Hamburg Local Court already maintains the largest shipping register in Germany. Now Rhineland-Palatinate is joining in.
A good 8,000 ships and ships under construction are already registered in the Hamburg database. It has been managed digitally since summer 2020 – and is now growing further: after Berlin, Brandenburg, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and parts of Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate is also transferring its shipping register to Hamburg on February 1. [ds_preview]
“I am very pleased that our digital offering is winning over more and more other states. This strengthens Hamburg as a location,” says Hamburg’s Senator for Justice Anna Gallina.
The state of Rhineland-Palatinate has around 850 ships and ships under construction. With the transfer to Hamburg, companies and citizens in the south-west will also be able to benefit from the advantages of digitization in court proceedings.
Ship register as a digital service
In the past, entries and changes in the files had to be made by hand, a cumbersome and expensive process in a sector such as shipping, which is based on different time zones around the world. Register printouts and shipping documents have now been generated electronically and automatically since 2020. Companies and citizens can also apply for register printouts online.
Among other things, ownership and mortgages are documented in the register. The oldest entry found dates back to 1889. Sea-going vessels must be registered if their hull length exceeds 15 m. Inland waterway vessels with a displacement of 10 m³ or a carrying capacity of at least 20 tons are subject to registration. Bremen maintains its own register.
The Hamburg IT project has already won an award: The digitization project took 2nd place in the renowned eGovernment 2021 competition. The register was also successful in the public award and was awarded 3rd place.
Focus on digitalization at federal level too
Digitalization and the reduction of bureaucracy is an enormously important factor for customers, i.e. shipowners, when working with ship registers and flag administrations. In Germany in particular, the authorities have not had a good reputation in this regard for a long time. But this is now set to change, as Christian Bubenzer, “Flagging-in Manager” at the responsible BG Verkehr, explains in detail in the latest episode of the HANSA PODCAST. Bubenzer also talks about new talks with shipowners and financiers and about the fact that the topics of digitalization and reducing bureaucracy in the Federal Ministry of Transport have recently received significantly more attention under the aegis of the FDP and Minister Volker Wissing.
