Agency Coordination on ITDS Showing Promise After Executive Order, Say Officials

The other government agencies involved in the completion of the International Trade Data System have become increasingly engaged in that work following the February Executive Order on ITDS, said Carol Cave, director of Import Surveillance, Consumer Product Safety Commission. Cave and other agency officials discussed the progress on Sept. 15 during the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America Government Affairs Conference. "There is a major shift going on with [the Border Interagency Executive Council]" as the government works to finish the system by 2016, as required in the Executive Order (see 14021928). For example, there's been a lot more coordination in looking at which agencies collect the same information that the CPSC also requires, said Cave.

There are a lot of commonalities among the agencies that regulate imports, Cave said. Data quality, for instance, is a "front and center" consideration as agencies develop risk assessment strategies and decide "what they are going to look at," she said. Another question is the "the hold and release issue and what agencies have that statutory authority," she said. There's a lot of work being done on how the agencies should respond to potentially dangerous cargo and when to allow for alternatives to holds, such as conditional release or delivery with "post-audit" enforcement, she said. Targeting is another open issue, said Cave.

The BIEC is also working on how to work on overlapping enforcement issues, Cave said. For instance, CPSC is increasingly seeing combined health and safety and intellectual property rights violations, she said. When CPSC takes the IP cases to the U.S. Attorney, they say "we want to see more health and safety along with the IP because it makes for a better case," she said. "So we have been doing a lot more cross-coordination with our counterparts to be effective." The biggest challenge for CPSC on ITDS is the "harmonized tariff product specification and classification work," she said. The agency "is doing a lot of work at trying to get better HTS classification." Another issue is the development of regulations, such as rules for the electronic filing of certificates, said Cave. The CPSC is also evaluating the Importer Self-Assessment product safety pilot and Cave expects that it would eventually be rolled into the trusted trader program, though the CPSC is waiting on some CBP data before CPSC's commissioners vote on the subject, said Cave.

The import processing will probably look significantly different than they do today and that's why the ongoing coordination is so important, Domenic Veneziano, director, Division of Import Operations, Food and Drug Administration. One of the biggest planned changes will be the electronic transmission of FDA notices, which are now sent in the mail, he said. "If we can do it electronically in real time, that would be a tremendous accomplishment," he said. The FDA will be meeting with CBP soon to go over the entire process to see what else can be streamlined, he said. Rules for the Foreign Supplier Verification Program should be published shortly, he said. "It's actually very close," said Veneziano. "I can tell you it's out of our hands right now, so pens are down, everything is completed."

The ongoing testing involving other government agencies -- the Environmental Protection Agency and Food Safety and Inspection Service -- would be improved if more companies involved in trade would participate, said Brenda Smith, the head of the Office of International Trade. "We are getting some, but not a lot," she said." So if you have an interest in the other government agency transactions, please raise your hands when we ask for volunteers." Those testing volunteers are "really the way that set the way we do business," she said. Smith said CBP has been working closely with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and Lacey Act filing automation should be available in October, though there be "a small disconnect" between when the functionality is available and when the Federal Register notice is published.

CBP and the FDA are "at the table" to discuss the effort toward ITDS, said Smith. "We believe FDA's and CBP's work will be essentially complete in February and then we will do deployments after that with the trade testing following those deployments," she said. A big bulk of CBP's work on ITDS will be finished once the agency gets FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture on board, Smith said she's heard from industry. Smith also urged for more filing in ACE. "If you are not filing at least 20 percent" of your entry summaries in ACE "and starting to work on the entry piece, you are behind the curve and probably at a competitive disadvantage going into the next year." The coming rollout of the modernized export function in ACE will also be used as a chance to train CBP officers, said Smith. "Not only on the automation itself, but also on the policy and processes," she said. That will mean "when our officers use the functionality, that they are really solid on the policy and the regulatory framework behind it."