Digital Trade Infrastructures: A Framework for Analysis

Abstract

In global supply chains, information about transactions resides in fragmented pockets within business and government systems. The lack of reliable, accurate and complete information makes it hard to detect risks (such as safety, security, compliance and commercial risks) and at the same time makes international trade inefficient. The introduction of digital infrastructures that transcend organizational and system domains is driven by the prospect of reducing the fragmentation of information, thereby enabling improved security and efficiency in the trading process. This article develops a digital trade infrastructure framework through an empirically grounded analysis of four digital infrastructures in the trade domain, using the conceptual lens of digital infrastructure.

A framework for voluntary business-government information sharing

“…perspective, we also added a dynamic view and showed how the factors linked to the governance processes. This research also extends earlier research on digital trade infrastructures (Rukanova et al, 2018) by providing further insights into the governance dimension.…”

“…)-made available via the data pipeline from the respective systems of buyers, sellers and their logistics service providersto cross-validate the accuracy of the submitted declarations of the imported or exported goods. Rukanova et al (2018) developed a framework to help analyse digital trade infrastructure developments such as the data pipeline. They propose to analyse three aspects to better understand digital trade infrastructures, namely: (1) architecture, which allows to make explicit the business and government actors that are involved in information sharing; (2) the process of initiation and upscaling of the digital trade infrastructures; and (3) the governance aspect which also includes cost-benefit articulation for parties involved in order to incentivise commercial parties to make the investments required to participate in a digital trade infrastructure.…”

“…Rukanova, et al Government Information Quarterly 37 (2020) 101501 central part of the framework is inspired by Gil-Garcia ( 2012) who proposed to look at a broader inter-organisational information sharing that goes beyond the single level of government. We also build upon the digital trade infrastructure framework (Rukanova et al, 2018) which addresses the interactions between business digital infrastructures (such as data pipelines) and multiple levels of (inter-) national governments that can access and make use of company data available in these business infrastructures. The central part of our framework is aimed at helping to understand and make explicit the context of a specific voluntary business-government information sharing initiative.…”

“…Therefore, voluntary information sharing is extremely challenging and relies heavily on articulating benefits and finding the right incentives for all parties involved (Gascó, Feng, & Gil-Garcia, 2018;Susha & Gil-Garcia, 2019). Another major challenge relates to governance (Emerson, Nabatchi, & Balogh, 2012;Rukanova, Henningsson, Henriksen, & Tan, 2018;Susha & Gil-Garcia, 2019) since voluntary information sharing arrangements involve a complex network of business and government actors which have their own interests, but need to engage in a process and work together to achieve the voluntary sharing.…”

Aligning Stakeholder Interests, Governance Requirements and Blockchain Design in Business and Government Information Sharing

“…The goal of TradeLens is digitizing global trade [18]. Digitization and development of digital trade infrastructures such as data pipelines are aimed at overcoming fragmentation of the information passed through systems of supply chain partners and authorities, and overcoming inefficiencies in the exchange of paper documents [8,23,24].…”