• Home
  • Diver BI Group
    • Diver | BI
    • Customer Commendations
    • Videos
    • Case Studies
    • Documents and Brochures
    • Diver BI Group Privacy Policy
  • Articles
    • News
    • Accolades
    • Blog
    • Ask Anthony
  • The Team
    • Key Experts
    • Members
      • Dynamic Business Informatics
      • Envisage
      • Chartwell IT
      • Cloud-Works Solutions Ltd
      • Data Management Business Insight
      • Manitex
      • Equiniti ICS
      • Pharma IT
      • Pinnula
      • Formell
      • IBI
    • Partners
      • Dimensional Insight US
      • Dimensional Insight EU
      • Dimensional Insight Asia
      • DI Panama
      • ID Technology (Brazil)
      • Infotool (Nordic Countries)
      • BIMAXIS – DI France
      • Vision IT
      • KDE Group (Israel)
      • Zight -Partner for Transport
      • 24/7 Uptime
  • Applications
    • Property
      • Property Prices Portal
    • Supply Chain
      • Retail
      • Distributor
      • Wholesale
      • Manufacturing
      • Produce
      • Beverage Alcohol Suppliers
      • Beverage Alcohol Distributors
      • Autoparts
      • Transport
      • Public Transport
      • DI Program Advisor
    • Healthcare
      • Healthcare
      • DI Surgery Advisor
      • DI Physician Performance Advisor
      • Pharma BI Applications of Diver
    • Finance
      • Finance
      • DI GL Advisor
    • Mobile & SaaS
      • Diver BI SaaS
      • SaaS for Sales Gap Analysis
      • BI designed for Tablet
      • DiveTab – Mobile BI
    • Diversity
      • Travel & Tourism
      • Colleges & Universities
      • Waste Management
      • Parking
      • Telecom Brokerage
      • Economic Trends
      • Maps
      • Smart Meters
      • Carbon Emissions Management
  • Workbench
  • Contact
    • Free Consultation with One of Our Experts
    • Add a New Revenue Stream as a Partner

DiverBIGroup

Business Intelligence Experts

Diver BI Group Blog Brexit and the Northern Ireland Border Challenge – is Technology a Solution?

Brexit and the Northern Ireland Border Challenge – is Technology a Solution?

25th July 2018

By Debbie Lonsdale | July 25th 2018

As a Technology Company (a Business Intelligence Software Distributor based in the Republic of Ireland) with customers and staff in both Ireland and the UK, we have a particular interest in this issue and how the outcome might affect our business and those of our clients. Does our own experience in Business Intelligence lend any validity to the claims made by each side of the Brexit Debate? The main proponent of “maximum facilitation” comes from Boris Johnson, who even after his resignation as Foreign Secretary still believes (at time of writing) that technological options are real and valid whilst Teresa May disagrees, saying, “No technology solution to address these issues has been designed yet or implemented anywhere in the world, let alone in such a unique and highly sensitive context as the Northern Ireland Border” (for quote origin see link 1 below). Are either of them correct, or is the reality a combination of both opinions, each correct for a certain element of the task in hand?

Traceability

To explain in a nutshell what we do, a lift-pitch as it were, we solve business problems for our customers by building applications that help them manage their data, incorporate data governance and deliver analytics – in numerous market sectors. As part of this role we are well-versed in the challenges set for many of our customers, by governments and industry regulatory bodies, to maintain accurate traceability information, within both the Food Sector and the Oil & Fuel Industry.

In dealing with clients whose businesses fall into these categories, such as baby-food manufacturers, meat processing plants, egg suppliers, animal feed suppliers, milk and cheese processors, fuel forecourts and oil distribution companies, we have often been asked to solve requests for compliance with these regulations, using our technology.

wholesaler

ROM1

For example, when the new ROM1 (Return of Oil Movements) for traceability of fuel was made mandatory by the Irish Revenue Commissioners in January 2013 in a bid to reduce illegal oil trading, we were called on by one of our customers in the oil and fuel sector to help them automate this monthly tax return. Their transactional ERP system was not capable of providing the information in the format required to upload into Revenue’s Online Service (ROS).  Using our technology we were able to automate the provision of monthly files supplying Opening and Closing Fuel Balances, Inward and Outward Movements by date, invoice and licensed recipient, plus aggregated information for forecourt and oil distribution movements to non-licensed recipients.  The project took days to deliver for our customers to be fully compliant – not months or “4 to 5 years” as has been doom-mongered for the Brexit solution.

