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30 DC VELOCITY JUNE 2016 www.dcvelocity.com
QCBP is the lead agency for the “Single Window,” which will
allow companies to submit data
once and automatically share it with
multiple federal agencies. Why are
some of the other agencies still not
ready, and what can CBP do to help
move them forward?
AI don’t think we’ve taken our foot off the gas on this for the
past two years. I give a lot of credit
to COAC for its work on this issue.
The Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) and Consumer Product
Safety Commission (CPSC) attend
every COAC meeting and are well
along in their plans. But the PGAs (par-
ticipating government agencies) all have
a huge number of other responsibilities.
They have to carve out time and resourc-
es, and that direction has to come from
the top of the organization. … They have
to balance the requirements with the
resources they have.
We have 60,000 employees, and most of
the PGAs don’t … so we can be very helpful to them. For example, on the southwest border, we may find bugs in imported produce, and if the U.S. Department
of Agriculture doesn’t have someone right
there, we’ll take a photo and send it to
the USDA, and they’ll tell us what to do.
I think that as the PGAs recognize that
we’re there 24/7 at the large ports of entry
and can help them, we’ll build stronger
relationships and more trust. Toward that
end, we’re doing more training on other
agencies’ rules and regulations so we can
better support the other agencies.
C
QWith the recent events in Western Europe and the increasing volatility
in the Middle East and Africa, the threat
of terrorism is understandably on many
people’s minds. How is CBP helping to
address those concerns?
M
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Flexible e-Commerce Fulfillment
“Clients rely on Dotcom Distribution to deliver a
tailored brand experience to e-commerce
customers. Lucas helps us meet that challenge
by picking more items in a shorter period of
time, with fewer errors and more flexibility. This
allows us to handle our clients’ order surges
during peak periods with less incremental labor
while retaining our accuracy and efficiency.”
AI went to four countries in Africa last year to help build relationships with
their customs organizations. It was very
clear that the model the United States
has developed—combining the resources
of trade enforcement, immigration, and
border security to leverage finite resources—would be very helpful there. But in
one country, customs officials told us
that although they wanted to combine
agencies, the ministry of finance wanted
to keep them separate because it saw customs only as a revenue collector. It didn’t
recognize how much customs can help
with security.
Supply chain disruptions can have a
significant impact on an economy. We
spend a lot of time sharing with other customs agencies the lessons we’ve learned
about security that they could apply in
their own countries. The World Customs
Organization supports this kind of open-ness and mutual assistance. It’s a good
resource for technical assistance and best
practices for securing the supply chain.
