CBP Outlines 2013 Efforts on ACE Development

CBP provided a broad outline of the agency's goals for progress on the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). The agency will be especially focused on Automated Corrections/Deletions; the Partner Government Agency (PGA) Message Set; and the first phase of Initial Entry Summary edits.

Among CBP's 2013 priorities for ACE are:

• Converting CBP's development efforts for the completion of the remaining core ACE functionality in about three years. This will allow the agency to make quicker incremental changes in the future.
• CBP is planning to migrate the Automated Export System (AES) from the current mainframe system over to ACE, creating a single automated export processing platform for all export manifest, commodity, export control and licensing, and export targeting transactions. The reengineered system is expected to maintain existing legacy AES capabilities and to provide for anticipated Census Bureau regulatory changes to include Option 3 filing functionality. CBP anticipates the development completion of the re-engineered AES export commodity filings by September 2013.
• Automated Corrections/Deletions in ACE Cargo Release and Simplified Entry will allow entry filers to update or cancel existing cargo information electronically transmitted for Cargo Release/Simplified Entries already on file in ACE. CBP will either accept or deny the changes.
• The PGA Message Set is part of three International Trade Data System (ITDS) initiatives; which require the collection, sharing, and processing of electronic cargo data between CBP and other Federal Agencies, involved in the import and export of cargo. Development of the PGA Message Set is expected to begin in early 2013, and will provide the Trade Community with a ‘single automated window’ for electronic data submission to Federal Agencies involved in the import review and release process.
• CBP will enhance ACE Entry Summary capabilities to include initial entry summary edits. Currently, ACE Entry Summary participants can file Consumption, Antidumping/Countervailing (AD/CVD) and Informal entries (types 01, 03, and 11.) The development of the initial entry summary edits will begin with Harbor Maintenance Fee (HMF) in early 2013 and will then move on to other validations.

ACE Milestones

CBP also released some statistics on ACE progress so far. For instance, ACE entry summaries filed jumped from 5.8 percent to 21.4 percent of all eligible entry types in 2012. Also Cargo Release/Simplified Entries can now be filed at 16 major airports, with 20 participants approved for participation.

CBP also released a document outlining the basic functions and capabilities in ACE, title "ACE 101." That document is (here).