UK Steps Up Digitialisation of Trade Effort

ICC United Kingdom, supported by the Tees Valley in the north of England, has launched the Centre for Digital Trade and Innovation (C4DTI) that is designed to be a focal point for bringing together initiatives and expertise to enable industry and government to advance efforts to digitalise and standardise trade systems.

The C4DTI will work closely with innovation clusters across the UK’s freeports such as the Teesside Freeport, as well as the City of London. According to an ICC news release, C4DTI “will be industry-led and promote an open digital trade system based on common, internationally recognised standards. It will connect the patchwork of systems and platforms across both the private sector and government to enable trade information to flow in standardised format and technology solutions to scale.”

Among its stated purposes, C4DTI will identify barriers and spur innovation at scale across the UK trading system. One industry study projects that GBP 225 billion (USD 294b) in efficiency savings could be achieved by digitalising the UK trading system.

ICC Banking Commission Senior Technical Advisor David Meynell has been appointed Digital Rules Advisor of C4DTI and Oswald Kuyler has been named Digital Standards Advisor.