ACE 2.0 Gives Chance to Avoid Another 'Massive Lift' to Replace Outdated System, CBP Official Says

TUCSON, Arizona -- CBP’s development of its next generation ACE 2.0 system will require yet more implementation work from customs brokers just years after the development of the original ACE, but is necessary to avoid the pain of waiting too long to update a legacy system, as happened with the agency’s Automated Commercial System, said Brandon Lord, deputy executive director at CBP’s Office of Trade Policy & Programs.

“We're trying to avoid putting off updating ACE for so long that it becomes this massive lift that frankly becomes even harder to get right, which is what happened to us with ACS,” Lord said at the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America annual conference May 3. “ACE was our second or third attempt to replace ACS because the first couple of attempts failed. We have to do something now.”

Lord pointed to the example of the Japanese customs service, which he recently discovered rolls out a major system update every five years. “Imagine a whole new ACE already happened two times,” he said. “I don't honestly think that's a bad thing,” but CBP does not have the budget for it, he said. CBP has said it plans to start development of ACE 2.0 in 2025 (see 2204010063).

“We can't have it both ways,” said Lord, who was responding to concern from the audience that brokers already have invested so much to get to the point where ACE messaging is smooth and seamless. “When we say, ‘well, we've invested all this money in this system, please be careful, we don't really want you to do things to it,’ and then somehow expect to stay current on IT, it doesn't work,” he said.

ACE 2.0 won’t completely upset the work brokers have put into ACE. “I don't know what will happen to messaging, but I will tell you that the core capabilities [are] not going to go away,” though the standards and technological architecture might change, Lord said. “Does anyone think we should be using a messaging infrastructure that was developed in the '70s in the 2020s? When we have all these other requirements like labor standards? I think most of us would probably say no.”