CBP to Begin Development of 'ACE 2.0' in 2025, Agency Official Says

CBP aims to start development of “ACE 2.0” in 2025, building off the work going into CBP’s 21st Century Customs Framework (21CCF) and the legislative framework that emerges from that effort, said Gail Kan, CBP acting executive director for trade policy and programs, during a meeting of the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee March 31.

“CBP is organizing internal working groups to evaluate those processes from a government perspective and completing a gap analysis, which will outline the overlaps and differences between ACE and ACE 2.0,” according to a document released by CBP in advance of the meeting. “Additionally, collaboration with industry stakeholders and trade experts continues to be key to moving forward.”

“ACE 2.0 is not a refresh of ACE or a set of incremental changes; it is intended to be a new system based on a rethinking of how current and future technologies can be leveraged to meet our mission most effectively,” CBP said in the document. “ACE 2.0 is intended to implement the re-imagined trade processes developed” through the 21CCF initiative, the agency said.

Work on 21CCF continues, alongside draft legislation in Congress (see 2111030035) released in November by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., that “aligns closely with the 21CCF vision,” CBP said in a separate document also released ahead of the meeting. “CBP is working with the Senator’s offices and other committees of jurisdiction to answer questions related to 21CCF,” it said.

The draft legislation put a greater emphasis on enforcement than had previously been under discussion among 21CCF working groups, so current discussions among the task force set up under the 21CCF effort are focused on how to incorporate enhanced enforcement into the “original philosophy” of the effort, centered around modernization and facilitation, COAC Co-Chair Brian White said at the meeting.

The 21CCF task force has recently added 20 new members for the new COAC term, ensuring the group does not have any gaps in representation, White said. “I'm happy to say that in the last couple days, we've had a number of hours in the rooms with all of these trade professionals, learned a ton in the process,” he said.

“We really divided it by sector where we had importers and exporters in one group, brokers and sureties and one group, express carriers and even the marketplaces in another group, because we recognize even across trade, individually, we're not all going to agree on the concepts that we want to put forward,” White said.

As for next steps, White said the task force is “really trying to distill and validate all of the discussions that we had in the last couple of days and within the next few days. And the next step is we will be meeting with CBP's leadership team as a focus group once we distill those ideas, and we're really looking forward to a meaningful conversation.”

Meanwhile, CBP is currently working with the Office of Management and Budget to expand its Section 321 filing pilot beyond the current nine participants, Kan said. Afterward, the agency will work with the 21CCF task for “to hopefully ensure that we have an increase in pilot participation.”