IMIS (Integrated Maritime Information System)

Acronym of the case:

e-Charter

Web address of the case:

http://ecrew.pomorstvo.hr

Country of the case:

Croatia

City/region:

Republic of Croatia

Posting Date:

30 November 2009

Last Edited Date:

30 November 2009

Author:

Bosko Ercegovac (Ministry of the Sea, Transport and Infrastructure)

one-stop-shop | nautica | interoperability

Type of initiative

Project or service

Case Abstract

BUSINESS SITUATION

Following the initiative of Croatian government for increasing efficiency of business processes and therefore reducing the â€žunderground economy" Ministry of the Sea, Transport and Infrastructure has adopted a number of new regulations in the segment of tourism and sailing security.

Purpose of new regulations is to facilitate the work of charter companies and thus to prevent the so-called â€œblack charterâ€,and to improve the government service towards the owners of foreign yachts.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

In order to fulfill the requirements of new laws and regulations, Ministry has recognized the need for information system that will be able to provide electronic support to all business processes related to maritime segment, to facilitate and to increase the transaction flow within the Ministry, as well as towards outside organizations.

Analysis of the existing information system has leaded us to the conclusion that neither the upgrade nor the adjustment of the system would have resulted in achieving the desired results. Furthermore, we have recognized that the software market momentarily does not offer any solution that will be capable of dealing with this specific business issue. Taking these results into the consideration, the only action step left to be taken was to develop and implement a new integrated information system.

Short deadline for system development has created an additional problem dimension. The new system had to be implemented, approved and completely functional for the upcoming tourist season.

Reengineering of business processes, adequate knowledge of maritime business matters as well as the new laws and regulations has enabled the development of a strongly integrated system that is at the same time flexible enough for future upgrades and the connection with other systems. Important segment of Integrated Maritime Information System is the application system called e-Charter.Â

Â Implementation of e-Charter has attained the following results:

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Enabled electronic communication of the Ministry of Sea, Transportation and InfrastructureÂ Â and the business entities

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Ministry's service availability 24 x 7

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Electronic connection among ministries

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â First fully digitalised service in Croatia

Â Benefits of the new system were visible immediately after its implementation:

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Business process performance enhancement

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Better business control over charter companies - extinguishment of â€œblack charterâ€

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Enabled the ability to forecast the tourist season based on the consolidated traffic data review

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Lowered operating costs

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Acceleration of business process

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Enhanced business efficiency of the Ministry and all of the business entities that use the system

Â Results of new system implementation are the following:

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â One-Stop-Shop - business entities are enabled to perform electronic transactions from one place available 24 x 7

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Electronic support of all Ministry's processes related to registration and monitoring of foreign yachts and charter boats

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Review of consolidated traffic of foreign yachts and charter boats according to various dimensions (financial, geographical, demographicalâ€¦.)

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Created register of charter companies, boats and concession permits for performing charter duties

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Enabled data exchange with the other ministries

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

Services for Businesses | Interoperability | User-centric Services

Sector

Travel, Transports and Motoring

Start date - End date

March 2005 (Ongoing)

Date operational

June 2005

Target Users

Administrative | Business (SME)

Target Users Description

Target users of our system are:

Ministry of Sea, Transportation and Infrastructure
Ministry of Internal affairs
Ministry of Finance, Tax offices
1224 charter companies
Croatian National Turistic Board

Ministry of Sea, Transportation and Infrastructure requiresÂ information related to maritime safetyÂ in CroatianÂ territorialÂ sea. Ministry needs informationÂ aboutÂ yachts andÂ data about people onboard.

Ministry of Finance requires information related to VAT.

Ministry of Internal Affairs has the goal to protect Croatian territory andÂ to monitor Croatian borders, so they also need to have information aboutÂ yachts and crew onboard those yachts.

Charter companies have legal obligation to collectÂ such data and to provide it to the ministries and to the Croatian National Tourist Board. And they use that data for tourist tax collection.

Scope

National

Status

Operation

Language(s)

Croatian

Policy Context and Legal Framework

The Government of the Republic of Croatia has initiated the One Stop Shop Program to give state administration users the possibility to satisfy all their needs in one place without having to know the competencies within an individual state administrative body or to be familiar with its organisational structure. The Program Strategy establishes a system of strategic, tactic and operational plans for implementing the Program. The document portrays the vision, mission and goals that rely on an efficient application of information and communications technologies and the state administration reform. It recognises the basic principles of information security, interoperability, openness (especially the application of open standards), flexibility and scalability, which are a basis for building modern state administration information systems.

The program aims at increasing the efficiency,Â efectiveness, flexibility and transparency of state administration, which can only be done by a systematic transformation of business processes.

A common architecture of information systems has been described in view of the basic principles and requirements which combines the existing information resources and makes it easily adaptable to future modifications of business processes. The goals and strategic principles of the One Stop Shop Program comply entirely with the programs for reforming and improving the work quality of state administration in the European Union and the developmental goals of an information society. The Program thus contributes to Croatiaâ€™s fulfilment of the tasks it took over under the Stabilisation and Association Agreement.

