The 2030 National Logistics Strategy sets out to establish Panama as a global logistics hub. With disruptive technologies driving the digital transformation of trade logistics, the Panama Trade Logistics Integration Platform is an essential piece of the strategy. It serves as a single point of access for all stakeholders involved in the trade logistics processes.
The digital platform offers a Web Portal for traders, shipping lines, airlines, railways, truckers, cargo agents, customs brokers, banking, insurance, and legal firms to conduct business with Panamanian government agencies. It integrates the transactional information systems of government agencies, to orchestrate the administrative processes related to the import, export and transit of goods, in order to streamline trade logistics operations, leading to performance levels comparable to the best in the world.
Efficient intermodal logistics is enabled through interoperability with the Panama Maritime Single Window (a joint service of the Panama Canal Authority and the Panama Maritime Authority), the Panama Civil Aviation Authority, the Panama airports company (Tocumen, S.A.), the national highways company (ENA), the Panama Customs Authority, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Health, and other regulatory agencies.
The purpose of the digital platform is to expedite the handling of cargo by means of electronic data interchange for submission of trade documentation at the time of departure from the country of origin, to allow for risk analysis in advance of the arrival at the port of discharge. The adoption of these standards and technical specifications enables interoperability with customs authorities and other government agencies of all countries, and compliance with bilateral, regional, such as the Central America Economic Integration System (SIECA), and global trade agreements, such as the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), established in December 2013, by the World Trade Organization (WTO) when members concluded negotiations. The TFA provisions to expedite the movement, release and clearance of goods, including goods in transit. In addition, it lays down measures for effective cooperation between the Customs authorities and other competent authorities in matters concerning the fulfilment of customs procedures and trade facilitation. Members of the WTO adopted on November 27, 2014 a Protocol of amendment to insert the new agreement in annex 1A of the WTO agreement. The Republic of Panama enacted Law No. 55, on September 2015, for the adoption of the TFA, which entered into force on February 22, 2017, when two thirds of the WTO members completed internal ratification process.
In line with the World Trade Organization´s guide for the implementation of the TFA, Panama has adopted the standards and technical specifications issued by the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) for message exchange, and the World Customs Organization WCO Data Model. The WCO Data Model has the following information:
The context of information exchange: Business Process Models
The content of information exchange: Data sets and Code lists
The structures of information exchange: Information models
The technical solutions for information exchange: UN/EDIFACT and XML message design.
The key components of the trade logistics digital platform are:
Information Bus, consisting of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), with business rules engine and business process orchestration for job scheduling.
Collaboration Portal in multiple languages (initially Spanish and English).
Platform Management, capable of handling of data streams, data categories, solution bundling, pipelines, events, and application development with a built in Integration Development Environment (IDE), and testing tools.
System Administration, capable of handling user and role based authentication, Web Services, file transmission utilities (FTPS, SMTP, SSH, SMB y NFS), credential providers, topology, instance clustering, messaging bus, data casting, document database, and search engine.
Security Management for each layer of the platform, and applications running on it. E-signature certificates will be provided by the National Directorate of Electronic Signature, a unit of the Public Registry of the Republic of Panama, which is based on standard X509 (https://www.firmaelectronica.gob.pa/).
Interface Management, capable of handling application connectors, remote calls, database connections, user credentials, identity and access management certificates, XML documents and schemas, XSL transformations, templates, diverse data formats, file system connections, and endpoints.
Data Management, that includes Master Data Management (MDM), systems single point of truth management, query management, Extraction Transformation and Loading (ETL), Data Warehousing, Online Analytics Processing (OLAP), and Business Intelligence (BI) scorecards and dashboards.
The traditional point-to-point integration approach generates a tangle of application dependencies that is very difficult and costly to maintain. Orchestration means integrating applications and/or services together to automate a process, or to synchronize data in real-time. Application orchestration provides for decoupling applications from each other, message routing, security, reliability, and centralized monitoring and management.
To make applications integration possible, the digital platform´s data transformation capacity is key, because data in different applications resides in different formats. Therefore, it is necessary to make data from one application or database available to other applications and databases by converting data from one format to another. Data is extracted from the source application or data warehouse, transformed into another format, and then loaded into the target application. ETL is the core of data integration.
The digital platform´s API Lifecycle Management capacity enables agility to create connectivity. Developers will be able to access endpoints and build connections without having in-depth knowledge of the applications. The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) provides API-based connectivity with real-time integration, isolating applications and databases from one another by providing a middle service layer. Developers will be able to use pre-built connectors to easily create integrations without detailed knowledge of source or destination applications and/or databases, and will be able to make changes without risk to the entire integrated system. Shielded by APIs, applications and databases can be modified and upgraded without undesirable consequences.
The digital platform implementation is carried out using the DevOps methodology, which focuses on operations early in the development process, allowing developers to produce higher quality code. Therefore, the platform enables continuous integration and efficient deployment with capabilities that address the full API lifecycle. It is expected that the Panama Trade Logistics Integration Platform will be operational by the end of 2018.