Census Half Finished with Closing Out Legacy AESDirect Users
The Census Bureau is halfway through closing filers out of the legacy AESDirect system as it prepares to close the system down on April 25, Census AESDirect liaison Theresa Gordon said during a March 23 meeting of the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Regulations and Procedures Technical Advisory Committee (RPTAC). Filers have submitted over 542,000 accepted shipments in ACE AESDirect since its November rollout, a 35 percent increase from the 400,000 shipments logged as of March 11 (see 1603110049). Gordon added that ACE AESDirect comprises more than 203,000 profiles, 10,030 filers, and 20,000 individual users, and has more than 84,000 stored templates. Census will review whether to impose a limit on templates as the system ramps up toward full usage, she said.
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Transitioning to ACE for exports has been a “value add,” as the system has unveiled some inaccurate records kept by her company, said Flextronics Vice President of Global Trade Compliance Karen Murphy. "Now, you can really see who’s been using their [employer identification number] or even, more importantly for me, sometimes my own folks have the wrong company name and the wrong commodity name, and things like that,” she said during the RPTAC meeting. “So we have to do some training and cleanup of our own processes, because now we really have a nationwide report that we can see in real time, versus sending in the letter, waiting, and things like that.”
Gordon said Census received “a lot of positive feedback” regarding ACE, as stakeholders have reported it as user-friendly, technologically quick, aesthetically pleasing, and as containing easily accessible data. “You do have to go through the vetting process, so continue to bear with us, because we do have an influx of requests coming in, and [Census’] trade outreach branch has since been working through those. But once you have access to the system, the vetting process is a one-time process.