CBP Planning VECS Pilot This Year, CPAT Validation Improvements, Officials Say

CBP is making progress on its new vessel entrance and clearing system (VECS) and hopes to release a pilot program “later this year,” said Brian Sale, CBP’s branch chief for vessel operations. The agency will release a Federal Register notice this week announcing a new Vessel Agency Account type within the Automated Commercial Environment, Sale said, which will allow users to eventually participate in the pilot.

VECS will help CBP digitize and automate its vessel entrance and clearance process, allowing vessel masters, operators and agents to submit certain data electronically instead of through paper forms, Sale said. CBP will pair that data with information it already receives from the Coast Guard and elsewhere so vessels only have to “fill out the remaining data pieces that we don't already have,” Sale said July 18 during CBP’s Trade Facilitation and Cargo Security Summit.

“We're not just taking a paper form and making it digital,” he said. “We're eliminating the need for them to fill out any parts of that digital form for data that we already have” so CBP only collects “the bare minimum that we need from them.” This will help ships “make it to berth much quicker,” Sale said.

Sale also said the digitized process will allow CBP to “be a lot more agile,” including during national emergencies that may disrupt trade. “If there's a hurricane in Puerto Rico or Miami and the port is shut down, CBP in nearby ports of entry can still log into VECS and support and help those ports of entry enter and clear and process vessels.”

CBP also is exploring new technologies in other departments, including in its Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program. Manuel Garza, CBP’s CTPAT director, said the agency is hoping to more quickly and efficiently conduct remote validation through so-called “immersive audits.”

These audits, which are coming “right around the corner,” will allow CBP to use a 360-degree camera to better complete a validation remotely, Garza said. “As the user behind the scenes, I have access to the video and I can see to the left and to the right and up and down, and you as the consumer would just be holding that stick and the camera and walking around your yard,” he said. Garza said the agency is still figuring out how the cameras will work, but is working with several companies to test them in the "coming months."

This immersive audit could help CBP validate companies that have so far been unable to be validated due to the pandemic (see 2102040052), Garza said. He said remote validations have been a “huge benefit operationally and financially” for both CBP and industry. Thomas Overacker, CBP's executive director of cargo and conveyance security, said CTPAT still will continue to do in-person validations, "but we're going to leverage this new technology to try to be even more effective and more efficient."

CBP also is preparing to roll out centralized examination stations (CES) for air cargo at additional airports, Overacker said. He said the agency is “exploring other locations” but declined to name specific airports. “This is really an issue of making certain that we have full stakeholder engagement on these and that the local port authority is on board with this process,” Overacker said.

CBP opened its first Air CES in 2021 at Los Angeles International Airport (see 2109220015), which has so far been a “huge success,” said Oscar Acuna, CBP’s assistant port director at LAX. Acuna said the station has helped CBP reduce the time it takes to clear a hold from around five to seven days to now one to three days. “It saved a lot of effort,” Acuna said.

Officials also said the agency is looking into new technologies to more efficiently help clear congestion at U.S. ports, including the severe backlogs in Southern California. Sale, of CBP’s vessel operations, specifically said the agency can make better use of CES.

With a CES, “we don't have to drive around for days to different warehouses to release that cargo because it's coming to a central examination station. That's what helps move cargo quicker,” Sale said. “I think that is how we see CBP relieve some of the congestion in the different ports.”

Overacker also pointed to advanced electronic data, automated systems and other technology tools CBP uses “to make a release decision instantaneously.” But he also said most of the port congestion is outside the agency’s control.

“I hope that everyone recognizes, especially since we're here in Southern California, that much of the supply chain disruptions that we've seen are disruptions that are outside of the scope of CBP,” Overacker said. “All of these things are part of the overall supply chain that go beyond the scope of CBP, but CBP will do everything it can to make its processes more efficient.”