The Australian Border Force (ABF) has launched a trial with Singapore Customs to use blockchain technology for enabling simpler cross-border trade.
The project, alongside Singapore Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), will use blockchain to test digital verification systems.
As regular readers of this publication will know, the Australian government has put an extensive roadmap in place to explore how the country can capitalise on blockchain technologies. The document, released at the beginning of this year, noted how the landscape in Australia was currently finance-heavy, but goals included ensuring blockchain was included in broader policy work, as well as the government establishing and coordinating a group of government blockchain users.
The trial will utilise the ABF’s Inter-Government Ledger, which is a proof of technology to share documents electronically between participating governments. The IMDA’s TradeTrust offering will also be used. Businesses and regulators ‘will give feedback on their experience verifying Certificates of Origin with the two systems’, the organisations noted, with the aim of reducing administration costs and increasing trade efficiency.
Other participants in the trial, again looking at the roadmap, are the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Australian Industry Group, as well as financial institutions such as ANZ.
Michael Outram, ABF commissioner, said the force ‘looks forward to close collaboration with international partner agencies on mutual border modernisation programs.’
Photo by Amber Weir on Unsplash
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In Australia, for example, there have been a number of developments such as the Electronic Transactions Act 1999 (Cth) which meant that electronic acceptance or the clicking of a submit button would constitute a binding transaction in a legal sense and that it was possible to commit fraud online using fraudulent representations of cyber activity. At the international level there is also the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce which outlines a protocol for a set of national laws which can be used to regulate online commerce and information technology by member states. The laws of Australia on privacy, telecommunications and to some extent the criminal laws at federal and state level all have aspects of them which regulate the use of computers. If you have a question about the operation of information technology law in Australia please do not hesitate to contact us.
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