One indirect benefit is facilitation of delivery of transportation services, which helps ensure freedom of transport and facility of trade, because transportation is the lubricant that does that. The question of protecting confidentiality obstructs our ability to harmonize data. Commercially sensitive or proprietary information is a barrier. Analysts will also prevent us from being able to harmonize. We cannot underestimate domestic barriers.
Problems exist at the national level in collecting data, some of which stem from lack of funding.
I would establish a process to manage the system. The first action should be to identify the low-hanging fruit we can pick up, particularly with regard to developing countries. Transportation activity is increasingly carried out in the private sector in electronic form. Some of these data are treated as special assets, but there may be opportunities to sample them. One barrier is not knowing the real quality of these data.