ICT: An Enabler For Transformation

The Port of Mauritius wishes to establish itself as a preferred maritime gateway. What is the technological infrastructure is needed to attain and surpass this objective?

The vision of establishing itself as a preferred maritime gateway is what all Governments are aspiring to achieve but as of November 2020, only 49 of the 174 member states of the International Maritime Organization possess functioning Port Community Systems (PCS’s)— with higher income countries making up the majority of those that do have Port Community Systems in place. The delay in introduction poses a risk to the business continuity during subsequent waves of the pandemic, along with a further risk over a slightly longer period, which would result from the development of a two-tier system, with laggards facing increased costs for the import and export of merchandise trade.

We need to have a clear approach towards embracing the digitisation of the port and the logistics supply chain. Industry stakeholders concerned with maritime trade and logistics should come together and accelerate the pace of digitisation so that the port community can at minimum offer a basic package of electronic commerce and data exchange.

There is also the need for the necessary policy reform as digitisation is not just a matter of technology but, more importantly, of change management, data collaboration, capacity building, accompanying legislation and jurisdiction as well as political commitment. In the midst of the pandemic, infrastructure developments and investments should align in keeping supply chains moving and economies functioning to ensure multimodal flows of vital medical and food supplies, critical agricultural products, energy streams, and other goods and services to reach their intended destinations in time.

Investment should be made in a sound IT infrastructure development to seize the opportunities found in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and drive the sector towards Industry 4.0 powered by the Industrial Internet of Things that brings about several operational effectiveness outcomes such as increased productivity, improved port efficiency, asset uptime and quality, reduced operational risks and overhead costs, enhanced security, lower emissions and monitor predictive and increasingly preventative maintenance.

Connectivity, ubiquitous access to information and AI driven processes in real time should prevail to steer our maritime industry into a fully-fledged smart port infrastructure.

How can Mauritius become an inspiring example model in terms of Smart Port ?

Research and development (R&D) has always been at the heart of innovation, technological provides powerful knowledge and insights into new product markets, service delivery and can improve the whole logistics chain in a port ecosystem where efficiency can be increased and costs reduced hence bringing growth. Oracle in 2020 and SAP in 2019 have invested €6.07 billion and €4.29 billion in R&D respectively.

I believe that R&D should be an integral part of a port’s business strategy and can be an important enabler for digitisation to a smart port infrastructure. Mauritius is ideally situated through its geographic position and location attractiveness to become a future hub for the region.

The Digital Dividend to be reaped from a smart port is multi fold including opportunities to accelerate growth, generate jobs, reduce turnaround time, lower transaction costs, better the environment, drive a circular economy, the blue economy and improve services.

To become a showcase as a smart port certain pertinent issues, need to be addressed thus. It is observed that opportunities are often missed or delayed as businesses and public authorities are either screened from innovation or face challenges to implementation. The typical bottlenecks are institutional or regulatory obstacles, the lack of domain expertise and a misalignment in stakeholder’s vision to bring about the changes.

A high level of integration between devices, agents and activities as well as a clear process is key for the deployment of a smart port. Alongside there should be a robust connectivity backbone with very low latency, high availability, secure interoperability and inbuilt knowledge based capabilities. This configuration shall drive a new ecosystem in the port industry where productivity, efficiency and growth prevails – one where being on the outside presents a significant disadvantage for port and country.

As remote access, wireless connectivity and data transmission is of the essence in a smart infrastructure, cybersecurity is one of the major challenges facing the maritime industry. In 2017, the ransomware – a virus that blocks access to your data or threatens to publish it unless ransom is paid – cyber-attack NotPetya on the shipping giant Maersk costs, the company $300 million bringing down their whole IT infrastructure for 10 days affecting 4,000 servers, 45,000 PC’s and 2,500 applications! Policymakers need to work with the private sector to ensure that this critical infrastructure is adequately protected and that there are proper procedures in place for cyber risk management and control.