Ill-Funded Network on Life Support

On April 1, the U.S. Customs Service hooked up its beleaguered Automated Commercial System to a sort of Internet-based life support.

The system, which is used by federal agencies to capture import documents and generate trade statistics electronically, has been around since the mid-1980s and has suffered some well-publicized crashes in recent months.

To keep the ill-funded system afloat, it has been fitted with a new Internet-related "interface." But international shippers have been left wondering when the successor to ACS will arrive. The recent move represents a reshuffling of funds at the Customs Service to accelerate the implementation of a technology that was supposed to have been a part of ACS's successor, the Automated Commercial Environment.

ACE is touted as a comprehensive system designed to automate both the importing and exporting sides of international trade. The National Customs Automation Prototype, a pilot ACE program, is being run by customs at the border sites of Laredo, Texas; Port Huron, Mich.; and Detroit.

All of the scrambling to update ACS has become necessary because of broader political problems that have held up funding for an updated customs automation program.

"The interface that is going onto ACS represents a migratory step toward the evolution of ACE," said Luke McCormack, director of infrastructure services at the Customs Service office in Newington, Va. "Because of problems we have had with ACS, we decided that we would bolt-on this interface as a temporary solution."

For the full story, see the May 17 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.