Multilateral exchange

Exchange of statistics and / or metadata between a sending and several receiving organisations for a specific Dataflow where all parties agree on all aspects of the exchange (including the mechanism for exchange, the formats, the frequency or schedule).

This exchange process has the effect of reducing the burden of a sending organisation of managing multiple unique bilateral exchanges of statistics and / or metadata with several receiving organisations. This is also a very common exchange process in the statistical area, where communities of national and international institutes agree on ways to gain efficiencies within the scope of their collective responsibilities.

Apart from multilateral exchange, the SDMX initiative identifies two other basic forms of exchange of statistics and metadata between organisations, i.e. bilateral exchange and data-sharing exchange.

SDMX, "Metadata Common Vocabulary", 2009