Smooth Sailing for ACE Export Systems Since Rough Weekend, Says CBP Official
CBP has been working to improve the responsiveness of its ACE help desk as part of the agency’s effort to address issues that arose for both import and export filers following two key transition dates at the end of March, said Bill Delansky, a product owner at CBP’s ACE Business Office, during an April 8 conference call with members of the Airforwarders Association. The agency also deployed several fixes to the system slowdowns users experienced and, alongside the Census Bureau, is now looking forward to several key transition dates on the near horizon for exporters.
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CBP is now allowing ACE account owners to reset user passwords directly rather than making them go to the help desk, said Delansky. That saves the unit about 200 calls and tickets daily that had to be resolved, resulting in improved response times and allowing the help desk to catch up on a back-log of requests for support. The help desk will retain the ability to reset passwords for account owners and for users when the account owner can’t be reached. A major cause of the helpdesk issues was also the March 31 mandatory use date for import filers to submit most entry summaries and certain PGA entries in ACE, he said (see 1603300037).
That March 31 mandatory use date on the import side, as well as a March 28 transition to ACE for a tranche of legacy AESDirect export filers, also caused delays in the new “refactored” ACE AESDirect (see 1604050025) and “system slowdowns” on the import side (see 1604050034). CBP addressed those issues by adding additional CPU units and servers, and applying an update to the system configuration, said Delansky. As a result, CBP has not seen any filing slowdowns since issues were reported on April 4, he said, though he noted that CBP is prioritizing the ability to file in AESDirect and users attempting to access accounts through ACE may still see slow response times.
As of March 28, the Census Bureau and CBP have now transitioned 3 of 5 tranches of current legacy AESDirect filers into ACE AESDirect, said Theresa Gordon, trade ombudsman at the Census Bureau’s International Trade Management Division. The next tranche of exporter identification numbers beginning with digits 61-80 will be transitioned over April 11, and the last tranche of EINs 81-99 will move over April 25. WebLink and bulk upload filers will be closed out of legacy AESDirect on April 30, she said, with the system being taken completely offline on May 20, she said. AESDirect users represent about 50 percent of export filing, said Gordon.
Long term, CBP and Census are working to implement additional PGAs in ACE, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Agricultural Marketing Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco & Explosives, Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, said Delansky. Though CBP does not yet have a timeline, it will bring the PGAs into ACE this summer and pilot them, he said. In the near future, CBP will deploy a secure FTP in ACE for AES users to file via VPN, he said. The new capability has been available in the certification environment since April 4, and will be put into production April 9, said Delansky.