20 October 2022 marked the end of the 3-day WCO Technology Conference and Exhibition held in Maastricht, the Netherlands. On behalf of the Conference host closing remarks were provided by Mr. Arno Kooij, Deputy Director General of the Customs Administration of the Netherlands who thanked all involved in the Conference and highlighted the need for Customs administrations around the world to respond speedily and effectively to the rapidly changing world of trade and logistics. “This requires robust, flexible and innovative administrations that focus all their efforts on developing and implementing quality technology” said Mr. Kooij.

Some take-aways from the Conference were also outlined in the closing remarks of Mr. Brendan O’Hearn, Deputy Director for Procedures and Facilitation at the World Customs Organization (WCO). Among those was the need for Customs to apply out-of-the box thinking to manage the exponential growth of Business to Consumer (B2C) cross-border shipments, which had to be done in partnership with the private sector. There was a lot of potential offered by Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Internet of Things, but there was still room for improvement with regard to the uptake by Customs and the data governance aspects surrounding the deployment of these technologies. Moreover, creating and sustaining a culture with data at its core was considered to be of high relevance to the current environment in which Customs administrations operate. What was also key was collaboration. First, collaboration through sharing between Customs administrations of data, good practices, and even ready-to-implement solutions, such as automated threat detection algorithms, but also collaboration between Customs on one hand and the private sector and academia on the other hand. When it comes to sharing of data, the important prerequisites were legislative framework, technological framework, and carefully defined datasets. Mr. O’Hearn concluded by saying that the discussions during the past three days had proven the relevance of the WCO Technology Conference in offering a forum for sharing of information, insights, experiences and best practices.

Last, an announcement was made that the 2023 WCO Technology Conference and Exhibition will be hosted by the Customs Administration of Viet Nam in Hanoi.