IMO Tackles Administrative Burdens in Maritime Industry

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has published a report containing the main findings and conclusions of the public consultation undertaken by the IMO on the reduction of administrative burdens in maritime regulations.

60% of those involved in the online consultation named ‘Have Your Say,’ which ran from May to October 2013, were ship masters, senior officers and ships’ crews.

The analysis of their feedback, together with that of other respondents, also sought to establish whether administrative requirements were perceived to be problematic (or not problematic) by an individual respondent (e.g. a senior ship officer), by a particular stakeholder group (e.g. ships’ crews), or by a variety of stakeholder groups (e.g. ships’ crews and shipping companies).

A major – and perhaps surprising – finding has been that the majority of administrative requirements addressed in the consultation process, 351 out of the total of 563, or some 66%, were not perceived as being individually burdensome by any of the respondents.

The consultation also pinpointed that it is not necessarily a specific administrative requirement which generates the bureaucracy but rather the indirect impact of having to report and document daily routines.

A careful analysis of each of the 182 administrative requirements (out of the total of 563) that were perceived as burdensome by at least one respondent, representing some 34% of the total, revealed that many responses did identify problems with excessive paperwork associated with regulatory compliance. Comments included suggestions for urgent change, for instance, by working with “intelligent” databases on websites with secure access in order to rationalise the fulfillment of administrative requirements.

It was instead recommended that certificates could be posted on a website with access provided to accredited authorities, or, according to one stakeholder, “a Facebook for ships”, with all certificates available for observation.

As one stakeholder put it, the tendency to “smother everything we do with paper” is also a result of a blame orientated and litigious culture, encouraging everybody to increase the paperwork as a means to demonstrate that everything has been done to prevent mistakes or mishaps and thus to avoid legal liability – by pointing the blame elsewhere.

The consultation also revealed that while the majority of the (182) administrative requirements perceived as burdensome were still necessary, proportionate and relevant, it is often the accumulation of requirements that represents a burden and this is an important issue IMO needs to address.
Burdens related to administrative requirements perceived as burdensome – some 24% – could be reduced by using forms of electronic reporting or notification. The figure was 14% with regard to the shipboard carriage of certificates and similar documents, for which electronic versions should be acceptable. Similarly, some 13% of burdensome requirements could be met more efficiently by electronic recording of information.

IMO accompanied this final report with a list of recommendations on how to tackle the problem of burdensome bureaucracy, presented in the infographic below.