Interview with Frank Dunsmuir, Industry Lead for Customs & Trade, Fujitsu

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Frank is the industry lead for customs and trade at Fujitsu.
He has over 20 years experience working for global technology organisations delivering services and solutions to the retail industry, the supply chain industry, as well as major government programmes, including the Government's DVLA electronic vehicle licencing.
Frank specialises in new and emerging technologies and his current focus is to support Government with its preparations for the UK's EU exit, together with the development of a vision of its future border capability for the UK, which will support growth in global trade and GDP.
He was tasked with considering if he had a magic wand and could create a smart vehicle that intelligently tells the border agencies what it's doing, where it's going, what it's carrying, where it's come from, then automatically give it permission to move through the border - what would he do? With that vision in mind he worked backwards to solve all the problems along the way.
Demonstrating in practice is really, really critical. So Fujitsu built the system, put smart locks on the back of trucks, they then followed those trucks using tracking devices and showed all of this information to the border agencies as the journeys were unfolding.
They could see on a dashboard electronically where the vehicle had come from, who had locked it, they could see the fact that it hadn't been opened or tampered with during its journey. It passed the port at this particular time and it arrived in its destination as it said it would and didn't go anywhere else.
And with that, they also shared all of the data about the truck, the owner of the trucks, the traders that put goods in into the vehicle, the customs declarations, and any certificates as well.
So all of the data had a digital equivalent on the system. And what that did is it showed the technology works. But equally, it showed that the hauliers could use the smart locks and therefore adoption of the technology was easy.
Frank says that now that we have a border strategy, the Government's published that the 2025 strategy, we need to invest in delivering that strategy to the point where solutions like smart freight are readily adopted. And we move the checks away from the border. It happens in other regions or programmes in Sweden and the American/Canadian border. where these sorts of schemes are developing at pace and are being used today.
He believes the UK needs to be best in class because 50% of our trade is with the EU - and following Brexit the issue of borders is not going to go away any time soon.

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