The ROM1 was deemed a success by the fuel industry soon after its inception, with an “Island-of-Ireland-wide” issue being addressed on their side by the Republic.  ROM1’s counterpart in NI, RDCO, was soon being considered ripe for a revision, to synchronise it with the ROM1 effort to eradicate fuel laundering across the whole island.

So in this case technology has been used successfully to solve issues of movement of goods by a self-reporting mechanism that does not require physical inspections and visits from Revenue or Customs officials, except in the case of non-compliance with monthly deadlines or irregular patterns in the data supplied.

Food & Ingredients

Similar technologies are used to track the movement of food and ingredients down to batch level. Traceability information must be transferred up or down the chain on the product itself or on accompanying documents, but managed remotely and automatically from the actual goods with labelling supplied by technology systems. They are invaluable for product recall and work well in preventing the spread of quality issues detected in the food chain.

Electronic Customs Declarations

There are already systems in place in HMRC for tracking the import and export of goods outside the EU. A new comprehensive system “CDS” is currently being rolled out to replace the old “CHIEF” system for electronic Customs Declarations and Customs Decisions. Couldn’t this be used? If it’s already there and working why would it take so many years to create one just for NI?

New solutions could incorporate blockchain technology: Singapore has just implemented the world’s first blockchain based platform for electronic certificates of origin, eCos, although I have heard it said that this type of option would be very expensive to set up.

But on the face of it, to my mind the currently used traceability solutions are far closer to the kind of technologies that would be required to solve the actual tracking of goods across the border of NI and the ROI in the case of a Brexit solution which could deliver an “invisible” border after an EU-UK trading relationship deal.

These traceability technologies could possibly be developed relatively quickly to suit the vast majority of commercial traffic and the goods they carry, with or without customs centres remotely located each side of the border for checks, random or otherwise to be carried out. But they cannot address the common everyday traffic that passes across the border thousands of times a day.  The task facing the UK government as they have pledged is to Exit the EU without imposing a “Hard Border”.

The Real Problem

Boris Johnson has likened crossing the border of NI and ROI to the crossing London Boroughs – but there are several obvious differences which cause a multiplicity of issues in this Brexit question that are at odds with each other, and which together contribute to the serious difficulties in coming up with an acceptable, satisfactory solution.

Crossing borders of London Boroughs to collect taxes from people using motor vehicles is a far simpler task that only requires technology to count the times a vehicle passes an “invisible” checkpoint in order to charge an agreed rate to an individual account linked to the vehicle. It does not involve collecting details of what is inside that vehicle, and whether it might be illegally transported.

It also does not impinge on issues of sovereignty or stir up political differences that have taken decades if not hundreds of years to pacify. Every vehicle passing from one borough to another is subject to the same laws and sovereignty. There is not one borough whose inhabitants have been divided by history about whether the borough border should even exist or not, or which is currently under a different jurisdiction.

Motorway Transport

The Border Size – Yes it Really Has 275 Crossings!

The sheer size of the NI border alone is also a matter of huge importance. There are over 300 miles (around 500 km) of border in Ireland. But this border has 275 border crossings, with some roads snaking back and forth over the border in the space of a few miles.  Whilst the technological solutions could take care of commercial traffic using similar methods to the ones described above –for individuals travelling to work or on holidays, going across the border multiple times across the 275 miles of border, it could be political dynamite to impose any checking of the contents of vehicles, even if some sort of tag to track vehicles was acceptable to the people of Ireland (which in many quarters it won’t be). At the height of the troubles only 20 of these border crossings were open, such was the impossibility of maintaining checks across the whole border. That impossibility hasn’t changed if it were to come down to a “Hard Border”.

To avoid the “Hard Border”, i.e. the commitment by the UK government to “no physical infrastructure or related checks or controls” for the mass of people who are not covered by traceability technologies – the aggregate records in the ROM1 as it were, we are left with highly expensive and “unobtrusive” technological options to monitor movements – the introduction of which could be viewed politically as anything but “unobtrusive”.

Tourists pre-registering for customs clearances, technologies that can detect certain drugs or contraband from a distance, sensors under the road, drones circling above the Irish countryside, mobile phone tracking etc are all options that have been suggested– but are they any less intrusive to the minds of the people than the alternative physical intrusion– an officer at a border asking one in 20 people crossing “have you anything to declare?”.

