AES SECURE FOR MANDATORY FILING OF CCL, MUNITIONS EXPORT DATA

AES SECURE FOR MANDATORY FILING OF CCL, MUNITIONS EXPORT DATA    The U.S. Census Bureau will submit a report to Congress this week that clears the way for mandatory electronic filing of shipper’s export declarations for shipments regulated by the Commerce Control List and the State Department’s munitions list.
   The report was initiated by Congress under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2000. The secretaries of Commerce, Treasury and the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology had to show that the Internet version of the government’s Automated Export System, AESDirect, was secure enough to handle this information.
   “We are extremely pleased that our studies have found that AES and AESDirect are fully functional and certified as secure to handle this type data,” said Charles A. Woods, assistant chief of the Foreign Trade Division at Census. These studies were conducted on behalf of the agencies by the General Services Administration and computer and data security specialists.
   About 270 days after the report is received by Congress, Commerce Control List and munitions shipment data must be filed to the government through AES or AESDirect.
   In the same legislation, Congress asked the secretaries of Commerce, State, Defense, Energy, Treasury and the Central Intelligence Agency director to determine the feasibility and advisability of making AES mandatory for all U.S. exports. The agencies recommended that AES should be mandatory and Congress is considering this proposal.
   AES was developed five years ago as a voluntary system to help reduce paper filings of shipper’s export declarations. Customs uses the information on these documents to target illegal exports, while Census compiles it for the country’s trade statistics.
   The amount of shipper’s export declaration converted to electronic filings continues to increase. About 4,600 companies, mostly freight forwarders, use either AES or AESDirect to file their shipper’s export declarations today, said Gerard J. Horner, chief of the AES Branch at Census.