Funding Limitations Make Transparency, Prioritization Increasingly Important in BIEC Discussions

Funding is a major and now even more complex concern within the Border Interagency Executive Committee discussions, BIEC members said while speaking at the West Coast Trade Symposium on May 24. "This is the real work, I think, now that we've gotten to the other side of the single window," said Cynthia Whittenburg, deputy executive assistant commissioner at CBP’s Office of International Trade. Adding to the already complicated work in the BIEC, the partner government agencies (PGAs) also now need to consider the effects on other parts of the overall system, said Agriculture Department international issues analyst Robert Berczik of the Food Safety and Inspection Service. "Now it's not simply" making process changes, "you've got to really think through, 'OK, well now what's the domino effect?' and 'Where does this impact everything else that's been developed and is in place down the line?'"

The BIEC creates a forum to look at how to approach all sorts of issues involved, Whittenburg said. "We get to throw those things on the conversation table and other agencies can opine or even bring up 'Hey, I collect that data element already and how do we figure out sharing that data with you'" to help reduce the costs involved, she said. "This, to me, is the exciting part of what we are doing," Whittenburg said. For example, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a BIEC member that's part of the Office of Management and Budget, is looking at "weaving" BIEC involvement into "new regulatory proposals," she said. This would force agencies to review with the BIEC "whether there's an automation hook" and the costs and time needed to build in new capabilities, she said.

The council faces some tough questions going forward. "One of our spirited discussions that is in front of us now is 'how do we evolve from the post-core ACE world?'" Berczik said. For example, as part of FSIS's recently established regulatory responsibilities for catfish imports (see 1512020024), "there are some IT things that need to be done in order to facilitate that single window process for those commodities," he said. "Who's going to pay for that?" The funding questions are causing uncertainty for the future of many planned additions to ACE capabilities (see 1705260007). "We are going to have to rely on more prioritization from the trade community" to deal with the funding limitations, said Bruce Harsh, director of the Commerce Department Office of Supply Chain.