Commentary: ACE dilemma forces CBP to think big for the future or focus on fixes

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is starting to think about a single North American window with Canada and Mexico for its Automated Commercial Environment system, but customs brokers want the agency to focus on fixing ACE’s present state.    Earlier this week, the executive assistant commissioner at U.S. Customs and Border Protection told a luncheon of customs brokers that the next logical step for the recently implemented Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) is a move to a regional version that would also include Canada and Mexico.
   However, Smith, who has served a tireless (and often thankless) role as CBP’s voice to the trade on ACE, was quickly reminded by those in attendance at a National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America (NCBFAA) conference to pump the brakes.
   Brokers said there are still too many technical and practical issues with CBP’s single window initiative to think about broadening it right now.
   And that sort of summarizes the problem with a project of this magnitude, one that has literally been decades in the making. ACE is up and running, but it’s a scaled back version, and one that’s fraught with issues like hour-long downtimes where users can’t access the system. Or instances where a broker doesn’t receive confirmation that an entry has been filed in the system. Or, alternatively, instances where a broker receives multiple such confirmations.
   Brokers want these sorts of issues hammered out fast, but CBP is working under a mandate to “finish” ACE implementation by the end of 2016. ACE users, on the other hand, don’t see the finishing line as being so close, regardless of the deadline. They’ve seen implementation deadlines come and go regularly over the years.
   So how does this relate back to Smith’s point regarding widening the reach of ACE? Well, that should be the goal, at least in theory. As reported last summer, the World Customs Organization envisions single window “clusters” as the most appropriate application for these systems.
   In other words, it’s great if a country develops a single window to harmonize data requirements for importers and exporters across all that country’s relevant governmental agencies, but the true power of single windows lies in the interconnectedness of those systems.
   In this ideal state, the same data entered for an export in one country is used by the country where the product is being imported, i.e. no conflicting data.
   And this is all great in theory, but as the developmental, and now teething, problems with ACE show, it’s hard enough to establish a single window within one country, let alone to coordinate systems between three developed nations.
   Furthermore, there are myriad technical and, probably more significantly, political constraints to a single North American window.
   The single window cluster concept is probably more relevant to smaller, less developed groups of countries, where there is less legacy infrastructure to replace, and where new procedures might be seen as progressive rather than burdensome.
   That said, the trade should laud Smith’s and CBP’s vision. The problems users are having with ACE today shouldn’t prevent the agency from thinking about the future. After all, it’s taken two decades to get ACE to this stage.
   If we’re to truly arrive at an optimal situation across North America, the industry better get cracking sooner, rather than later.