The 7 million-Euro ITAIDE project is powered by the vision of an efficient “single-window” customs system. With it, trade information will only need to be submitted once to fulfill all import-, export- and transit-related documentation.
Four “living lab” pilot projects with participants such as Arla Foods in Denmark, Heineken in the Netherlands and United Paper Mills in Finland have started up and will run until October, 2009, giving a solid basis for evaluating the technical solutions provided by SAP, IBM and Resultmaker.
Single-window technology and Authorized Economic Operators
The ITAIDE system radically rethinks current customs procedures and incorporates international recommendations from UN/CEFACT, UNeDOCS and WCO, allowing participants to validate trading documents against UN/CCTS standards. It simplifies administrative routines while ensuring strict control and high security in order to prevent fraud and protect consumers. The system not only links the various national customs systems, but lets companies link their own systems to those of the authorities.
Denmark is the spearhead in customs reform
The Danish participants in the Food Living Lab are the Danish customs authorities (SKAT), the huge dairy product conglomerate Arla Foods, Copenhagen Business School and Resultmaker.
As a whole, the ITAIDE team mobilizes a prodigious expertise and experience which is being aimed at integrating the public and private sectors and standardizing concepts and data for customs clearance.
The kick-off meeting for the Danish Food Living Lab was held on April 3, 2007, and was headed by Prof. Niels Bjørn-Andersen of Copenhagen Business School. Bjørn-Andersen is an internationally recognized expert on information systems and is the most recent recipient of the prestigious international AIS-LEO award, also called the “Nobel prize of information systems.”
For more information about the ITAIDE project and Resultmaker’s role in it, see
ITAIDE’s web site, www.itaide.org