The Centre for the Facilitation of Administration, Commerce, and Trade (CEFACT) provides the 55 Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) members as well as non-ECE members and the private sector a formal say in the development of EDIFACT and other programs as they relate to worldwide trade protocols. CEFACT is the UN organization coordinating policies and technical development to facilitate trade and electronic business. Working with the International Standards Organization (ISO), CEFACT designed EDIFACT in 1986, and the protocol was formally adopted as a global standard in 1987. UN/EDIFACT is independent of any specific industry, country, or region.
The first organizations to adopt the standard, according to the Journal of Commerce, were those entities with the highest stake in international trade, particularly multinational corporations who were primarily concerned with conducting smooth, international, intra-firm transactions. Over time, the adoption of EDIFACT spread through these companies' supply chains and into their transactions with governmental, insurance, and banking organizations.
CEFACT in 1990 announced its official definition of UN/EDIFACT, which states that its rules for EDI "comprise a set of internationally agreed standards, directories and guidelines for the electronic interchange of structured data, and in particular that related to trade in goods and services between independent, computerized information systems."
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