UN/CEFACT Symposium on Single Window Standards and Interoperability

Geneva, 3-5 May 2006

Palais des Nations

Single Window Implementation

Experience of FinlandRolf Bäckström, Finnish Maritime Administration

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Background

There were 6-8 mandatory forms to be completed manually at ship port arrivals and departures in the beginning of 90’ies

Form content was identical to about 80% Forms were largely distributed by letter, fax or

courier to the Custom’s, Maritime, Ports Administration, Port Authority, etc.

About 50 relevant actors from the port environment were invited to participate to develop a new scheme

UNECE UN/CEFACT

The first lead agency was the Ministry of Telecommunication

The first step was to develop a single paper form, accepted by all actors

A study was conducted to determine the actual benefits of an electronic solution

FMA already had two ongoing parallel SW projects for pilots and for icebreakers, supporting a similar concept

Design and development process 1(3)

UNECE UN/CEFACT

The first PortNet, to collect notices into a common database, was developed in 1993

PortNet was operated with VT100 dumb terminals into an IBM mainframe with a RDBMS database – a massive overkill!

There were about 200 daily data providers, with no useful feedback from PortNet

PortNet use was voluntary but encouraged by a 1% discount in charges of some ports

Design and development process 2(3)

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Y2K problems, as well the extremely high cost of any changes, brought about a total redesign of PortNet 1998-99

In 2000 a XML & web user interface based new PortNet was taken into use

PortNet 2 is now in the works, planned to be introduced in late 2008

FMA is the lead agency since year 2000

Design and development process 3(3)

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Advance notice on the arrival of a ship given 24 h before the arrival: EU ship monitoring directive 93/75/EEC, Custom’s decree (national) THT 194/2003,

Security notice given by the ship before arrival (ISPS): IMO, Finnish law 1.6.2004/485

IMO general declaration regarding the arrival of a ship into port (IMO/FAL Form 1): EU Directive 2002/6/EU

Structure and services 1(4)

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Fairway tax notice as a consequence of the port call: Finnish law on fairway taxes, 2006

Cargo declaration notice for arriving or departing cargo attached to the port call (cargo manifest that meets regulations issued by the Custom’s concerning the presentation of the cargo to the Customs): EU Customs code (EU) Nr 2913/92

Structure and services 2(4)

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Notice on the arrival and the departure of dangerous cargo: Regulations from IMO as well as the EU directive 2002/59/EC.

Cargo information for official import and export statistics: Finnish law regarding the Maritime Administration, 939/2003

PortNet issues a Custom’s reference ID code to be carried along throughout the port call

Structure and services 3(4)

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Terminal notices regarding imports and exports. The notice regarding exports is based upon the Custom’s decree THT 182/2004

DG notification to the port, enabling the port to issue an official dangerous goods reception permission into that particular port

Waste notification regarding ship generated waste: EU Directive 2000/59/EC

Many other services available

Structure and services 4(4)

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Technology

COTS equipment, tailored software, Oracle Data may be sent by the ship agent either by a

the web interface or by XML/EDI file transfer Handling legacy systems:

o There were no other potential legacy systems than EDI

o Standard EDI messages are accepted: CUSCAR, CUSREP and IFTDGN

o The PortNet Web GUI

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Participants

The principal data providers are the ship agents

VTS, lines men, pilots, ports, etc. update the timetable information during the process

Terminal arrival data are provided by transport companies

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Clients

The principal data users are the authorities: Custom’s, FMA, Border Guard and the ports

Ship agents may also re-use the data to provide reports, statistics or simply as a base for creating new similar notices

Data is used by numerous other actors

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Business model

The Custom’s, FMA and the 20 largest ports presently own the system and pay for it

The total accumulated cost is about 1,2 mill. € Annual development cost is about 100.000 €/a

and running cost is about 100.000 €/a No user fees are carried, costs are embedded

in the fairway tax PortNet is considered to be national

infrastructure

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Results 1(6)

Dependency is very high and PortNet outages cause massive user response

Custom’s has combined Single Window and One Stop Shop concepts successfully

Custom’s does not store documents anymore on field level, as opposed to min. one fax + 8 copies per ship call before - a huge reduction

Custom’s clearance can be made fully electronic (trusted clients only)

PortNet covers 99% of the traffic (1% = domestic ship traffic)

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Results 2(6)

Fairway tax is calculated on the basis of the received ship and cargo data and the decision is promulgated using PortNet

Data for official port import and export statistics are provided with 1 month turnaround time

The port call specific Custom’s reference code has proved very useful

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Results 3(6)

Major ports use data as input for port charge invoicing

One major shipping company declared that their annual fax count fell from 15000 to 360, relieving three persons to other duties

PortNet provides direct input to the EMSA SafeSeaNet system without involving any other actors

40000 port call notices are received annually 70000 cargo notices are received annually

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Results 4(6)

A single cargo notice may contain up to 900 cargo lots

15000 Dangerous cargo notices are received annually

70% of the data, however, is sent from a handful of users, using XML file transfer

The amount of cargo to/from Finnish ports is close to 100 million tonnes

Nearly one million TEUs are handled

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Results 5(6)

PortNet has about 2000 registered users and 1000 daily users

Even if notices are sent by file transfer, all notices have to be addressed using the web-interface as well - the actor issuing the notice has to confirm the correctness of the notice which the Custom’s formally acknowledges

We are prepared to implement the planned new EU Custom’s implementation provisions and the planned new EU Customs code

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Results 6(6)

The port security procedure ISPS is easy to implement using PortNet

The quality of data has improved considerably with data editing facilities and the provision of a ship and dangerous cargo code lookup database within PortNet

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Data Exchange

EDI CUSCAR, CUSREP, IFTDGN messages XML messages, generically developed from

the above, have identical content to EDI Numerous other XML message types are

developed by us, but free for common use Cross border data exchange is implemented

through the ship agents, required by law to reside in Finland – PortNet is a national system

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Legal issues 1(2)

The collection and distribution of this data is partly based upon existing law

The only real legal issues we have dealt with concern the legal ownership of PortNet - the problem is that there are public as well as municipal and private ports as partners

Having unofficial status, the PortNet community cannot own PortNet, hence it is temporarily owned by the operator

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Legal issues 2(2)

Data is strongly compartmented by user management procedures:o An agent can access only his own datao A port can access only his own traffic to/from his

porto Authorities may see all data, partly only in read-

only modeo Time table data is open for all

The advent of ISPS will ultimately make PortNet solely government owned

UNECE UN/CEFACT

Lessons learned

We strongly feel that we are on the right track Commit all the major actors financially Establish and streamline collection and storing

of data, only then start to refine the services The key success factors:

o Cooperation between authoritieso Agreement on the process to be implementedo Legislation or statutes to enforce and support

mandatory reportingo Shared financing

UNECE UN/CEFACT

What are your future plans for the Single Window?

Realise the new PortNet 2o Develop the terminal notice feature furthero Implement the new EU Custom’s requirements

including the new electronic standard manifesto Connect to PortNet-like services in other countries,

if and when they develop (EU BaSIM and EU TEN-T MOS projects)

o Develop multimodal extension features with the advent of the new EU Customs directive

o Develop an implementation of the container security initiative (CSI) in the feeder ports

UNECE UN/CEFACT

The biggest challenges for Single Window Interoperability

Overarching telematic architecture - at least two levels, including the logical level?

What data sets should be exchanged, in which format and using which interfaces?

The concept should be developed into standards and enforced at e.g. EU level

It concerns many otherwise unconnected actors, even on EU level, but who should take the initiative and the lead?

UNECE UN/CEFACT

UNECE UN/CEFACT