Hearts and Minds are the Crux

It seems to me that technology could or does already solve the main business and commercial questions, but the harder problem which impacts on the hearts and minds of the Irish People, north and south of the border, is not going to be that straightforward to resolve.

UK and Ireland with people

=================================================================
I’m no investigative journalist so the caveat that I’m declaring for this article is that my reading around the question of the technology is gleaned from various sites and news around the internet, rather than first had experience of all the systems being suggested in the media. However I do have long term experience of working with a BI product that solves and reports on various traceability challenges within the trading of goods. Here are some of the sites that I found useful:

  1. https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/latest-theresa-may-takes-on-internal-critics-over-plans-for-irish-border-856537.html
  2. http://theconversation.com/can-technology-and-max-fac-solve-the-irish-border-question-expert-explains-96735
  3. https://www.joe.ie/news/leaked-recording-shows-boris-johnsons-cluelessness-irish-border-issue-628879
  4. https://www.fsai.ie/faq/traceability.html
  5. https://www.revenue.ie/en/customs-traders-and-agents/customs-electronic-systems/customs-decisions-system/index.aspx
  6. https://www.albacore.co.uk/customs-declaration-service-cds-factsheet/
  7. https://www.revenue.ie/en/companies-and-charities/excise-and-licences/mineral-oil-tax/mineral-oil-traders/return-of-oil-movements-rom1.aspx
  8. https://fueloilnews.co.uk/2014/08/rom1-a-step-in-the-right-direction/
  9. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40949424

 

About Debbie Lonsdale

Debbie Lonsdale Image

Debbie Lonsdale has been working with the Diver Solution as a BI Consultant at Dynamic Business Informatics since 2008. Her previous experience includes computer programming, analytical and technical roles, team management, account management, sales and marketing in a variety of market sectors, including the Travel Industry and Distribution. She combines this experience as an all round ICT professional in the BI sector.

Tags: Brexit, CDS, CHIEF, Debbie Lonsdale, Diver 7.0 Platform, Food chain, NI Border, ROM1, Technology for Border Control, traceability

Articles

  • News
  • Accolades
  • Blog
  • Ask Anthony
  • Diver | BI
  • Customer Commendations
  • Videos
  • Case Studies
  • Documents and Brochures
  • Diver BI Group Privacy Policy

Dynamic Business Informatics Ltd

Distributors of The Diver Solution & Diver Platform, providing business consultancy services, products and applications derived from the Diver Solution & Diver Platform.
14 Mellifont Avenue
Dun Laoghaire
Co. Dublin

+353 1 2302022

10 Kenyon Street
Nenagh
Co Tipperary

+353 67 43309

Contact Us

We would love to hear from you! Please submit your query and we will get in touch with you shortly.

Email addresses are never sold, rented, or shared. See our Privacy Policy.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Accolades

  • Best in Klas Report 2023 – Straight A Grades for Dimensional Insight
  • Dimensional Insight Named an Overall Leader by Dresner Advisory Services in 2022 Industry Excellence Awards
  • Dresner Wisdom of Crowds 2022 – Best in Class Results
  • Klas 2022 – A Grades for Dimensional Insight
  • Dimensional Insight Earns Top Marks in 2021 Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study

Copyright © 2023 Diver BI Group · Privacy Policy · website by cubecolour

We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.


What Are Cookies?


As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or 'break' certain elements of the sites functionality.


For more general information on cookies, please read "What Are Cookies".


How We Use Cookies


We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.


Disabling Cookies


You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.


The Cookies We Set




  • Account related cookies


    If you create an account with us then we will use cookies for the management of the signup process and general administration. These cookies will usually be deleted when you log out however in some cases they may remain afterwards to remember your site preferences when logged out.




  • Login related cookies


    We use cookies when you are logged in so that we can remember this fact. This prevents you from having to log in every single time you visit a new page. These cookies are typically removed or cleared when you log out to ensure that you can only access restricted features and areas when logged in.




  • Forms related cookies


    When you submit data to through a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.




  • Site preferences cookies


    In order to provide you with a great experience on this site we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page is affected by your preferences.




Third Party Cookies


In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.




  • This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.


    For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.




More Information


Hopefully that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren't sure whether you need or not it's usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site.


However if you are still looking for more information then you can contact us through our contact page

Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT