Timing for First CEEs to Handle Entire Industry Processing Still Unclear, Says Ryan

It's still unclear exactly when the three Centers of Excellence and Expertise (CEE) chosen for accelerated roll-out will begin to handle import processing for their respective industries, said Elena Ryan, who is in charge of the transition to the CEEs at CBP. Those CEEs -- the Pharmaceutical CEE in New York, the Electronics CEE in Los Angeles and the Petroleum CEE in Houston -- will be the first centers to handle post-release processing for entire industries (see 14030613). Despite rumors otherwise, "we do not have a specific date in mind for all of this to happen," she said. Ryan discussed process on the CEEs during the American Conference Institute's Import Compliance and Enforcement forum on June 13.

CBP will need to go through "extensive negotiations, which often takes months" with the National Treasury Employees Union, the union that represents CBP employees, on how CBP employees are moved to the CEEs, she said. Among the employees CBP must consider are about 1,000 import specialists, 500 entry specialists and port management, said Ryan. Because the national import specialists do not handle the processing of entries at the ports, they are not considered operational for CEE transition purposes, she said.

Initially, CBP will use an internal order to transfer authorities of the port director to the CEEs, she said. Eventually, the agency will put out a Federal Register notice announcing the end of the pilot status for the three CEEs, while the remaining seven CEEs will continue to operate as a pilot program, said Ryan. CBP previously transferred some authority to the CEE directors through a pilot program (see 12082733). There's a group that is now working to modernize CBP regulations and there's some question whether the agency should update the regulations at once or in "little bites," Ryan said. Importers should continue to apply to the other seven CEEs even if they are unable to admit new members due to workload issues, she said. "It's nice to get you all lined up and ready to come in," said Ryan.

The agency is not currently planning to bring drawback and quota processes into the CEEs because they are very "paper intensive," she said. "We are waiting for the quota module to be built in ACE before we do that," she said. There's also some industry concerns with drawback going from the four drawback centers to the ten CEEs, though it would make some sense for a lot of the commodity experts to join the centers, said Ryan.

Companies that import numerous products across multiple industries are chosen for a CEE pretty much at "random," said Ryan. "There's not a perfect way to do this," she said. "I think we'll get better at as our system are capturing data better." If a company imports "51 percent of one good, 49 percent of another, we'll work with you" on which CEE the company would be part of, she said. There's a number of companies that are in a CEE that falls largely outside the core business, she said. For instance, a well-known chicken company is included in the machinery CEE because the company doesn't import chickens, but does import the machines it uses for processing the chickens, she said. Ryan said that because the CEEs will use account-based processing, a certain CEE will handle entire shipments, even if there's items that fall outside that CEE's sector, for instance, promotional t-shirts shipped with engine parts.