Shared Responsibility between the Owners of the Vessel and the Agents

Ultimately, the owner of the vessel is responsible for the safety, security, upkeep and well-being of the vessel at all times, although it devolves a certain degree of that responsibility to the agents when the vessel enters port. How-ever, the owners of the vessel equally devolve the responsibility of the reporting of the vessel to different parties depending upon the circumstances of the vessel at a particular point in its voyage. The sailing plans are the responsibility of the master and the crew, as well as any charterparties using the services of that vessel. The reporting mechanisms required for sailing through restricted international waters are the responsibility of the master of the vessel, while the responsibility for declaring the vessel’s arrival at a port are devolved to the ship’s agent at the port in question. In this respect, the vessel’s owner takes little responsibility for the vessel’s activities, other than those basic legal responsibilities required of the owner. The rest is split between the vessel’s master, the agents and perhaps the vessel’s charterer.

There is a requirement, therefore, for a degree of collective responsibility relating to all parties involved, concerning who should accept responsibility for what function. It is unfortunate that the use of electronics for the purpose of vessel monitoring does not allow for in-depth scrutiny of information relating to both the vessel and its contents. Various rules pertaining to the responsibil-ity for various degrees of reporting functions are often overlooked in the interests of expediency, and often do not account for the complete situation concerning the presence of a vessel in a specific location, especially in an international strait or on the approach to a port. If information is not required or specifically requested, it will not be divulged. A major area of anomaly concerns how much information should be divulged by the operators of a vessel, the vessel’s agents or the vessel itself. The net result is that between all these considerations, there is no standardization in the detail or the amount of

information available to the maritime authorities from any vessel. It is ulti-mately this anomaly which needs to be addressed in order to achieve complete control over not only a vessel’s movements but also what it carries for overall security purposes.

There are therefore several anomalies in the marine reporting system which can give rise to breakdowns in communication between the vessel and the national authorities. Many of the anomalies refer to the level of basic informa-tion required by each of the authorities, but the main concern is to what extent maritime security is being prejudiced by the lack of essential information pertaining to not only the vessel itself, but also the cargo it carries. If such details are not adequately reported, then safety or security issues could be severely compromised. In an age of insecurity and uncertainty, such failure to fully report any information relating to the vessel or its cargo engenders an increasing level of risk, which may in turn compromise the level of national security for any nation concerned.

R E F E R E N C E S

Churchill, R.R. and Lowe, A.V., 1999, The Law of the Sea, 3rd edn, Man-chester University Press.

Wilson, J.F., 2004, Carriage of Goods by Sea, Pearson Longman.

Branch, A.E., 2005, Elements of Shipping, Routledge.

The International Maritime Organization, 2004, The ISPS Code, London:

IMO.

The Maritime and Coast Guard Agency On-line, www.mcga.gov.uk, accessed 26 September 2006.

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G L O B A L T R A D E S Y S T E M : D E V E L O P M E N T U P DAT E

Dean L. Kothmann Electronic Data Systems (EDS), USA

Abstract

In 2003, a global trade system was presented to the United Nations. Industry presented a concept for a global trade system that meets the need to improve the logistics processes to handle improving global trade, and at the same time, enhancing global trade security both to and from all participating nations. This concept has progressed to the implementa-tion phase. This chapter is an up date of the progress made, and the future direcimplementa-tion of a global trade system.

1 I N T R O D U C T I O N

Today’s logistics and supply-chain security challenge is to meet the security needs of a nation while improving logistics and growing commerce. The challenge is not just container security, consolidated shipment security, or bulk shipment security, neither is it the sole creation of safe shipping corridors.

It is the ability to engage the world in a global trade, development and security solution that is good for all nations; a solution that does not favour one nation, one port, one vendor, or one individual over another. The challenge is to prepare the world for the near future in which development must occur in third world nations as well. The absence of a robust capacity to filter the illicit from the licit in the face of (a) a heightened terrorist threat environment, and (b) the growing volume of people and goods moving through international trade corridors, places US and global commerce at frequent risk of disruption.

A global trade system demands that more information flows, that it flows faster, and that it becomes more useful as subscribers increase and share information more broadly. In this regard, a global trade system must have the following attributes:

u be available for adoption by all nations;

u apply to all commercial shipments by all modes of transportation;

u be useful to discover all contrabands;

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u be structured to secure global acceptance and use, achieving rapid adoption;

u be universally useful, not designed for one user or a single purpose;

u improve commerce without imposing additional cost;

u significantly reduce delays and improve the speed and effectiveness of commerce;

u provide a global response to deal with any transportation incident requiring global intervention or notification;

u increase the system’s value and enhance security as the data flow increases when more countries adopt the system;

u provide accurate and reliable data to all stakeholders;

u provide information for verification/validation of manifest;

u provide information on tracking of containers and contents; and u be capable of incremental, evolutionary growth with no reduction in

efficiency or effectiveness, from initial implementation to full utilization.

The challenge is therefore to achieve the business benefits described pre-viously. However, the response to this challenge has been to focus on technol-ogy to solve the problem with less emphasis on the business drivers.

Essentially, this is a business process innovation requiring realignment of processes and reallocation of people. The technology is in the role of support-ing the defined business change.

2 O V E RV I E W O F C U R R E N T G L O B A L T R A D E S Y S T E M S

Current global trade systems fall into three categories:

u government sponsored or built systems in the highly industrialized nations;

u privately built, profit-making vertical systems; and u private stakeholder and value added network systems.

The global trade system offers a fourth approach, a shared consortium-based, mutually beneficial, infrastructure approach.

2.1 Nation-Sponsored/Supported Systems