Project Proposal: Electronic Interchange of fisheries catch data

The project’s purpose is to standardise the data exchanges between Flag States of fishing vessels and other parties relating to electronic logbooks, usually involving countries or Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMO).

The project concentrates on data exchanges and data management related to electronic logbooks.
It aims at harmonising and standardising the business processes and data exchanges of electronic logbooks. The benefits include a common approach towards electronic logbooks for fishing vessels, interoperability between IT systems and easy exchange of data between parties.
Projects related to data management for fisheries control and management, such as fisheries inspection reports, fleet data and /or licences and authorisations data, may follow this project; but they are currently out of scope of the work of this project. 

The deliverables from the project are:
- CATALOGUE: A catalogue of Business Process Models using UN/CEFACT Modelling Methodology (UMM) / Unified Modeling Language (UML) covering the electronic logbook business process
- USER GUIDE: A guide for users to help them to select the model appropriate to their needs 
- CLASS DIAGRAMS: The class diagrams of the business transactions for the creation of the Extended Markup Language (XML) messages
- SPECIFICATION DOCUMENTS: The Business Requirements Specification (BRS) and Requirements Specification Mapping (RSM) documents
- MESSAGES: XML messages to support the business transactions

- CATALOGUE: Proposed Final Draft published
- USER GUIDE: Proposed Final Draft published
- CLASS DIAGRAMS: Proposed Final Draft published and messages produced based on them
- SPECIFICATION DOCUMENTS: Proposed Final Draft published
- MESSAGES: Proposed Final Draft of messages based on Class Diagrams, with implementation verification
- PROJECT: Completion of all deliverables, publication of Final Drafts, establishment of maintenance measures, if any, and notification to the Plenary

Membership is open to experts with broad knowledge in the area of public-private consultations, intra-governmental consultations and the organisation of civil society.
In addition, Heads of Delegations may invite technical experts with proven knowledge in the domain of interest from their constituency to participate in the work. Experts are expected to contribute to the work based solely on their expertise and to comply with the UN/CEFACT Code of Conduct .

The following Heads of Delegations to UN/CEFACT have indicated their support for this project (minimum of 3 required for this project): Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Additional support has been indicated from the Belgian sea fisheries office and the Fisheries Department of Malta.

The geographic focus is global.

The project team will be submitting some working documents as part of this proposal.
It is understood that these initial contributions are for consideration by the project team and that additional contributions from other participants are encouraged in order to ensure that as much information as possible is obtained from those with expertise and a material interest in the project.

Participants in the project shall provide resources for their own participation. The existence and functioning of the project shall not require any additional resources from the UNECE secretariat.
Specific skills needed for this project include business experts with a broad knowledge of electronic data exchange of fisheries control and management, and electronic logbooks in particular, in any region or country. Modelling expertise is also required.

Project Chair 	Ben KLOPPENBORG 	
Lead Editor 	Francky CALLEWAERT