Abstract

While in today?s world economy international trade volumes increase constantly, financial, health and security concerns increase as well, resulting in two conflicting forces. It is the interest of businesses and government to solve the paradox of increasing government control in international trade, while at the same time reducing the administrative overhead for commercial as well as public administration organization. Solving these challenges may require a shift in mindset, in working practices and underlying assumptions and in roles and responsibilities of the involved actors.

The objective of the EU-funded ITAIDE project is to streamline Customs procedures using IT. The overall theme of the workshop is therefore to discuss innovations in e-Customs and the adoption thereof.

Workshop objective

The workshop is organized as a combination of presentations and a discussion. Both activities focus on organizational and technological challenges that national Tax and Customs Administrations face when implementing e-Customs. The objective of the workshop is to stimulate a discussion between stakeholders involved in e-Customs. Reflecting the organization of ITAIDE, the workshop will include the following stakeholders:

• Living labs will demonstrate two studies of challenges in international trade, and suggested organizational and technological e-Customs innovations to tackle these challenges in collaboration between private and public sector organizations.
• A technology provider specializing in Enterprise Resource Planning and interoperability will discuss how a technology provider can help solve the interoperability issues for e-Government.
• Representatives from academia working on the development of robust methodologies for implementation of the ideas stemming from the project will be invited for discussions.

Background of the ITAIDE project

The ITAIDE project aims to develop technological, procedural and organizational frameworks to analyze, understand and innovate e-Customs. The use of standards, systems and semantics interoperability, the use of commercial processes to facilitate government controls and partnerships between the public and private sectors are key elements in achieving strategic e-Customs goals such as the introduction of Authorized Economic Operators and Single Window for businesses.

ITAIDE develops technological, procedural and organizational tools to improve the efficiency and simplification of e-Customs procedures. We are developing the e3-control procedure analysis and redesign methodology, a methodological tool that supports the redesign process of control procedures. To encourage the adoption of these redesigned procedures by Tax and Customs Administrations, businesses and technology providers, it should be the result of a truly collaborative co-design process that creates win-win benefits for all these stakeholders. This requires new public-private partnerships between Tax and Customs Administrations and businesses. The project will develop a network collaboration model to build these new public-private partnerships.

Benefits for workshop participants

We wish to trigger a discussion on e-Customs that goes beyond the ITAIDE project. After a short workshop introduction, two of ITAIDE?s living labs will be presented as large scale e-Government case studies to examine. Next, an external view will be given on the two living labs, focusing on reducing administrative burden and fighting financial fraud. In an open discussion participants can then reflect on adoption of these and other e-Government initiatives, and consider issues including (1) adoption barriers, (2) interoperability in business-to-government setting and (3) reducing administrative burden vs. the need for control. It is the aim to trigger a discussion on implementing e-Customs innovation. The 90 minutes workshop will end with a summary of the insights gained.

The workshop?s target group includes representatives from the private sector (businesses), public sector (government) and academia, reflecting the multi-faceted nature of e-Government initiatives.

Workshop agenda