ACE System Outages, Communication Issues Add to Concerns Over Summer PGA Deadlines

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Import filers could be in for an eventful summer, with ACE system slowdowns and CBP communication problems compounding problems related to an already crowded slate of ACE deadlines, said several software developers and a customs broker during the annual conference of the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America on April 19. After a slow implementation process over nearly a decade and a relatively successful transition for entry summary on March 31 (see 1604050034), the pace is set to increase markedly as 19 PGAs join the two already online at as yet undetermined dates.

Currently listed as “summer 2016” on CBP’s ACE deadline page (here), CBP has “worked up a notional schedule” that it “needs to coordinate” with the other agencies before it can announce exact dates, which will be staggered to avoid all PGAs coming online at once, said Debbie Augustin, executive director of CBP’s ACE Business Office, during remarks the following day. CBP is aware that deadlines are important for the trade community to prioritize its work, and hopes to “communicate more” within “the next couple weeks,” she said.

An early announcement of concrete deadlines, for FDA in particular, is critical to ensuring the trade community is ready when the switchover comes, said Fany Flores-Pastor, director-R&D systems at Descartes, a software developer. Currently, FDA isn’t even on the list of PGAs scheduled for this summer. “We really hope [the deadline is] earlier than” December 2016, the administration’s deadline for full ACE implementation, “because we don’t want last minute,” she said during the April 19 panel discussion. “I know in order to get your clients to participate, you need something more firm.” Filers need to be able to tell their clients they need certain information because enforcement is coming on a tangible date, she said.

Whether the trade community will be ready for what’s coming is a major concern for Flores-Pastor, she said. In seven years, ACE implementation has been completed for two PGAs. Over 20 more PGA deadlines remain in 2016, she said. Not helping matters is CBP’s continued and continuous stream of changes making it impossible to follow a normal development schedule, she said. What had been a long, slow ride over the past seven years has become a “roller coaster,” she said.

The deadlines this summer will come on the heels of CBP’s May 28 deadline for cargo release entry types 01, 03, 11, 23, 51 and 52. As that deadline approaches, and following CBP’s March 31 deadline for entry summary for those same entry types, ACE participation has soared, with cargo release rates now over 72 percent.

The increase in participation has had the side effect of ACE going down “every day,” said Amy Magnus of A.N. Deringer. That’s a big problem for brokers like Magnus, who is based near the Canadian border. CBP doesn’t even see the trucks backing up across the border because truckers have learned to stay away from the port of entry until the entry has been accepted, she said. Sandra Coty of OHL recounted that she had one trucker get stuck in limbo because CBP hadn’t accepted the entry but Canadian customs wanted a bond posted before it let the trucker back in.

In the aftermath of system slowdowns associated with the March 31 ACE deadline, CBP added capacity in the form of new servers and other hardware, but that may not be enough for the agency to get where it needs to be, said software developers on the April 19 panel. According to Chris Springer of QuestaWeb, the size of ACE messages is “out of hand.” What used to be 50 lines now stretches into the megabytes. Only able to process a given amount of data at a time, the ACE system gets clogged and “falls apart.” Celeste Catano of Kewill thinks that software errors in the system are causing “clogs” when “a certain type of message hits,” and everyone suffers “until they see the message and get rid of it.” Until CBP can “analyze each one and move forward,” the system issues will keep happening, she said. The issues could get bigger as more PGAs come online and more messages are added, said Flores-Pastor.

Compounding matters is a lack of communication from CBP to the trade community of system issues, fixes and new deployments, said the panelists. CBP has relied on its 2:00 p.m. daily ACE call to inform developers and filers of new functionalities in ACE, said Catano. The calls have been useful, but it can be “scary” to miss even one due to the information provided, she said. CBP also needs to provide ACE downtime guidelines just like they have for the legacy Automated Commercial Environment, said Coty, who noted she had a shipment of puppies held up for seven hours because ACE was down and the CBP officer at the port of entry “didn’t know what to do.”

Attendees at the conference polled by a show of hands overwhelmingly said CBP needs to issue CSMS messages on system issues more quickly. One commenter during the April 19 panel said CBP has been reluctant to send messages as soon as an issue occurs, not wanting to air every single issue that came up. CBP wanted to find a problem, fix it, and then let the trade community know, but situations develop so quickly that industry needs to know, she said.

System performance remains a “priority focus for CBP and “will continue to be so,” said CBP’s Augustin during the panel discussion on April 20. CBP's IT teams “continue to implement metrics to put capabilities in place for more proactive monitoring, and that emphasis is going to continue moving forward,” she said. CBP is also “trying to provide transparency on issues that we do encounter through daily trade calls” and “CSMS messaging.” CBP has been trying to balance requests for more CSMS messages with feedback that there have been too many, she said, and is open to feedback on how to make its messages more useful. “I don’t think you’ve been communicating enough, so the more we hear the better,” responded Coty.