COAC Details 'Grave Concerns' Over ACE PGA Filing Pilots

The CBP Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations has “grave concerns” about the ongoing pilot of Food and Drug Administration filing in the Automated Commercial environment, it said in a memo posted to the CBP website Nov. 2 (here). FDA is “not piloting reality,” instead testing an artificial process where importers must go through multiple steps to pre-validate shipment data, said the memo, which also detailed PGA filing issues related to the other agencies. With the Feb. 28 mandatory date for FDA filing fast approaching, FDA “needs to pilot real data in order to adequately identify issues and test the success of their ACE deployment,” said the COAC.

Currently, FDA is requiring that importers participating in the pilot provide a spreadsheet of shipment data along with each entry filing, which is then checked for any discrepancies against the agency’s internal database, said the memo. Once everything completely matches up, the filer must then transmit through CBP’s artificial certification testing environment, and finally through the regular ACE production environment if no issues arise. The process is “not sustainable” given the amount of time required for all parties involved. Once FDA’s system goes live “in just a couple of months,” there will continue to be mismatches in data, and the COAC is “worried that these continued mismatches will throw everything to human review and bring FDA-regulated imports to a crawl,” it said.

Meanwhile, additional data requirements are causing customs brokers participating in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ACE pilot to spend an “outrageous amount of time” processing information manually,” said the memo. “Until importers complete their programming, the broker will continue to spend an outrageous amount of time processing the information manually, and subsequently increasing their fees,” it said. Similar issues are arising in the Food Safety and Inspection Service’s pilot for meat shipments, with transcription causing brokers to spend “an additional 5-20 minutes per file,” and in the Environmental Protection Agency’s pilot of chemical pesticide filing, where new data requirements mean “broker processing time has increased by 20 minutes per entry,” said the COAC.

Though CBP has stressed the need for more pilot participants, the agency has been very slow to process requests to participate, said the COAC. “One filer has a client who wanted to join the EPA pilot and sent the requested information to CBP within 24 hours of the pilot announcement. It has now been two months without any follow up from CBP to get them into the pilot. It seems CBP can’t keep up with the requests,” said the memo. CBP also needs to do a better job at targeting its communications at importers, it said. CBP currently directs its messages to filers, assuming that “are acting as a conduit and funneling information to importers,” said the memo. That, however, is not happening. “Importers are very unclear on the steps it takes to join a pilot. Filers cannot join pilots without consenting importers, nor can they force all of their clients in just because a few of them are interested,” said the memo.

More generally, implementation of PGA message set requirements in ACE is moving too slow for all parties involved, said the memo. Software providers are seeing implementation guides change frequently, constantly having to work on new revisions when modifications are made, it said. The COAC recommended a freeze on changes to PGA requirements in the run up to the Feb. 28 mandatory use date (see 1510300018). “Error messages for test filings in the certification environment are “not specific and clear, requiring follow up calls to the agencies,” said the COAC. Filers are “struggling to get correct information from their importers because they haven’t provided the information in the past and don’t have it readily available,” said the memo. “There is a large learning curve for the importers,” it said.