TSA PREPARES TO FUND “SAFE COMMERCE” PROTOTYPES

TSA PREPARES TO FUND “SAFE COMMERCE” PROTOTYPES

TSA PREPARES TO FUND “SAFE COMMERCE” PROTOTYPES

   The Transportation Security Administration, the one-year-old security agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation, is making progress on the public/private Operation Safe Commerce initiative. The initiative provides grants for business processes and technology prototypes that protect commercial shipments from threats of terrorist attack and other risks.
   TSA said that Operation Safe Commerce will serve as “a technology and business practice ‘laboratory’ to identify and explore innovative solution sets” that support federal transportation policy.
   Applications for grants must come through the ports Los Angeles, Long Beach, Seattle, Tacoma, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The five ports will be invited to submit proposals for funding consideration under this initiative.
   Congress, through the 2002 Supplemental Appropriations Act, has appropriated $28 million for Operation Safe Commerce to improve the security of international and domestic supply chains, through pilot projects involving the container load centers of Los Angeles/Long Beach, Seattle/Tacoma and New York/New Jersey.
   TSA, working in conjunction with an interagency executive steering committee for Operation Safe Commerce, announced a program to identify and fund “business driven initiatives to enhance security for the movement of cargo through the supply chain.”
   The initiatives would also protect shipments from illegal immigration and contraband, while minimizing the economic impact on the transportation system.
   TSA invited the industry to comment on the program, and on the criteria to be used to select candidate projects. Comments must be submitted to the agency by Dec. 5.
   The Operation Safe Commerce began in New England as a local public/private partnership where federal, state and local law enforcement entities, and key private sector entities combined efforts to design, develop, and implement a means to test available technology and procedures in order to develop secure supply chains. The Operation Safe Commerce New England initiative analyzed a supply chain shipment between Eastern Europe and New Hampshire. A full container shipment was fitted with onboard tracking, sensors and door seals, and was constantly monitored through the various transportation modes as it traveled through numerous countries and government control functions.
   “Operation Safe Commerce intends to build upon existing freight and information system operational tests sponsored by the Deparment of Transportation and to support the procedural programs sponsored by Customs (for example, the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism and the Container Security Initiative),” TSA said. These efforts will be coordinated with new initiatives brought forward by the partnerships that carry out Operation Safe Commerce operational testing, it added.
   Operation Safe Commerce seeks proposals from the transport sector practitioners.
   “If these technologies and procedures are to be successful and minimize the impact upon all parties, they must employ efficient and cost effective methods of validating the security of processes for stuffing and deconsolidating containers, physically securing and monitoring the containers throughout the supply chain, and exchanging timely and reliable information,” TSA said.
   These cost effective solutions must have the ability to be replicated and scaled for use in commercial shipping applications, the agency added.