Details on AES Partnership Agency Interfaces (Part IV - Final)

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 IV, the final part of a multi-part series of summaries of the various AES partnership agency interfaces and focuses on the NRC and OFAC.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission

The NRC issues licenses for shipments of nuclear material and equipment.

Interfaces currently in place

• Data pertinent to the NRC is currently collected as part of the electronic transmission of commodity information (Shippers' Export Declaration (SED)) from the AES filer: License Code, License Number/General License Citation.

The Exporter (U.S. Principal Party in Interest (USPPI))/Agent selects the appropriate License Code (i.e., Specific, General license) from the License Type Code Tables.

The Exporter (USPPI)/Agent enters the approved NRC Specific License Number or the General License Citation (i.e., CFR...) for all nuclear material/equipment shipments.

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.

Future Enhancements

• CBP will collect and transmit to NRC commodity/transportation data on export shipments subject to that agency's nuclear material and equipment licensing requirements.
• A System validation of outbound shipments will be performed against NRC-approved Licenses.

The ultimate goal is to eliminate the trade community and CBP manual processing and paper review of the SED/approved license data and replace it with 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 the NRC.

Office of Foreign Assets Control

OFAC issues licenses for certain export shipments that would otherwise be barred by specific country sanctions.

Interfaces Currently In Place

• Data pertinent to OFAC is currently collected as part of the electronic transmission of commodity information (SED) from the AES filer: License Code, License Number/General License Citation.

The Exporter(USPPI)/Agent selects the appropriate License Code (i.e., Specific, General license) from the License Type Code Tables.

The Exporter(USPPI)/Agent enters the approved OFAC Specific License Number or the General License Citation (i.e., CFR...) for allowable shipments to sanctioned countries.

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.

Future Enhancements

• CBP will establish a Specially-Designated Nationals/Terrorists table in AES for CBP use, with regularly transmitted updates from OFAC. A hyperlink will be established from CBP/AES Web site to the OFAC home page on the Internet to provide access to the list for Exporters(USPPI)/Agents to assist in their compliance efforts.
• CBP will collect and transmit to OFAC commodity/transportation data on export shipments subject to that agency's sanctioned countries licensing requirements.
• A System validation of outbound shipments will be performed against OFAC-approved Licenses.

The ultimate goal is to eliminate the trade community and CBP manual processing and paper review of the SED/approved license data, and replace it with 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 the questions on the type of OFAC license an exporter's merchandise requires, license application procedures, etc.

(See ITT's Online Archives or 02/07/06, 02/08/06, and 02/09/06 news, 06020720, 06020830, and 06020910, for Parts I-III.)

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