Vietnam Customs in strong collaboration with WCO in organizing 2023 WCO Technology Conference and Exhibition

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	2023 WCO Technology Conference and Exhibition ends

Ludovic Thanay - Head of WCO’s Communications, Events, and Strategic Planning. Photo: Hoang Cuong

Could you tell me about the great efforts of the WCO in organizing and implementing the communication for the 2023 WCO Technology Conference and Exhibition?

The 2023 WCO Technology Conference and Exhibition is the WCO's biggest event and is the most popular for our members. It is the only platform that Customs has networked with their stakeholders when we talk about customs stakeholders, the private sector, academia, international organizations, NGOs, and other government bodies...

The event is very important to us. Vietnam Customs has supported the WCO in many ways by participating in WCO meetings and has been active and tried to be the leader in the region in terms of technology. For us, it was important to have the WCO Technology Conference and Exhibition in Vietnam. At the same time, it showcases what Vietnam Customs is doing and also what the country is doing in terms of technology.

On the other side, it brings other people together in a land of peace in Hanoi, which is the city of peace, where you have so many people coming from so many different countries. We have around 95 countries represented in the conference and we're all coming here to see what's known, what are the new technologies, and what other technologies are starting to influence the future of customs tomorrow.

The customs landscape is ever growing, it's always changing and customs have to adapt to this changing environment. The best way to do it is to stay on top of all the new technologies. Customs need to know what other new technologies what other challenges relate to these technologies and how we can overcome them.

What do you think about the communication by Vietnam Customs for the Technology Conference and Exhibition?

The communication has been very effective from the Vietnamese side. We had a very good collaboration since the beginning and we've communicated a lot with the administration in order to organize the event. We cannot organize such type of event without strong collaboration with the host. Vietnam has also communicated about this event to regional countries. Vietnam Customs has reached out to regional countries to invite them to attend this event and to show their support for this great event.

Could you tell me more details of the cooperation between Vietnam Customs and WCO in the event?

The collaboration has been very successful. The conference has shown what we have achieved together, this cannot be achieved alone, never from the Vietnamese side, never from the WCO. We cannot do this on our own, but we can do great things together. We have 48 boots, have so many sponsors, and 1200 people registered for the conference, which means that people wanted to come and we have worked together closely to make it happen.

How do you assess the advanced technology equipment introduced by technology providers?

We have seen a lot of technologies that we knew before, but now we're seeing the advancements of these technologies. For example, when we talk about the Internet of Things, this is not new to the WCO. We've been talking about the Internet of Things for decades now, but we have a lot of new developments on the Internet of Things.

Nowadays everything is connected. The technology advances a lot and we need to know these technologies. We might not have a lot of new technologies, but we have developments around the technologies, One of the new ones that we have is generative AI.

We have talked about how generative AI is changing the work of customs, and how we start to use generative AI. Everyone uses generated AI now, but how can Customs use generative AI to enhance its performance, which is one thing that we do?

We also talked during this conference about blockchain. We have seen blockchain going in several directions, but now it seems that there might be a new direction. We have to explore this new direction and we have people coming, speakers coming in and telling us how we can see blockchain from a different perspective and try to use it for customs.

Thank you so much!