C-TPAT Updates Progressing, Much Still to Be Done, Program Director Schmelzinger Says

The work is ongoing toward making some significant updates to the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program, but there's been serious progress in recent months, said Elizabeth Schmelzinger, C-TPAT director at CBP, during a Sept. 6 interview. Between an update to Minimum Security Criteria and a new best practice framework, the program is undergoing a combination of fine-tuning and major updates that are meant to show measurable security improvements while keeping it attractive to the trade for cargo processing benefits, she said. Schmelzinger said implementation of a small number of new criteria requirements could come at some point during fiscal year 2018, which ends Sept. 30, 2018.

The update to the Minimum Security Criteria "has been a long process, but I'm not interested in doing it fast ... we're interested in doing it correctly," she said. "We're at the point now where we have to prepare a briefing for leadership" that will include some proposals and what the changes will entail, she said. After the leadership is briefed, the discussions will next move to how to prioritize the pieces, she said. There will also be a chance for the "larger trade audience to review what we're thinking," she said. Because C-TPAT isn't a regulatory program, a public notice and comment period won't be required, she said. A Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) Minimum Security Criteria working group offered some recommendations last year (see 1611150030).

The updated criteria will come in phases, she said. "We would never turn on a hundred new requirements for companies, that's not reasonable," she said. "Most people wouldn't have any opportunity to make those changes if they needed to instantly. So we anticipate developing an education process, an outreach for the trade and our members and then phased implementation to any changes to the criteria, so the trade can catch up and get it right. The goal of this entire program is to get people to be compliant," she said. Because validations occur every four years, "it will take four years of iterations to make a complete and holistic change," she said. Schmelzinger declined to discuss C-TPAT reauthorization legislation being considered in Congress (see 1709070034).

CBP is in the process of reviewing some suggestions from participants in the Trusted Trader pilot for new benefits, she said. The agency is "working through the feasibility" of those, she said. Before any transition to such a program, it's important that the benefits be "quantifiable," she said. The Government Accountability Office found in a recent report that CBP's data on benefits for C-TPAT participants is lacking (see 1702080061). "At the end of this exercise, I think the pilot participants and CBP want to come out with a framework of what the benefits of such a compliance program would look like," she said. "We know what compliance looks like in terms of being able to get an [Importer Security Assessment] certification, as it exists. There's not really too much debate about the merits of that. But I think for people to be attracted to such a program, they really need to understand" what the benefits are for investing in this partnership, she said.

Schmelzinger expects that "this will probably take us this coming year to settle on all of those and put those forward in a way that we can get underway with the transition of current ISA members into a program like that." It would also make sense to "institutionalize a process" for considering new benefits and tracking them through the COAC, she said. There's also been some discussion about involving other agencies, but so far mostly on issues specific to an individual pilot participant, she said.

Schmelzinger also unveiled a best practices "methodology" during a C-TPAT conference in Detroit last week. "Instead of a list of best practices," the methodology "contains some particular elements which are about sustainability of a practice and most importantly the buy-in of the leadership of the company of the particular practice and is it measurable," she said. It's "individualized and so if the particular practice is unique to their company, they can use this methodology and framework to sort of say, 'Yep, it's sustainable. Yes, I can measure it. Yes, the leadership is supportive of it.' And that way they can submit it after doing the exercise that we would do," she said. The COAC will give some reviews on the methodology and then the agency will work to "roll that out with our partners in the future."