The United States’ Single Window: A year in review
Implementation of Executive Order 13659 (3 of 4)
February 2015 will mark the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s release of Executive Order 13659: Streamlining the Export/Import Process for America’s Businesses. As we approach that important milestone, it is helpful to take stock of our work over the past months and perhaps even make some resolutions for the New Year.
As discussed in yesterday’s post, Executive Order 13659 requires the completion of the United States’ national “Single Window” by December 2016 and also highlights a series of trade modernization activities to be advanced by federal agencies between now and then. Work to develop a U.S. Government Single Window started years ago, but the Executive Order helped breathe new life into the effort. While the political commitment conveyed by the Executive Order focused senior level attention on this important project, it also raised the stakes considerably and necessitated a reconsideration of how we defined “success.” Some of the key first steps toward tackling these challenges included getting the new governance structures in place; taking a hard look at U.S. Government data needs and working to streamline and simplify these requirements; ensuring a sound legal framework; and selecting priority policy issues that required immediate attention.
Governance Structure
While DHS (primarily U.S. Customs and Border Protection) is responsible for developing and operating the technical foundation of the Single Window, the project as a whole requires a remarkable amount of coordination and collaboration among dozens of agencies, each with different missions, requirements, and budgets. Before the Executive Order, a long-standing body called the International Trade Data System Board of Directors coordinated these interagency efforts. The Board, chaired by officials of the Department of Treasury, worked to build a Single Window that fulfilled basic statutory requirements established in Section 405 of the “Security and Accountability for Every Port Act of 2006” (P.L. 109–347, October 13, 2006). Specifically, that law required a unified portal system, to be known as the “International Trade Data System” that would collect and distribute standard electronic import and export data required by government agencies.
However, the Executive Order expanded the scope of the initial effort by calling for a set of broader reforms among the many agencies responsible for processing imports and exports. The Border Interagency Executive Council (known as the BIEC) stood up in early 2014 to take on these challenges. DHS Deputy Secretary Mayorkas and Elliot Kaye, Chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, officiated over the five meetings held throughout 2014. BIEC membership includes senior-level officials from relevant Departments, including the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Health and Human Services, Interior, Justice, State, Transportation, and Treasury, an array of independent agencies, and representatives from the Executive Office of the President. While focusing initially on organizational matters such as membership, subcommittee structures, and organizing principles (more info is available at www.ITDS.gov), the BIEC soon turned to the more substantive work of defining strategic goals and identifying U.S. Government laws, regulations, policies, or operations that threatened to hinder achievement of them. Also of note, the BIEC opted against the establishment of a new industry advisory council and instead will look to the number of existing bodies for advice and recommendations on strategic issues and topics of relevance to multiple agencies.
Legal Frameworks and Data Needs
DHS and other agencies focused much time and attention in 2014 on finalizing data needs across the U.S. Government and ensuring that necessary legal frameworks were in place to enable on-time delivery of Single Window capabilities. Under the leadership of the ITDS Board of Directors, agencies reviewed all current legal authorities for data requirements and initiated a coordinated regulatory and information collection amendment process to ensure that everyone can collect required data electronically.
While all relevant agencies have agreed to the strategic goal of a delivering a predominantly electronic and automated Single Window, the ongoing exercise of translating existing paper forms to electronic data formats unearthed a few noteworthy complications. For example, most agree that transitioning to electronic data elements (over paper forms) will promote information sharing among agencies, improve targeting and risk assessment, and facilitate the movement of legitimate trade by assisting government decision-making. The transition is also intended to reduce the burden of compliance on industry and make the importing and exporting processes as simple and cost effective as possible. However, DHS and other agencies must work to balance interests in obtaining more data with the strategic goal of minimizing and streamlining data requirements. In addition, any transition of information collection from paper to electronic data increases the level of required data entry (in the form of keystrokes) for filers. Further discussion is needed to determine how the U.S. Government collectively can limit or even reduce the amount of data that will need to be “keyed in” by industry while at the same time leveraging the full range of Single Window technical capabilities to support broader document/information collections where necessary.
Priority Issues
While the Single Window will provide new technical capabilities for collecting and sharing data, it is much more than an IT development project. Rather, the effort requires a fundamental change in the way that agencies work with each other and with the private sector and thereby requires intense collaboration, the development of common goals, and a shared understanding of how “success” will be defined at different points along the way. Experts from within and outside of government have highlighted the dangers inherent in too reflexive or too sudden of a transition from today’s manual and paper processes into a much faster electronic, automated trade environment. The risk is that we “do bad things” even faster, that we speed inefficiencies and trigger an avalanche of unintended consequences.
The BIEC’s mandate is to not allow that to happen. The challenge, beyond just trying to get the right people in the same room periodically, was to find the big policy, legal, and operational levers and figure out how much each needed to be pulled to achieve our common goals. One exercise that yielded helpful results was a mini-table top meeting in which agencies walked through the importation process for a few different commodities. The purpose was to identify specific “pain points,” areas where duplicative or even conflicting policies and processes among agencies slowed commerce and/or hindered enforcement efforts. These pain points were mapped to those flagged by industry advisory committees and, after further assessment, turned into the “strategic solution statements” noted below. Of course the devil is in the implementation details, in answering the questions of “How? Who? To what degree? In what instances?” These will be taken on by the BIEC as part of next year’s work but are outlined here to encourage input and feedback on possible ways forward.
Strategic Solution #1: U.S. agencies (particularly those with the ability to hold cargo at the border) should have access to, and use, advance information to target high-risk cargo prior to arrival or departure.
Strategic Solution #2: U.S. agencies should develop a harmonized identification mechanism for data elements (e.g., product, entity) included in the entry filing and message set.
Strategic Solution #3: U.S. agencies should build early system validations that electronically and automatically reject submissions of missing or inaccurate data.
Strategic Solution #4: U.S. agencies should develop mechanisms or capabilities to enhance communication of agency-specific risk factors, and build “business rules” in the system to automate targeting for common risk factors.
Strategic Solution #5: U.S. agencies should establish a coordinated, consolidated messaging capability to provide hold, detention and release status updates to trade.
Strategic Solution #6: U.S. agencies should establish a messaging capability that provides all appropriate agencies visibility to the final disposition and related enforcement actions.
