The tasks involved filling out forms and depositing myriad documents, as required by a range of port-sector entities in different countries, had always been onerous and annoyingly repetitive. The time spent by crew doing paperwork for a ship to enter and use port services lengthened vessel calls; created port congestion; and effectively slowed global commerce.
“I discovered that any vessel entering Barbados had to produce… at that time, I believe it was close to 20 forms. And a lot of those were copies. They were distributed at different agencies. So, we set out on this mission to solve this problem,” said Rommel Edwards, Digital Innovation and Development Manager at the Port of Bridgetown. He, among others, made their comments in a panel discussion at the recent (June 28, 2023) annual meeting of the Port Management Association of the Caribbean held in Antigua.
The first moves to rectify this situation came with digitalisation. After years of review and amendments, an updated FAL (to enhance the free flow of trade by ship) called for the establishment of systems for the electronic exchange of information by April 2019. The new requirements which came into effect on April 8, 2019 “required national governments to introduce electronic information exchange between ships and ports. The maritime single window is recommended.” There was a proposal to make the Maritime Single Window (MSW) mandatory, as pointed out by Wayne Mykoo of Antigua and Barbuda Department of Marine Services and Merchant Shipping.
A small number of Caribbean territories have moved to establish an MSW and to further digital Port Community Systems, but progress towards this end has not been impressive. It certainly has not impressed Pascal Ollivier, Chairman of the International Association on Ports and Harbors Data Collaboration Committee and the founding chairman of the International Port Community System Association.
“Lagging behind – big time!” was how Ollivier described the progress of digitalisation in the Caribbean, mentioning the release of a road map to digitalisation two years ago.
He said that only a few countries in the Caribbean have port community systems (PCS). The French territories have had PCS for 20 years. St. Maarten, St. Kitts and Nevis, Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago are implementing, or have signed a contract for procurement, and Barbados is working on it.
“But why are we so late in other countries? And where are we with cyber security?”
In response to his own rhetorical questions, Pascal Ollivier made two points related to the capabilities and effectiveness of the human assets that collectively make the port function.
“One reason why the Caribbean is lagging in implementation of systems is that we are lacking skills and new talent,” he said, further adding that, “With digitalisation we need to re-skill people. This creates new opportunities for people, often in areas that they never thought about.”
Human asset
Commenting on the human aspect as Barbados took its initial steps to building an effective PCS, Edwards said: “… you can develop some of the best tools out there, but if you have not involved your end users; if there’s not end-user buy-in; if there’s no management buy-in, then it will fail and not because of the technology, but because of the human aspect.
“Knowing this, when we started the PCS, we knew it was a very large project, especially one to take on… on your own. And so, in collaboration with the Caribbean Development Bank who then enlisted our dear friends at the Organization of American States, who then enlisted our dear friends at Hudson, we addressed that human aspect. We addressed that buy-in. We addressed that sensitisation and there were several meetings… around 50… with just about every possible stakeholder we could identify, over several months. So, we were able to overcome that initial friction and now we have most people waiting to see the PCS and waiting for it to be in action. We have already had people using the Maritime Single Window. So that investment in buy-in; that investment in your end user; that is critical.”
Andrew Baskin of HudsonAnalytix commented that the impact of digitalisation on port workers and other human assets comes up for discussion in situations where his organisation is digitalising operations and processes and, in some cases, automating them.
“The fact still remains that the most important asset that we have at any port is the people; the humans who work at the port. Ongoing digitalising has an effect on them. So, the question is, how do we manage that effect? How do we do this such that everyone benefits?
Opportunity, benefit, challenge
“First, we can talk about an opportunity, a benefit and a challenge.
“The opportunity I think almost everyone has talked about this week is training, or, in some cases, retraining… ensuring that training is skills-based; that it aligns with the technologies that we’re implementing; and, gives current workers and then also future port workers the opportunity to have the skills necessary to do their jobs. It’s not a lack of talent. It’s not a lack of human capital… lack of ability. It’s simply the need for opportunities for the acquisition of the skills that are necessary.
“Next then is the clear benefit that we’ve seen and this is as we move from sort of physical strength to skill among port workers. We’re seeing that port workers don’t have to be close to two metres tall and burly. And because of that, this creation of equal opportunities… first of all, from specifically a gender perspective and then, more broadly, from an accessibility perspective… means that there is a larger pool of human capital that can contribute positively to a port’s performance. And that makes every port better, right? A larger pool of human capital, more people who can apply their skills and their talents makes our ports better.
“But what we’ve learned (the challenge) is… we can’t ignore the fact that some workers are simply, for whatever reason, not going to adapt to this evolution. It’s just a fact of our lives. But we have to make sure that they can choose to ‘not adapt’ and make that choice with some dignity. That could mean early retirement, company buyouts, whatever the case may be, but ensure that anyone who chooses not to, for whatever reason, go through this process of adapting their skills to this evolution, that they can do it in a dignified manner.”
Data and cybersecurity
While the port’s number one asset is the people, the second most important asset is its data, said Max Bobys, Vice President and Practice Leader at HudsonCyber. In this regard, he noted a tendency to shunt responsibility for cyber-risk management to the IT Manager.
“When we talk about cybersecurity, really, we’re not just talking about IT systems.
IT systems are very technical. And, oftentimes, what happens is the leaders in the organization will defer all responsibility for cyber-risk management to the IT manager. And that’s not fair to the IT manager because it is a balance sheet risk. It’s a risk that you have to manage that is organisation-wide, and putting all that responsibility – whether it’s directed or implied or assumed is not fair to those individuals.”
From a fiduciary perspective, it is not the IT manager’s responsibility to manage risks to the company’s balance sheet, he argued.
“So, it’s about organisational change, transformation, and the most effective, most cyber-mature organisations are the ones that have top-down leadership. They cover every aspect of an organisation and they involve every key leader in that business… about how they touch digital assets, how they create those assets, how they manage, shape, exchange, store and use and process that data,” Max Bobys said.