NCBFAA’s (National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America) “White Paper” outlines challenges facing both freight forwarders/customs house brokers/shippers and CBP (Customs & Border Protection) transitioning from ACS (Automated Commercial System) to ACE (Automated Commercial Environment). The paper’s thrust is as the NCBFAA’s white paper committee chair Ken Bargteil suggests, making the industry wide adoption of ACE a sensible “business proposition.”By George Lauriat, AJOTFor seemingly ages, ACE has been on the industry’s doorstep just waiting to be adopted. Of course, during all those years of waiting, ACE has grown to the point that squeezing the 800 pound gorilla through the door has become problematical. For a variety reasons, time is growing short for the trade to help shape ACE to a more realistic size for universal adoption. On July 29th the NCBFAA (National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America, Inc.) released a “White Paper on the Future Development of ACE.” The Washington DC based-NCBFAA, with a membership of over 800 companies composed of freight forwarders, NVOs (non-vessel owning common carriers), ocean transportation intermediaries (OTIs), customs-house brokers and air cargo agents, is the largest stakeholder vested with processing imports into the United States. According to the NCBFAA, customs brokers are the “most active trade users of ABI/ACS and will, similarly, be the largest non-governmental users of the corresponding parts of ACE. Customs brokers file 97% of all customs entries. Fewer than 2,000 brokers act as agents for the more than 800,000 annual importers. The succinct 12-page White Paper outlines a pragmatic approach to decommissioning ACS and moving to ACE, as the sole import processing system. The paper’s release comes at a critical moment as the need to make the transition for funding and commercial reasons is at hand. AUTOMATE OR PERISH Back in August of 2001 US Customs and the industry unveiled a new program entitled “ACE” as a means of automating an antiquated import filing system. The aim was to build a paperless commercial environment to process imports. US Customs at that time vocally advocated an “automate or perish” manta with the customs house brokers and their import customers. But with the terrorist attack of September 11th 2001, the goals and indeed all processes related international trade became linked to security concerns – US Customs itself was reconfigured into Customs & Border Protection (CBP) under Homeland Security. By June of 2003 the first ACE forty-one brokers were online with CBP but the new goals were continually widening the scope of the program and increasing the difficulty for the trade to transition from ACS to ACE. Six years later wide-scale implementation of ACE has still eluded CBP and a duality of ACS and ACE has coexisted. The customhouse brokers have had to address this duality by training staff and assigning equipment to work in two different environments. In the meantime the increase in funding that CBP expected for implementation in 2006 never materialized and funding remained flat and will be reduced in 2010. These and other issues have placed the adoption of ACE and decommissioning of ACS at what NCBFAA’s white paper called a “crossroads.” MAKING BUSINESS SENSE To the NCBFAA it was clear in April that the time was now to address the issue of ACE with the goal of proposing to the CBP pragmatic steps towards voluntary industry adoption over mandatory implementation. To build the white paper the NCBFAA assembled a select committee representing a cross section the membership. The recommendations by the membership were then reviewed by the ACE Strategy and Automation Committees and ultimately approved by the NCBFAA Board of Directors. Ken Bartiel (Kuehne & Nagel), chaired committee vested with preparing the white paper. From a purely man-hour point of view, assembling the white paper was a serious endeavor. Bartiel, in an interview with the A