OASIS has received a proposal from several members for a technical committee to develop standards for controlled trade. Chaired by Todd Harbour of FGM, the group will address new "challenges in managing transfers of sensitive and strategic goods in order to help governments share information and protect the transport of sensitive goods." The purpose of the proposed Controlled Trade Markup Language (CTML) Technical Committee is "to develop a unified trade control vocabulary that supports an international collection of business documents (e.g., trade applications, cases, licenses, delivery verification certificates, etc.) through the extension and expansion of an existing XML vocabulary. The TC will concentrate on building standards in the areas of controlled trade, import, export, and transit licensing, sanctions, commodity classification, internal control programs and export management systems." The standards will also "allow industry, nongovernmental organizations, and governments to unambiguously identify the essential business and legal documents to be exchanged in particular business contexts and geographic locales."

From the (draft) Introduction:

"The CTML standards will be open, vendor neutral, application independent and incorporate national authorities world-wide. The CTML TC will concentrate on building standards in the areas of controlled trade, import, export, and transit licensing, sanctions, commodity classification, internal control programs and export management systems. The CTML TC will advocate and establish relationships with other groups working on similar and complementary activities to do joint work in an 'open' process in order to avoid duplicity and confusion..."

CTML Design Approach: "[1] Collect and use input from real world users, applications and experts (e.g., U.K., U.S., Estonia, Poland, etc.). [2] Collect and use valuable input from other controlled trade standard initiatives around the world (e.g., EU, NSG, CWC, Wassenaar Regime). [3] Conduct a detailed analysis of international controlled trade information to serve as baseline vocabulary. [4] The development of CTML information will hopefully take less than a year because of solid work previously accomplished."

From the proposal and draft charter:

The end of the Cold War opened new opportunities for international trade, but it also created new challenges to managing transfers of sensitive and strategic goods. The risk of unauthorized sales of strategic items increased as traditional control systems broke down and the number of governmental and private entities with possible access to such items increased. Compounding matters, technological developments, like the Internet, now permit industry to increase the speed and efficiency of its electronic trading processes, requiring improved government-industry cooperation at all levels. However, there is no single, unified, and open means for government and industry to share information in a structured and meaningful manner. Now, more than ever, both government and industry need to improve their data sharing capabilities so that industry remains competitive and so that governments can protect truly sensitive goods.

The purpose of the Trade Control Markup Language (CTML) Technical Committee (TC) is to develop a unified trade control vocabulary that supports an international collection of business documents (e.g., trade applications, cases, licenses, delivery verification certificates, etc.) through the extension and expansion of an existing XML vocabulary. A goal of our work will be to incorporate the best features of other XML business vocabularies and provide a clearly articulated interface to other mutually supporting specifications. In the end, the CTML specification is intended to become an international standard for controlled trade activities, and together with other XML specifications, allow industry, nongovernmental organizations, and governments to unambiguously identify the essential business and legal documents to be exchanged in particular business contexts and geographic locales (i.e., country).

Furthermore, the CTML will align its vocabulary and structures with the vocabulary and structures of other OASIS libraries (like Unified Business Language, Business Transactions, and Customer Information Quality) and implement a mechanism for the generation of context-specific schemas for basic business documents and their components through the application of transformation rules to a common XML source library.

The specification will be open to everyone without licensing or other fees.