One of the goals of the Project e-Croatia is to establish an e-State Administration, which is also an important constituent for developing an information society in the Republic of Croatia. The purpose of e-State Administration is to ensure interoperability of state administration information systems in such a waythat information can flow freely between state administrative bodies and public institutions so that enterprises, citizens and civil servants would not have to repeat the same actions and verify the same information. Such organization is necessary in order to raise the quality of state administration services and increase its efficiency and purposefulness.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

IT infrastructures and products

Overall Implementation approach

Public administration

Technology choice

Standards-based technology

Funding source

Public funding national

Project size

Implementation: €49-299,000

Yearly cost:

€1-49,000

Implementation and Management Approach

IMPLEMENTATION

Implementation has been taking place simultaneously with the development process. This strategy enabled the immediate testing of concepts and models in the real environment. Needed adjustments were minimal and were mostly related to the reporting system for the reason of new system functionalities that have increased the need and demand for new reports.

After the completion of implementation process, the system was monitored, measured and optimized for web transactions in order to achieve higher performance quality and greater speed.

INFORMATION SECURITY

Extremely significant aspect of the new system was its security as well as the security of all of its transactions. It was necessary to design and implement an adequate protection of all Ministry's business data and the personal data of citizens using the system.

Special attention has been dedicated to the security aspect, especially for the part of the system that is implemented to work through the web. Security has been resolved on few levels:

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Special location and configuration of the Ministryâ€™s network server, which decreased the potential risk of unwanted entrance into the system to the minimum

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â client communication with the server goes through the security channel (SSL) by using the digitally certified server

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â registration and authentication of users using digitally certified Smart cards, which enables a high level of identity determination and user responsibility

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â digitally signing documents using digitally certified Smart cards which secures the validity and integrity of the document's content

vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Certification of system's users is managed by RBAC (Role Based access Control) which enables defining the limited set offunctionalities and data that each user is allowed to access. This is applied on the report system and thus the potential risk of dana abuse is decreased to the minimum.

Â SYSTEM'S STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES AND SUCESS FACTORS

Enable the electronic monitoring of all business processes related to charter boats and foreign yachts
Speed up business processes related to charter boats and foreign yachts between the Ministry and the outside organizations
Decrease the Ministry's amount of daily administration
Enable the outside organizations to independently and electronically perform all transactions with the Ministry
Provide the consolidated data for the entire Croatia in real-time
Communicate with the other government bodies and exchange data
Provide 24 x 7 service availabilityÂ

Technology solution

TECHNOLOGY

Microsoft technology has been used for development of IMIS system. User already had needed infrastructure for serving and using MS applications.

IMIS system has been created in layer architecture, using the following:

SQL Server 2000 (data base)
.NET Framework (business logic)
ASP.NET (user interface)
Reporting Services (reports)
XML Web Services (communication with other systems)

e-Charter system is used on 80 distributed Ministryâ€™s locations.

tehnological platform

System has been developed as a set of web applications located on the Ministryâ€™s servers, accessible through the Ministryâ€™s intranet or the web.

This solved the demand for a unique and integrated view on the systemâ€™s data and the availability of the data on any of the Ministryâ€™s location. Charter companies have access to set of functionalities over the web, with the security of the preformed transaction.

According to the standardized indicators set by theÂ eEurope 2005 Action Plan, e-Charter system complies with the highest 4th level , therefore onÂ July 2005 first fully digitalized serviceÂ has been established in Croatia.Â

Impact, innovation and results

Economic effects

Larger than €10,000,000

Impact

Charter companies:

Â·Â Â Â Â Ability to conduct business has been increased to 24 hours a day and does not depend on the working hours of government offices

Â·Â Â Â Â Business in the area of communication with goverment has been accelerated for more than 20 times

Â·Â Â Â Â Abiliy to focus and spend more time on core business functions

Â·Â Â Â Â The operating expenses have been significantly reduced

Â·Â Â Â Â Number of charter companies raised from 150 in year 2005 to 1300 in year 2009

Â·Â Â Â Â Number of turists in using nautical charter services rised up to 30%

Government:

Croatian government has significantly increased budget income from VAT from charter companies. Before introduction of the new system, Croatian budget losses were estimated to be 30.000.000 euroÂ due to â€žgrey charterâ€œ.

Track record of sharing

We have shared this case with Croatian public sector, and the result was increase in confidence related to Croatian strategy for e-Croatia, and initiation of new one-stop-shop projects.

This system was presented at various conferences in Croatia, and also in Tunis at The World Summit on the Information Society in year 2005.

ThereÂ a video presentation onÂ Croatian government web site related to this project :

Â http://www.vlada.hr/hr/multimedija_i_fotogalerije/video/informativni_i_promotivni_tv_spotovi/e_nautika

Lessons learnt

IT experts, along withÂ field experts from the Ministry ofÂ Sea, Transportation and Infrastructure completed the project in less than three months. Reengeneering of business processes was completed duringÂ the same period with adoption ofÂ new legislation in the segment of sailing security. With such approach, IT system perfectly fitted within the new organization, because IT experts were team members from the begining of the project.

Projects that have relatively small cost and great benefit for business and governemnt can be completed in short time. However, expertise and strongÂ support of all stakeholders (government and nautical business companies) is necessary.

SME business in Croatia isÂ willing to accept and use new technologies, and this way of conducting business with government. SME business companies implementing such new technologies are capable of their implementation in aÂ very short term - just 3 months.

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practice IMIS (Integrated Maritime Information System)