Declaration on Shared Principles for Maritime Digitalisation and Harmonised Information Exchange

This declaration follows a workshop held at BIMCO in March 2026.

Background

Maritime digitalisation has progressed significantly in recent years, yet the shipping sector is still not realising its full value. Across the maritime domain, digital solutions continue to develop in isolation, resulting in fragmented implementation, limited interoperability, and poor scalability.

Maritime stakeholders rely on diverging data models, formats, interfaces, and interpretations of similar requirements. This fragmentation increases cost and complexity, limits reuse of data, and prevents digital solutions from scaling across shipping segments, borders, sectors, and use cases.

As a result, the maritime actors struggle to unlock the full potential of digitalisation in terms of efficiency, safety and risk reduction, environmental performance, and commercial value.

Experience shows that digitalisation driven primarily by compliance obligations or technical ambition does not scale. Adoption at industry level is driven by clear business values and benefits, including reduced administrative burden, improved safety and transparency, and lower integration and operating costs.

Harmonisation and coordination are therefore essential prerequisites for value creation in global shipping.

Why this matters

The maritime industry operates as a global, interconnected system, yet digital solutions are all too often implemented in silos by individual ports, administrations, companies, or regions.

For shipowners, operators, ports, and logistics, fragmentation leads to higher integration costs, duplicated effort, limited flexibility, and dependency on proprietary platforms. For regulators and administrations, it reduces data quality, transparency, predictability, and the ability to reuse information across reporting regimes. For technology and service providers, fragmentation constrains scalability and increases development and maintenance costs, slowing innovation.

At the same time, the maritime industry faces growing demands related to safety, security, efficiency, environmental performance, and resilience. Meeting these demands requires reliable, interoperable, and trusted information exchange across organisational, sectoral, and national boundaries.

The foundations for maritime digitalisation largely exist. What is missing is not new technology, but stronger coordination, shared principles, and more consistent implementation across the maritime digital ecosystem.

Purpose and scope

The purpose of this declaration is to establish a common set of guiding principles for maritime digitalisation, applicable across the entire maritime domain.

This declaration applies to maritime digitalisation across ships, ports, terminals, agencies, logistics and hinterland connections, service and solution providers, classification societies, regulators, and international organisations. It covers regulatory, operational, commercial, safety, performance, and sustainability related information flows.

The declaration is technology neutral and applies to both public and private digital initiatives. It recognises that maritime digitalisation may not converge towards a single global system or platform. Sustainable progress instead depends on principled harmonisation that enables interoperability and federation across co existing solutions, while respecting regulatory sovereignty, operational diversity, and different levels of digital maturity.

The shared principles set out in this declaration are intended to function as a practical manifesto for disciplined maritime digitalisation – articulating a common ambition, direction and call for more consistent implementation across the sector. They are deliberately framed as a Declaration in order to support broad endorsement and application by industry, administrations and international organisations alike.

Our commitments

We commit to the following principles as the foundation for maritime digitalisation:

1. Harmonisation over fragmentation

Digital solutions should be based on harmonised data structures, definitions, and processes that are usable across borders, sectors, and stakeholders.

2. IMO Compendium as the common maritime reference data model

The IMO Compendium should be used as the global reference for maritime data semantics, rather than creating new, incompatible data models.

3. Using the IAPH Port Call Optimization Guide as reference for harmonised Port Call processes

The IAPH Port Call Optimization Guide should be used as the foundation for design and implementation of harmonised port processes and related data exchange.

4. Interoperability by design

Interoperability should be achieved through shared definitions, payload structures, and business process logic, separating the “what” from the “how” and enabling federation across co‑existing systems.

5. Scalability and inclusiveness

Digital solutions must be scalable and usable by all maritime stakeholders, including small and medium‑sized shipowners and ports, and not optimised solely for large actors.

6. Incremental and purpose‑driven implementation

Digitalisation should progress through minimum viable datasets and use‑case‑driven subsets, lowering entry barriers and enabling adoption across organisations with differing digital maturity.

7. Information sharing and open access processes

All new implementations should, as far as possible, be based on wide information and requirements sharing, and involvement of stakeholders – not only in individual ports or companies, but across the maritime sector.

8. Building on what works

Existing standards, processes, and proven solutions should be reused and extended wherever possible, rather than repeatedly reinvented.

9. Neutral and sustainable governance

Shared digital foundations must be governed in a neutral, transparent, and sustainable manner, supported by predictable versioning and effective change management.

10. Secure connectivity through identity, authentication, and trust

Digitalisation must be underpinned by secure and interoperable approaches to identity, authentication, and trust, enabling “connect once, trust many” outcomes within federated frameworks rather than reliance on a single global identity provider.

In support of these principles, we agree to:

Adopt harmonised reference data models and semantics aligned with the IMO Compendium in the development, procurement and operation of digital solutions
Promote interoperable information exchange, enabling “report once – use many” principles across regulatory, operational, and commercial use cases
Support neutral international collaboration and governance structures through recognised international bodies and standardisation organisations to enable scalable implementation
Align industry initiatives with IMO frameworks and avoid creating new, overlapping standards or proprietary interpretations
Actively promote awareness and uptake of existing IMO standards and frameworks, as a foundation for cohesive, interoperable, and well‑connected maritime digital solutions to ensure awareness translates into real-world.

Call to action

We call upon all maritime stakeholders - shipowners, operators, ports, logistics, service and technology providers, classification societies, flag States, regulators, and international organisations to endorse these principles and apply them in practice, ensuring solutions are accessible and adoptable by organisations of all sizes, including small and medium sized ports and operators.

This declaration is a non binding, leadership level signalling instrument, intended to translate broad alignment into more coordinated and consistent implementation across the maritime domain.

By aligning on direction and foundations, the maritime community can move from fragmented initiatives to scalable, global digitalisation that delivers measurable business value while supporting safety, efficiency, and environmental objectives.

By endorsing this declaration, stakeholders position themselves at the forefront of harmonised and interoperable maritime digitalisation, helping to shape future developments while reducing fragmentation, integration complexity, and implementation costs across the sector.

To sign the declaration, please contact BIMCO's Chief Naval Architect Jeppe Skovbakke Juhl

Email Jeppe Skovbakke Juhl