BIMCO, in collaboration with a range of industry stakeholders, has announced plans to launch a principle-based industry Declaration on Shared Principles for Maritime Digitalisation and Harmonised Information Exchange, that will provide a shared reference for stakeholders across the maritime ecosystem and promote more consistent implementation of digital systems worldwide.
The move is the result of a recent industry workshop in Copenhagen in collaboration with ITS Norway and the DYNAPORT project to explore how the maritime sector can accelerate digital interface harmonisation across ship-to-shore stakeholders.
Bringing together 45 representatives from shipping companies, ports, authorities, and technology vendors, discussions centred on three interconnected themes shaping future maritime digital exchange.
These included business value as an adoption driver, focusing on how clear commercial benefits can accelerate convergence around digital systems. Participants also addressed data and systems alignment, including information payloads, semantics, and transport mechanisms needed to enable interoperability, alongside trust in a global ecosystem to handle identity, authentication, and governance across multiple stakeholders and jurisdictions.
Across these themes, a strong consensus emerged that while significant progress has been made in defining frameworks and standards, the core challenge now lies in consistent implementation.
The workshop highlighted three critical insights for the industry. First, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Compendium was consistently recognised as the essential reference point for maritime digitalisation, providing alignment on definitions and meaning to act as a common language across stakeholders, though it is not intended to serve as a technical or operational blueprint.
Second, the industry is converging on federated approaches rather than pursuing centralised platforms. These federated architectures enable existing systems to interoperate while preserving flexibility, allowing stakeholders to connect without needing to replace established systems.
Third, trust frameworks are critical to scaling data exchange. Secure, scalable international data exchange depends on robust approaches to identity, authentication, and trust, which must be underpinned by clear governance structures and strengthened international coordination.
A key takeaway from the workshop was that the maritime sector is no longer struggling to define what data should be exchanged. Instead, the challenge has shifted to how existing standards are applied consistently across regions, sectors, and technology providers.
Fragmentation persists at the implementation level, limiting the ability to scale systems globally. Participants agreed that overcoming this requires a more coordinated and practical approach that focuses on applying shared principles rather than prescribing a single standard or system.
In this context, future ship-to-shore data exchange is unlikely to rely on one unified system covering both semantic and technical interoperability. Instead, progress will depend on principle-based harmonisation, supported by common semantic references with the IMO Compendium as the cornerstone, agreed implementation principles to guide system development, and coordinated governance at an international level.
BIMCO is now calling on industry stakeholders to show their support for these digital standardisation initiatives by joining as signatories to the Declaration on Shared Principles for Maritime Digitalisation and Harmonised Information Exchange – interested parties can find more details here.
