One of ICA’s senior consultants worked with a major Australian Port Authority for over a year assisting in the specification, selection and customisation of a Port Management and Port Community System. The system is comprised of 3 major modular areas: Navigation management, Safety management including dangerous goods and Permits, and Financial Processing. Our consultant is responsible for the safety management and financial processing areas.
The senior consultant brought to the project decades of experience in the trade and transport industry, and port authorities in particular. The task involved understanding the business and its processes, both internal and external, to analyse and document the requirements, and to recommend improvements. This project has, to date, encompassed four phases:
The National Dangerous Good Hub is a computer system that significantly improves the ability of participants in the supply chain of sea-going freight to create, submit and manage dangerous goods notifications and thereby comply with Australian and international regulations. The new system not only makes it easier for those involved in the supply chain to submit notifications, it also makes it easier to manage notifications and identify mis-representation of dangerous goods. The net result is an improved conformance to the dangerous goods regulation and legislation. The new application replaces existing, paper-based, systems that are hard to manage, prone to abuse and do not facilitate the notification process.
This project investigated the risk associated with the current authentication and authorisation process utilised by the Dangerous Goods Hub system and provided an evaluation of the adequacy of the mechanism currently employed. The Australian Government Authentication Framework (AGAF) was used to evaluate the site. AGAF evaluate two aspects of the system in order to determine the risk associated with access to the system: the registration process itself and the authentication assurance required by the system.
The project involved interviews with major freight forwarders to identify disconnects in the current process of receiving a dangerous g goods notification, packing the consignment in accordance with regulations and providing access to the various entities requiring notification. Important information regarding in-correct application of federal government regulation was identified.
The ICA Consulting team also were involved in all aspects of the design and implementation of the system including end user training sessions for Shipping Lines, Stevedores and Freight Forwarders.
