About the Marine Department's Electronic Business System
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The Marine Department of the HKSAR is the administrator of the port
of Hong Kong and is responsible for all navigational matters in Hong Kong
for ensuring safe operation of the port and shipping in Hong Kong waters and administering
the Hong Kong Shipping Register.
Hong Kong is a major international shipping center and is growing in importance as a hub port
for China and world trade. To cope with this dynamic challenge and
the emerging e-commerce environment in the 21st century, the Marine Department's Electronic
Business System (MD eBS) is implemented to provide for the handling of port formality
documents required by this department, the Department of Health and Immigration Department,
covering the following list of services:
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1. |
Pre-arrival
notification |
2. |
Report
of arrival and departure (M.O.618 and M.O.877), Marine
Department's Shipping Report, General Declaration |
3. |
Port
Clearance Permit Verification for Ocean-going vessels |
4. |
Application for permission to work cargo at special
anchorages |
5. |
Various permits including repair permit, dead ship permit etc. |
6. |
Application
for Government mooring buoys |
7. |
Submission
of Dangerous Goods Manifest |
8. |
Pre-arrival
Clearance application with attachment of crew list |
9. |
Application for Radio Pratique and subsequent permission/rejection |
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System Objectives
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The objectives of establishing MD eBS for handling port formalities and other related services for the Marine Department are to:
- Provide a one-stop electronic submission solution to handle various port formalities and shipping related activities in Hong Kong;
- Provide built-in intelligence to extract the appropriate information from a single or multifaceted submission and distribute it to the Marine Department's corresponding backend systems or Government Departments for processing;
- Provide data exchange capability in XML format as recommended by International Maritime Organization (IMO) and interact with other ports' and e-Business systems in future;
- Maintain the competitive position of the port of Hong Kong.
The Technology Overview
Web-based technologies are deployed for being platform-independent, high-performance, and very user-friendly. The MD eBS application design is based on the industry-standard J2EE which inherently offers all enterprise qualities such as resilience, scalability, secure authorization access and transaction management.
In graphical snapshot, the high level operation overview of MD eBS is shown in the following diagram:
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The story of beneficial and collaborative partnership
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This MD eBS is provided not only to streamline the process flows for the multitude of port and shipping related formalities and services, but also to derive the whole package of benefits as follows:
Phase 1
- Provide a better service to meet the shipping community needs on e-business by enabling submission of port formality documents electronically
- Save their resources and operating costs involved in preparing paper application and submitting port formalities in person for acquiring the department's service
- Provide convenience for the public to obtain public services online through user-friendly and interactive service interface
Phase 2
- Provide one-stop lodgement services through electronic means for all port formality documents related to Marine Department, Immigration Department and Department of Health such that shipping agents can comfortably comply with the tight schedules of port formalities submissions
- Provide a total e-business solution to support the submission and collection of the majority of routine and regular port formality related documents at anytime and anywhere
- Fulfil the obligation as a member of the International Maritime Organization by compliance with its recommendations to provide electronic data interchange exclusively for ships arriving and leaving port
- Eliminate its clients' redundant data submission and reduce their resources spent in acquiring Marine Department's services
- Provide query facility on submission and payment status
- Enable data storage and sharing on vessel-voyage related document submissions with other government departments
- Enable capturing, storage and query of vessel related information for Marine Department's sections on shared basis to carry out their duties more effectively
- Allow data sharing with some government departments
With the implementation of this MD eBS, the government provides the community with a better business environment in terms of operating costs. The shipping industry can run the business with a lower cost and increase the competitive edge. Having all the competitive advantages in place, the system will increase the efficiency and the flexibility of port services and enhance the competitiveness of Hong Kong in international trade as well as facilitate the development of Hong Kong SAR as a logistics hub in Asia.
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Online interactive introduction |
For online interactive introduction of eBS2, please click here.
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