The Department of Commerce is planning to launch a national technology competition to help U.S. seaports and stakeholders develop and use port information-sharing technologies, also known as port community systems, in the United States. 

Such IT platforms -- often deployed successfully at non-U.S. ports and providing them with a competitive advantage -- enable enhanced stakeholder awareness of cargo flow and port operating status, promoting information-sharing and collaboration to improve cargo flow among port community members.  Helping interested U.S. ports and stakeholders to develop such systems for use in U.S. ports would improve port operating efficiency, enable faster U.S. cargo flow, reduce port and supply chain congestion, and allow U.S. port stakeholders to better handle new container megavessels that will soon begin to arrive at West Coast and other U.S. seaports on a regular basis. 

The Department’s launch follows industry requests to the Secretary during her April 2016 Regional Port Roundtable at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.  At the Roundtable, port stakeholders urged the Secretary to help promote the development of port community systems.   The Secretary has asked the Department’s industry Advisory Committee on Supply Chain Competitiveness (ACSCC) for recommendations on which maritime cargo status data elements should be used by seaports and stakeholders to improve collaboration and information-sharing.  The ACSCC’s recommendations will be a key facet of the competition.

The Department will share the results of the competition with ports and supply chain stakeholders, to improve their awareness of effective platforms for their voluntary use and implementation at their discretion.  The Department recognizes that ports may select other options based on local circumstances or continue to utilize existing systems at their discretion.  The results of the competition will also be shared with U.S. ports, supply chains, and stakeholders as part of a best practices report that the Department will publish in December 2016.  The best practices report, as well as this competition, are entirely separate from other port-related technology development and port performance statistics initiatives underway in other parts of the U.S. Government.

The technology competition will involve teams consisting of port users, technology developers, and other stakeholders to develop prototypes for open-source port community system platforms.  The prototypes will need to utilize the ACSCC’s recommended data elements and to ensure the secure sharing of this data within the stakeholder communities of specific ports.  Individual ACSCC members will be invited to provide industry knowledge and guidance to the teams as appropriate. 

The prototypes will be judged by the Department and prizes awarded, based on the findings of an expert panel, on a range of criteria that may include design creativity; ease of use; information security; flexibility; value added to existing operations; ability of others to build on the platform; and interoperability.

We invite any interested organizations to indicate their interest in partnering with the Department in organizing this competition and provide a short project proposal to Jeff Weiss, Deputy Director of Policy & Strategic Planning, in the Office of the Secretary ([email protected]) by Friday, September 9.  We anticipate that the selected organization will help organize and run the competition and assist the Department in organizing and holding a Demo Day in November 2016 that will enable teams to demonstrate their prototypes for interested port and supply chain communities.