U.S. sets up inter-agency export control centers

   The Obama administration on Wednesday opened two inter-agency fusion centers to coordinate how the U.S. government administers the system for controlling exports of products with military or dual military and civilian applications.
    The reorganization is part of President Obama’s two-year initiative to reform antiquated licensing procedures so U.S. companies can more easily sell technology and equipment to overseas buyers while enhancing the government’s ability to make sure sensitive technologies are not transferred to people that pose a threat to U.S. security or engaged in nuclear proliferation. 
   The Export Enforcement Coordination Center (E2C2) is a task force headed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement designed to improve information sharing and collaboration between law enforcement and intelligence officials responsible for investigating possible violations of export control laws. Specialists from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, Defense Security Service, FBI, the Director of National Intelligence and other agencies will be co-located at the facility.
   Each agency will maintain existing responsibilities for enforcement activity. The E2C2 will pool resources to facilitate their efforts, administration officials said.
   Congress increased penalties for export violations two years ago and the Obama administration has made stricter enforcement a priority even as it seeks to liberalize rules on what products are covered by licensing requirements.
   The second multi-agency center is the Information Triage Unit, housed in the Commerce Department. It’s job is to assemble and distribute all information, including intelligence, necessary for agencies to make decisions on applications for export licenses. The goal is to make sure all decision makers have access to complete data within the government and are making decisions from the same information set. Coordinating the reviews of separate processes is expected to streamline the export licensing process and make it more predictable for U.S. companies, officials said.
  “The ITU helps realize President Obama’s vision of a more efficient and effective  export control system that maximizes our resources and enhances our national security,” Eric Hirschhorn, Commerce’s undersecretary for industry and security, said in a statement. “By creating a unit consisting of analysts from a number of agencies, including the intelligence community, to identify and disseminate information about parties to licensed transactions, we can leverage our resources and support the licensing regimes of the departments of Commerce, State, and the Treasury.”  
   The White House has proposed the eventual creation of a single licensing agency. The ITU would be folded into any reorganized entity, an administration official said during a background briefing with reporters. — Eric Kulisch