Bulgarian participant in EDIPA project is department Hierarchical Systems in Institute of Computer and Communication Systems - Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

Following the international trend for automating business processes and moving towards paperless business transactions, a consortium of IT & T companies, shipping enterprises and port authorities from EC Member States and Balkan Countries is launching an initiative project of designing and implementing an EDI system fot the automation of the exchange of cargo-documents. Generally, telecommunication network will be established for the exchange of EDI information between port authorities, customs, agents, ship owners, in all four participating countries' ports (Greece-Piraeus, Italy-Genoa, Bulgaria-Varna, and Romania-Constanza).

In the framework of the project, the end user community (administrations, shipping agents, ship owners, dispatching agents, cargo hendlers, container terminals and port authorities in the participating countries) will be contacted first and their needs will be identified and used for developing the specifications for creating the EDI system.

The project has European dimension since it will involve large number of users in EU Member States and Phare countries to be influenced by the participating organisations. Furthermore, important saving are expected for the users due to the rapid exchange of information supported, whereas security of the information exchanged is achieved. The experience of the technological partners in EDI and electronic commerce technologies guarantees the best possible service developed. It will allow port authorities in the participating countries to further ameliorate their business transactions and to install a network that solves many of the bureaucratic problems encountered so far. Furthermore, the project will also address the needs of the user group community. It will also support EDI research in the countries involved. The adoption of EDI technology in port transactions will allow the automation of the communication between the various information systems, thus limiting the human intervention.