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Details on AES Partnership Agency Interfaces (Part II)

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted to its Web site a notice describing the various Automated Export System (AES) partnership agency interfaces.

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CBP states that AES has developed various levels of automated interaction with the following agencies and is exploring further enhancements to the interfaces:

Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS)/Commerce

Office of Defense Trade Controls (ODTC)/State

Bureau of the Census (Census)/Commerce

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)

Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)/Treasury

This is Part II of a multi-part series of summaries of the various AES partnership agency interfaces and focuses on ODTC. (See ITT's Online Archives or 02/07/06 news, 06020720, for Part I. See future issues for additional summaries.)

Interfaces Currently In Place

The State Department's Office of Defense Trade Controls (ODTC) issues licenses for permanent exports and temporary exports and imports of certain munitions (defense articles and services).

  • Data pertinent to ODTC is currently collected as part of the electronic transmission of commodity information (Shippers' Export Declaration (SED)) from the AES filer: License Code, License Number/License Exemption Citation. The Exporter (U.S. Principal Party in Interest (USPPI))/Agent selects the appropriate License Code (i.e., Permanent Export, Temporary Import, Temporary Export, License Exemption, etc.) from the License Type Code Tables.

The Exporter(USPPI)/Agent enters approved ODTC License Number or the License Exemption Citation (i.e., CFR...) for all munitions shipments.

  • A System validation of outbound shipments is performed against ODTC-approved Licenses. With AES, CBP is still the responsible agency for reviewing export shipment information prior to departure.

CBP notes that no license application data is processed through AES.

  • An automated munitions license Decrementation Program has been implemented in AES. Nationwide implementation will allow for decrementation of licenses even when the shipment departs ports other than where the license resides.

For AES filers with DSP-5 licensed goods, the filer's export shipment data entry will trigger the decrementation process.

For non-AES filers, the program will allow Customs field personnel to key in the basic data on the dollar value of the shipment, etc. The program will decrement the license and calculate the remaining balance.

Future Enhancements

  • Customs will collect and transmit to ODTC commodity/transportation data on export shipments subject to munitions licensing requirements.
  • A return message will be sent to the AES filer with information on the ODTC/State remaining license balance for those export shipments for which they are the responsible party.

The ultimate goal is to reduce the trade community, CBP, and ODTC manual processing and paper review of the SED/approved license data and replace it with current data on-line to view for verification purposes. This will result in more efficient and faster handling of export shipments at the ports.

See CBP notice for contact information for questions on ODTC licenses and data error messages in AES.

CBP notice (posted 02/01/06) available at http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/export/aes/tech_docs/partnership/current_partnerships.xml.