for digital data exchange across logistics and supply chains 

Conclusion wins BDI tender

Conclusion has been awarded the contract for the development of the core components of the Basic Data Infrastructure (BDI). BDI is a public-private partnership that promotes and facilitates standardised digital data sharing across logistics chains and supply chains in the Netherlands and beyond. Conclusion will develop and manage the technical components that enable companies to exchange data with each other as well as with public sector organisations.

Logistics and supply chains, including those in the agrifood sector, face a specific digitalisation challenge: how do you exchange data with organisations that are also your competitors? To address this, BDI has developed a governance framework that defines how trust, ownership and governance are safeguarded when sharing data. Until now, these agreements and technical blueprints have largely remained on paper. Conclusion’s role is to turn them into working solutions and drive adoption.

The approach is deliberately open source. Rather than creating another closed platform, the project delivers a set of reusable components that complement and connect existing systems.

The first practical application, focused on container logistics, provides visibility into the location of a container within the supply chain. While that may sound straightforward, this information is still frequently exchanged via email or spreadsheets. By recording trust relationships in a central authorisation registry and standardising data flows, many barriers to accessing relevant container data are removed. As a result, data becomes available in a timely and complete manner.

Further use cases already in development include last-mile delivery in construction, a pharmaceutical data corridor for end-to-end medicine tracking, and CO₂ footprint data exchange across agrifood supply chains.

Five organisations participated in the final stage of the procurement process. Conclusion was selected based on its pragmatic approach and demonstrable experience in addressing similar challenges in other sectors. Within the project, Conclusion is responsible for project management, architecture, adoption, technical development and testing.

A key technical differentiator is the use of Keycloak as the foundation of the identity layer. Conclusion developed plug-ins for Keycloak that have since been incorporated into the official open-source project, recognising the technical quality of its contribution.

Leon Roseleur, Principal Consultant at Conclusion, said: “Logistics underpins almost every critical sector in the Netherlands. The movement of goods, medicines and construction materials depends on data that crosses organisational boundaries. That only works when ownership and trust are governed properly. What BDI has created is a foundation on which the logistics sector itself can continue to build, without becoming dependent on a single platform or supplier. That is exactly the kind of approach that enables innovation to scale.”

The platform being developed for BDI has been designed as a transferable model. Its open standards and modular architecture make it applicable to other sectors and regions where data exchange between competing organisations remains a barrier to collaboration, including the agrifood supply chains mentioned above.

Steven Schouten, Product Owner at BDI, said: “With Conclusion, we have found an experienced and pragmatic partner to help bring BDI into its next phase. Conclusion’s experience and flexible approach align perfectly with the BDI philosophy of an open ecosystem. The layered architecture, in which BDI’s core components can easily be combined with sector-specific applications, demonstrates the flexibility of the platform. Together, we are creating a future-proof and independent foundation for secure data exchange.”