What digital maturity means:

Here are some ideas on what digital maturity means for shipping, building on discussions at People Tech Maritime - digital in Athens in October 2025:

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SUPPORTING PEOPLE TO MAKE DECISIONS: Mature software should support decision making and situation awareness of people in all maritime operational roles, on the ship and in the office

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SUPPORTING DECARBONISATION: Mature digital technology will support decision making and awareness around decarbonisation, for deck and engine crew, vessel performance / efficiency managers, technical superintendents, safety departments, commercial management, senior decision makers.

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TECHNOLOGY MAINTAINABILITY: Mature digital technology will be easy to manage, integrate with other tools and update. 

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COMPONENTS APPROACH: It is likely that mature digital technology will be made up of a number of different components, so companies can choose the elements which work best for them and prove most robust and reliable. This means the components will be able to integrate easily with others, including components made by other software houses.

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GETTING BENEFITS FROM AI: Mature digital technology will support companies in getting the most from developments in AI. This means software tools which can "talk" to AI systems, and the ability to use free standing AI tools, such as to create custom training materials.

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SUPPORTING CO-ORDINATION - mature digital technology supports all departments in shipping companies to work well together - procurement, maintenance, crewing, commercial, safety. Rather than each work in their own 'silos' and co-ordinate over unstructured e-mail, the software tools for each department will 'talk' to software tools from other departments. 

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CONCRETE BENEFITS: mature digital technology will provide tangible benefits, such as finding ways to reduce crew travel costs and make concrete savings.

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PROVIDE RETURNS TO BOTH INVESTORS AND SHIPOWNERS: There can be a conflict between the interests of technology investors and shipowners in developing technology, if shipowners want a range of products to serve their business, and investors want to put money in a "point solution" which does one task very well and they envisage selling many times over to recoup their software development cost and make a profit.

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GOOD RELATIONSHIP WITH IT AND OPERATIONS : mature digital technology is something both IT staff and operations / business staff in a shipping company will like and be able to work with, so both get along well.

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BE CYBERSECURE - mature digital technology will be robust to hackers, without creating onerous additional work for staff, such as with drawings which need someone to enter a hashcode to access

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BE UNDERSTANDABLE - mature digital technology is understandable by people using it and the people who manage it

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MAKE ADMINISTRATIVE WORK EASIER - make the administrative part of work easier to do, rather than more cumbersome