting, concrete proposals for supporting the maintenance and improvement of UN/LOCODE, include: institutionalization of the role of National Focal Points; the establishment of official terms of reference for UN/LOCODE National Focal Points; and a decision to update the latest version of UNECE Recommendation No.16 (1998) which defines UN/LOCODE and makes recommendations for its maintenance and use. A call was also made for all interested stakeholders to participate in this work.