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Ministry of the Sea, Tourism, Transport and Development
Croatia

The Problem

Infodom ltd. from Zagreb, Croatia by performing the reengineering of business processes, based on adequate knowledge of maritime business matters as well as the new laws and regulations has developed and implemented a strongly integrated system that is at the same time flexible enough for future upgrades as well as to connect and exchange communication with other systems.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
Infodom ltd. from Zagreb, Croatia has developed and implemented an Integrated Maritime Information System in the Croatian Ministry of Sea, Tourism, Transport and Development based on Business process reengineering and new regulations. The most important segment of the system is the application system e-Charter. e-Charter operates as an e-One-Stop-Shop service for charter companies, available to its users 24/7.
Integrated Maritime Information System is integrated information system that deals with different business domains, such as: Foreign yachts registration processes, foreign yacht and charter crew lists, Charter companies and boats registration, foreign yacht arrival and departure monitoring, financial transactions of maritime bodies, maritime safety inspections, statistics, reporting etc.

With the e-Charter application system, charter companies are enabled to register their crew members online. Upon the completion of the registration process the crew information is being sent to the government authorities.
Implementation of the system has enhanced the work, speed up business processes up to 20 times, increased the business efficiency and reduced the operation expenses not only of the Ministry of Sea, Tourism, Transport and Development, but also of the charter companies.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
Implementation has been taking place simultaneously with the development process. This strategy enabled the immediate testing of concepts and models in the real environment. Needed adjustments were minimal and were mostly related to the reporting system for the reason of new system functionalities that have increased the need and demand for new reports.

After the completion of implementation process, the system was monitored, measured and optimized for web transactions in order to achieve higher performance quality and greater speed.

The e-Charter system started its operation in March 2005. Since March 2005 until the end of September 2006, it has successfully processed over 320 000 transactions. E-Charter system has registered 701 charter companies with 3 066 vessels and is being continuously used on 80 distributed Ministry’s locations across Croatia.

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
Following the initiative of Croatian government for increasing efficiency of business processes and therefore reducing the „underground economy" Ministry of the Sea, Tourism, Transport and Development has adopted a number of new regulations in the segment of tourism and sailing security. In order to persue those regulations the Ministry needed an adequate information system as a support.
Analysis of the existing information system has leaded us to the conclusion that neither the upgrade nor the adjustment of the existing system would have resulted in achieving the desired results. Furthermore, we have recognized that the software market momentarily does not offer any solution that will be capable of dealing with this specific business issue. Taking these results into the consideration, the only action step left to be taken was to develop and implement a new integrated information system.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
The primary purpose of these new regulations was to facilitate the work of charter companies and thus to prevent the so-called “black charter”. Another aim that had to accomplish was to improve the government service towards the owners of foreign yachts and to enable Charter companies to perform their business activities from one place at once (One-Stop-Shop).

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
Strategic goals of the new system were to accelerate all of the business processes related to the charter boats and foreign yachts between Ministry, charter companies and other stakeholders, to enable Charter companies to perform their business activities from one place at once (One-Stop-Shop) and to eliminate the „black charter“ activity in Croatia.

System's strategic objectives were to enable the electronic monitoring of all business processes related to charter boats and foreign yachts, to speed up business processes related to charter boats and foreign yachts between the Ministry and the outside organizations, to decrease the Ministry's amount of daily administration, to enable the outside organizations to independently and electronically perform all transactions with the Ministry, to provide the consolidated data for the entire Croatia in real-time, to communicate with the other government bodies and exchange data, to provide 24 x 7 service availability, and etc.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
Benefits of the new system were visible immediately after its implementation. e-Charter system has enabled business process performance enhancement, better business control over charter companies and thus the extinguishment of the so-called “black charter”, the ability to forecast the tourist season based on the consolidated traffic data review, lower operating costs, acceleration of business process, enhanced business efficiency of the Ministry and of all of the business entities that use the system.
Special attention has been dedicated to the security aspect, especially for the part of the system that is implemented to work through the web. Security has been resolved on few levels:
-Special location and configuration of the Ministry’s network server, which decreased the potential risk of unwanted entrance into the system to the minimum
-client communication with the server goes through the security channel (SSL) by using the digitally certified server
-registration and authentication of users using digitally certified Smart cards, which enables a high level of identity determination and user responsibility
-digitally signing documents using digitally certified Smart cards which secures the validity and integrity of the document's content
Certification of system's users is managed by RBAC (Role Based access Control) which enables defining the limited set of functionalities and data that each user is allowed to access. This is applied on the report system and thus the potential risk of data abuse is decreased to the minimum.
Integrated Maritime Information System performed the first secured electronic transaction between a business entity and a government body.

Results of new system implementation are the following are:
- One-Stop-Shop - business entities are enabled to perform electronic transactions from one place available 24 x 7
-Electronic support of all Ministries’ processes related to registration and monitoring of foreign yachts and charter boats
-Review of consolidated traffic data of foreign yachts and charter boats according to various dimensions (financial, geographical, demographical….)
-Register of charter companies, boats and concession permits for performing charter duties
-Enabled data exchange with the other ministries (Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Finance)

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Ministry of the Sea, Tourism, Transport and Development
Institution Type:   Government Department  
Contact Person:   Bosko Ercegovac
Title:   Project Manager  
Telephone/ Fax:   +385 1 6169 106
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   bosko.ercegovac@pomorstvo.hr  
Address:   Prisavlje 14
Postal Code:   10 000
City:   Zagreb
State/Province:  
Country:   Croatia

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