Connecting Commercial Blockchain Platforms and European Customs: an Interoperable and Self-Sovereign Data Sharing Architecture

Abstract

Increasingly specialised logistic services are triggering the disaggregation of supply chain functions and fostering the generation of information silos. This is perceived by European customs as a threat, since it affects the reliability of the import risk assessments and cargo inspections. In parallel, the rise of data sharing platforms based on blockchain technology (BCT) are fostering collaboration and accelerating the verification of trade finance documents in the logistics industry. The cross-organisational trust achieved in these platforms has driven the digitisation the documents from which import declaration data is extracted and shared with European customs. The latter see combining data from multiple platforms an opportunity to automate the cross-validation of declaration data, which is still performed manually to a large extent. This would improve supply chain visibility, turn declarations more agile and risk assessments more effective. However, it remains unclear how to integrate declaration procedures in these data ecosystems. There are two major barriers to overcome. Firstly, the lack of interoperability solutions to make data exchanges with multiple platforms compatible for the aggregation of declaration data. Secondly, the need to adapt available identity management solutions to the distributed architecture of these platforms to promote trust between declarants and their partners. To tackle this, a peer-to-peer data collection architecture is presented as a novel solution to migrate from import declarations based on data duplication towards information sharing based on links to the original and trusted shipping data stored in BCT platforms.