For the last two decades, the United State has invested considerable resources in making specimen data from its collections freely accessible. A key product of this investment has been, and continues to be, development of data management programs that make sharing occurrence data easier. One of these, Symbiota, continues to be freely available. This availability has enabled herbaria and botanists in many of poor institutions, including some Old Word Countries, to share their data online or to aggregate data from multiple locations for their own research. Doing so has revealed impediments to providing quality data, some of which go beyond the scope of a data management system but need to be addressed if countries with a poor data infrastructure are to become active partners in increasing knowledge about their biodiversity. Some impediments reflect biases in standards such as Darwin Core, for example, use of StateProvince and County for administrative regions. Others reflect the pressures created by the multiplicity of languages that people use, different taxonomic traditions, the cost of educating rapidly growing populations, poorly developed physical and digital infrastructure, and differing cultural traditions. Adopting and adapting new developments in digital technology can assist in overcoming some impediments, but it is also essential to address other impediments such as the lack of a taxonomic tradition and the difficulty of providing quality education to people in dispersed communities as must the frequently encountered lack of understanding of the wide range of skills taxonomists need to acquire. This presentation will highlight some of the impediments we have encountered while working outside the US overseas and approaches we are using, or are proposing to use, to address them.