CBP to Delay ACE Deployment

CBP is postponing the planned Oct. 5 deployment of several Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) pieces due to the government shutdown, the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America said in an alert. While CBP is ready to deploy on schedule, "due to limited personnel resources within CBP--notably the absence of Client Representatives--and complications being experienced with normal release and post-release processing often related to [Partner Government Agency] systems and their resource limitations during the hiatus, CBP did not want to put further stress on the trade at this time," NCBFAA said.

NCBFAA agrees with this decision and stressed "to CBP that remaining functionality should not be eliminated or compromised if the hiatus stretches into new development schedules," it said. "In addition the NCBFAA stressed the importance of providing the trade adequate time for development, testing, and reliance on ACE over ACS and it is important that time not be compressed with future deployments. To the extent possible, CBP will continue to work on new development; the brokerage community should continue to work with their software developers during this time as well." New capabilities in the ACE update were to include ACE Reports Software Upgrade, ACE Cargo Release Pilot Expansion, Partner Government Agency Message Set, Entry Summary Validations (see 13092719).