Benefits of semantic data models. A study in the European goods transport industry

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Kapitel 2.21 The European Commission:

In 2010 the European Commission published a communication named „A Digital Agenda for Europe”. Its objective was to define measures to create a digital single market with interoperable applications by 2020. The low penetration of standards for electronic communications and the lack of coordination, particularly among contracting authorities, is seen as one of the reasons why effective interoperability has not been achieved yet. Additionally, data exchanged via the internet is seen as vital, and the establishment of trust and security in data exchange were to be defined.
Within this communication key actions were defined; of which most have already been implemented. These include for instance the migration to a Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA), enabling e-Maritime services and an update to the value added tax (VAT) directive to ensure equal treatment for electronic invoices with paper invoices. As invoices are in principle issued by any entity, the latter directive may therefore have an impact on any company in Europe.
Even though already in 2010, the efforts to create a legal framework for a progressive digitization of Europe were started, a regulation relevant for professional data exchange was only agreed upon in 2018. It defines the framework for „free movement of data within the Union”. Within this context a professional user is defined as every natural or legal person that is using or requesting a data processing service for purposes related to its business. The goal is to contribute to a competitive data economy, with interoperable systems that take open standards into account.
While the digital agenda and the resulting regulations and directives directly focus on improving a digital economy other regulation led to similar impacts, although they originated from a different perspective. The regulation on the provision of food information to consumers is given as an example. Up to then information about ingredients, allergens or similar was mostly printed on the packaging of the food. With the new regulation all this kind of information had to be provided for example for processed food as well. For instance, a required information for meat is the country of origin or place of provenance. For the existing supply chain this was no easy task to provide this information, especially if the meat was processed. In the supply chain there may exist different organizations for breeding, slaughtering, cutting, mincing and packing. During this process meat from different individual animals can get blended into the same product. Standards for processes, identification and data exchange were created or adapted to fulfil the requirements from the regulation including impacts on the goods transport industry like labelling of pallets or packages.
The two examples each had an indirect influence on the transport industry. In addition, work on a regulation on electronic freight transport information is in progress. It is based on former initiatives like the digital agenda and aims to establish a framework „which requires the cross-border acceptance of electronic transport information”. It takes several transport modes into account: road, rail, inland waterway transport, maritime and aviation. It includes the establishment of obligations for public authorities in all member states to accept electronic transferred information. In case of a contract of carriage the electronic document leads to evidence in administrative legal proceedings. The idea is that by making the acceptance of electronic information mandatory, it will lead to a higher level of digitalization in the business world as well.
Summing up the three examples, European legislation has defined the framework conditions for collaborative data exchange in recent years. It also had an impact on individual business processes in the transport industry.