Researchers from UCD Smurfit School of Business have been awarded €450,000 to study how e-government practices and systems can improve the way tax and customs information is exchanged between business and public administrations.
Overloading exporters with duplicated effort or excessive documentation introduces delays, errors and adds to the cost of doing business. An Irish exporter wanting to ship goods to the Netherlands, for instance, can be involved with upwards of 20 different parties including transporters, shipping agents, customs and tax authorities. A single container can require up to 150 different associated documents to cross an international border, ranging from goods inventories to cargo manifests and excise exemptions.
Dr Séamas Kelly, director of the Centre for Innovation, Technology and Organisation at the UCD Smurfit School of Business, explained the technological and organisational problems associated with addressing these issues.
"Reducing the administrative complexity of customs and taxation processes demands the collective mobilisation of a large inter-organisational network of government and business agencies. Standardised protocols and modes of information exchange must be agreed, often requiring the redesign, alignment and integration of key organisational practices and technological architectures.
"Our challenge as researchers is to develop a mature understanding of the difficulties with mobilising such complex socio-technical networks and of ways of addressing these issues in practice."
UCD Smurfit School is part of a 16-member consortium awarded the four-year, €5.4m EU research tender. Other partners include universities throughout Europe, the UN and multinationals such as IBM, SAP and Nordea Bank.
Researchers will examine the way European businesses interact with international customs and tax authorities through a single-window-access IT system designed to make this interaction easier. They will make policy recommendations on simplifying customs procedures and increasing collaboration amongst European governments.
Autor: John Kennedy
Quelle: Siliconrepublic, 15.03.2006
