AESDirect and AESPcLink Targeted for Summer 2016 Transition

The Commerce Department and CBP aim to complete its transition of the Census Bureau’s AESDirect and AESPcLink into the Automated Commercial Environment by the end of the summer, Gerard Horner, director of the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Office of Technology Evaluation, said on Jan. 20 during the first of two days of meetings of Commerce's Advisory Committee on Supply Chain Competitiveness in Washington. Data will no longer be collected via separate systems. “Everything will go through the government's single window system ACE,” Horner said. “Census is currently transitioning the 50,000-plus companies who currently use AESDirect and AESPcLink to ACE."

Companies that aren’t voluntarily switching over to ACE will start getting notifications in mid-February, a CBP official said at a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations (COAC) on Jan. 13 (see 1601150022). CBP will select chunks of Employer Identification Numbers (EIN), and notify companies that aren’t using ACE that “we expect you to start transitioning,” she said. CBP expects to run through all EIN numbers and send notifications to non-ACE filers by mid-spring.