Digitalisation of freight transport license between Finland and Russia

Abstract

Digitalisation has been a widely used topic in recent decades. While the private sector easily adapted into it, the public sector has been digitalising services at a slower pace. The European Union showed great interest in the digitalisation of customs for better services at the border. However, to this day, there are still a lot of documents that are needed from transportation companies to provide to customs to cross the border while transporting goods between Finland and Russia. The goal of this thesis was to find out if a software application can replace paper documents and if such system would improve efficiency in customs. According to the literature, long waiting times, costs, usability, and document forgery have been key issues found during the transportation process. The literature has been used to gather technical solutions to the identified issues and a new system has been implemented. The finished artefact has been evaluated through expert interviews with a special focus on the aspects of time, costs, usability, and security. The results showed that the developed artefact improved usability, lowered costs, decreased waiting time, and has the potential to prevent document forgery. The analysis of the results show that a software system can replace paper documents and has great potential to increase efficiency in customs.