Call to action to accelerate digitalisation

Co-signees of ‘Accelerating Digitalisation of Maritime Trade and Logistics: A Call to Action’ are backing a wide-ranging adoption of secure electronic data exchange. To date, only 49 of the 174 Member States of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) possess functioning Port Community Systems.

“The COVID-19 crisis has painfully demonstrated the heterogeneous landscape that currently exists across ports worldwide,” said the Call to Action document. “While some port communities seized the opportunities of the fourth industrial revolution and developed into full-fledged ‘smart’ ports, many others have barely grasped the essentials of digitalisation and continue to struggle with larger reliance on personal interaction and paper-based transactions as the norms for shipboard, ship-port interface and port-hinterland based exchanges.”

The Call to Action was initiated by the International Association of Ports and Harbours (IAPH) and co-signed by nine maritime organisations.

Priorities in the call to action include finding ways of using existing International Maritime Organization’s Facilitation (FAL) Convention requirements to support electronic transmission, receipt, and response of information for all port community-related transactions, making the transition to full-fledged single window systems.

The organisations involved in the call to action also back harmonizing data standards beyond FAL to create additional e-business solutions, share data to optimize port calls as well to effectively deploy resources by logistics providers to handle and clear cargo handling; and striving to introduce Port Community Systems and secure data exchange platforms in IMO Member State ports.

The policy document will now be submitted to the IMO Secretariat in London.