ITIGG

ITIGG is an international group of experts engaged in the development and implementation of UN/EDIFACT standard messages for electronic trading in the transport industry.
ITIGG is a sub-group of TBG3, the UN/EDIFACT Message Development Group for Transport. ITIGG develops recommendations which provide software developers with a series of simple, straightforward tools to assist in designing applications which can be used for trading electronically throughout the world, and to clarify the intentions of the designers of key UN/EDIFACT messages. In the longer term the group aims to harmonise messages used in the transport sector, so that the same message specifications can be used anywhere in the world. 

The development of UN/EDIFACT messages in the Transport sector in the late 1980"s initiated the formation of a global EDI standards organisation and this development has continued to progress from the inception of the UN/EDIFACT standard to the present time. Message structures, essential to the use of electronic commerce in the transport sector have been agreed and approved by the relevant United Nations and local authorities, have been implemented by various communities around the world over the past ten years.

These existing implementations have, in most cases, developed in isolation and this has resulted in differing interpretations of the standard messages. In turn this has resulted in a lack of international synergy with regard to the use of codes, qualifiers, data elements, composites, segments, groups of segments and even the messages themselves.

The UN/EDIFACT Message Development Group for Transport (TBG3) has recognised that this lack of synergy represents a serious inhibitor to the growth of global electronic commerce. Interested members of the Transport Group formed an informal group to harmonise known message implementation guides and user manuals and to provide a basis for intending implementers to proceed with confidence.

This group formally established itself in 1995 as the International Transport Implementation Guidelines Group (ITIGG).

ITIGG realised its major objective of compiling and issuing a document which provides the principles and rules for the international implementation of electronic messages in the transport industry. ITIGG has thus produced harmonised guidelines for all modes of transport (maritime, air, road, rail and other means of inland transport) through consistent recommendations which apply across all modes. Through TBG3 ITIGG is actively participating in the UN/CEFACT process of comparing and harmonising segment usage between different industry sectors.

For additional information please contact the SMDG secretariat.