ACS Unavailable as Backup System to ACE as of July 23, Says Augustin

PHOENIX – Following the July 23 mandatory use date for most remaining entry types, the Automated Commercial System will no longer be available for entry and entry summary filings even in cases of ACE outages, said Deborah Augustin, executive director of the ACE Business Office at CBP. After all the agencies that use ACS complete the transition to ACE on July 23, CBP will begin to dismantle ACS, she said while speaking at the West Coast Trade Symposium on May 26. "So, ACS then is no longer available as a back up for processing," she said. Field operations and downtime procedures may instead come into effect if there are issues with ACE, she said.

While there are concerns surrounding the July 23 cutover related to quota, there are “mitigation” and “fallback plans” related to the implementation and the agency will provide that information “if we need to go that route,” said Augustin. Because quota entries are processed electronically within ACE and manually within ACS, CBP can't process those entries in both systems, said Seven Zaccaro, client representative branch chief in the ACE business office. June 15 is also a major date for ACE, said Zaccaro. With FDA PGA data mandated in ACE on that date, all entries and entry summaries under entry types 01, 03 and 11 -- which account for 99 percent of all entries filed -- will be required in ACE, he said. "Regardless of what other [Partner Government Agencies] that you have associated to them, those entries and entry summaries will need to be filed in ACE," he said.

CBP plans to update the cargo release business processes document soon to reflect knowledge gained from the thousands of entries processed since it was first issued, said Jim Swanson, a director in CBP's Office of Field Operations. “We anticipated quite a bit in terms of policy, but we did notice there's things we did miss,” he said. For example, there are some new processes necessary for Foreign Trade Zone weekly estimated entries and the Border Release Advance Screening and Selectivity and Free and Secure Trade program entry summaries to allow filers to provide “your PGA information electronically at entry summary, instead of at cargo release,” he said.

CBP is also working with other agencies to “come up with alternative places to file PGA information for Foreign Trade Zone transactions,” he said. “We're looking at how to file at the time the goods are admitted to the zone, because many of the agencies have legal authority over those goods at the time they land” in the U.S., he said. That could “solve some of our back end problems of filing in entry summary and not being able to segregate goods out appropriately,” Swanson said. Those discussions are ongoing and will be based on the legal requirements involved, he said.

Major changes on issues considered to be outside core ACE features – or “post core” -- are unlikely to come soon, Swanson said. Among those issues are “de minimis” shipments, though CBP is “actively involved” on that with the other agencies, he said. The Food and Drug Administration is also working internally and in interagency discussions to determine what its policy on de minimis “will be in the future,” said Andrew Seaborn, supervisory consumer safety officer at FDA. There's been some new attention on de minimis policies following an increase to CBP's de minimis value threshold for entry requirements (see 1605160030).

The June 15 date will also be a major milestone at the FDA (see 1605130028), with the seven entry types involved accounting for some 90 percent of entries that agency sees, said Seaborn. At an operational level, very little will change within FDA, he said. “There's policy that has to be developed as enhancements are made, but largely it's still the same functions that local FDA performs, whether it's reviewing entries, collecting samples, doing field examinations,” he said. The Centers for Devices and Radiological Health products issued a memo that said “they will not accept any medical devices in weekly entry filing for FDA” and “we've heard our Center for Drugs might be following suit, but haven't seen a memo,” he said.

There's “post core” plans to eventually combine the Import Trade Auxiliary Communication System and the Document Image System, but ITACS “will continue to exist,” he said. That system offers some different features beyond DIS that are specific to FDA, he said. The agency “hopes” to have its proposed rulemaking, which outlines data requirements and will allow for electronic notices of action, out by June 15, he said. For FDA, and for CBP, the Manufacturer Identification (MID) codes are "largely going away for entry transactions," though there are some commodities "that have certain manufacturer specific requirements," he said. "For FDA, we require in ACE the entity name and address and also request" and if available, the Firm Establishment Identifier or DUNS number, he said. "The underlying issues is the case where the original manufacturer is not known" and can't be determined, in which case, "you can transmit the distributor to us," he said.

Right now, about 90 percent of cargo release is "going great," but there's struggles with the remaining 10 percent, said Sandra Langford-Coty, vice president, customs brokerage product, at OHL. The biggest challenge are truck manifest transactions, said Zaccaro. That's because on the CBP side, truck manifest is "significantly older ACE technology" and needs significant updates, he said. Until then, while the port of entry isn't required for cargo release, "we suggest that you do" list port of entry for truck shipments so a CBP officer can manually release the shipment if there's an issue, he said. Some perceived problems in ACE are actually a reflection of what's a "tighter" system than ACS, said Zaccaro. "A lot of time what's happening is ACE is rejecting something and you're seeing it as a problem, but really it's enforcing something that should have been enforced anyway and you've been getting away with," he said.