NCBFAA CONTINUES FIGHT FOR CUSTOMS AUTOMATION FUNDING

   Members of the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America will descend upon Capitol Hill this week to lobby for Customs automation funding.
   The NCBFAA, along with other associations in the Coalition for Customs Automated Funding, have spend the past year trying to persuade Congress to fund Customs’ future system, the Automated Commercial Environment.
   "After a year of brown-outs and extended downtime, a new system base is needed as soon as possible to manage the extra workload and to incorporate the changes envisioned by Congress in its Customs Modernization Act," the NCBFAA said.
   The president’s proposed budget to maintain Customs’ 16-year-old
Automated Commercial System through 2000 is short of $12 million and
there’s no funding for ACE.
   The authorizing committees, House Ways and Means and Senate Finance, have indicated that they would support funding for ACE in the 2001 budget. Customs’ failure to produce adequate cost-benefit analysis of its future system has slowed their approval.
   However, Customs has taken measures to satisfy its critics by hiring an
outside systems developer, Mitre Corp., to find a contractor to build ACE. the NCBFAA will ask Congress to spend another $12 million for ACS and $40 million to keep the ACE contract process running through 2000.
   "This can be done through emergency supplemental appropriations in a
yet-to-be specified funding vehicle," the group said.