BIMCO has announced plans to run an interoperability pilot to demonstrate the exchange of digital seafarer certificate data between different system providers’ platforms using the IMO Compendium data model as the common standard.
Development of the pilot will take place during a workshop in Copenhagen in September and aims to test whether an artificial seafarer identity and associated electronic certificates can be exported, transferred, imported and displayed across independent platforms without loss of data or manual reconstruction.
The exercise will use only artificial data and will be conducted under the Chatham House Rule, the association notes.
The pilot follows BIMCO’s development of a standardised data model for electronic seafarer certificates, which has since been incorporated into the IMO Compendium on Facilitation and Electronic Business. The model is intended to support interoperability between digital certificate platforms used by flag States, training providers, crew managers and ship operators.
Participating technology providers will each act as both a sending and receiving platform, exchanging an artificial seafarer identity, a Seafarer’s Identity and Record Book (or equivalent) and two electronic certificates. The pilot will assess whether identity records and certificates remain correctly linked, with all required data preserved after transfer.
The exercise is intended to identify practical implementation issues requiring further harmonisation or guidance rather than evaluate commercial products. BIMCO says it will not publish rankings, pass/fail results or provider-specific assessments, but will submit a neutral summary of the findings to the IMO Facilitation Committee in 2027.
The pilot is open to independent providers of digital seafarer certificate vaults that support, or intend to support, the IMO Compendium data model. Participants may use different transport mechanisms, payload formats and technical architectures, provided the exchanged certificate and identity data can be correctly interpreted and imported by another platform, BIMCO says.
