CBP Reports to Congress on ACE (GAO Recommendations)
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted its report to Congress on the Automated Commercial Environment for the second quarter of fiscal year 2008 (January 1, 2008 - March 31, 2008). The report provides an update on ACE accomplishments, challenges, fiscal status, and upcoming program milestones.
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This is Part III of a multi-part series of summaries on this report, and highlights CBP's efforts to address certain open recommendations by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Minimize Degree of Overlap and Concurrency Across ACE Releases
The GAO has recommended that CBP minimize the degree of overlap and concurrency across ongoing and future ACE releases. CBP should also capture and mitigate the associated risks of any residual concurrency.
CBP notes that past editions of this report have detailed CBP efforts to reduce the level of concurrent ACE development and mitigate the risk of remaining concurrent development efforts. Key elements of these efforts include the decoupling of screening and targeting (S&T) releases from ACE secure cargo management releases to reduce interdependencies between development efforts; the establishment of a comprehensive program management foundation for managing ACE requirements, cost, schedule, and performance; etc.
CBP has also taken the following actions to reduce potential resource conflicts across ACE releases (partial list):
Program managers have conducted extensive planning to ensure that development milestones eliminate contention for computer hardware environments needed for development, integration, testing, and training activities.
CBP is centrally managing underlying ACE shared software services to maximize the efficient use of resources, enhance responsiveness to workload peaks, and provide consistent technical management approaches across releases.
ACE releases have been divided into smaller groups of capabilities or "drops."
Program Risks and Mitigation Strategies
The GAO has recommended that CBP report on the program's plan and actions for improving ACE risk management and its current inventory of program risks, including their associated mitigation strategies and the status of the strategies' implementation.
According to CBP, a new round of risk identification efforts began in September 2007 to align with the finalization of the FY 2008 program and expenditure plans.
Additional rounds of risk identification were conducted between December 2007 and February 2008 in alignment with FY 2008 Integrated Baseline Reviews (IBRs). These will continue as additional FY 2008 IBRs were to be conducted March-May 2008. Risks are being reviewed on a continuous basis in various forums. As an added forum for review, risks are now being included as part of the monthly Contractor Performance Reviews.
ACE's Fiscal Status
The enacted FY 2008 DHS appropriation provides $100 million to maintain the continuity of ACE program management activities and an additional $216,969,000 upon approval of the FY 2008 Modernization Expenditure Plan, which was submitted to Congress on February 29, 2008.
(See ITT's Online Archives or 06/04/08 and 06/05/08 news, 08060415 and 08060505, for Parts I and II of BP's summary on this ACE report, with information on cargo, ESAR, MMM, screening and targeting, etc.)
CBP's ACE quarterly report (including Appendices A-F) available at http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/trade/automated/modernization/ace/quarterly_reports/ace_status_report_to_congress_march_2008/ace_2ndqtr_08.ctt/ace_2ndqtr_08.pdf
Appendix G of quarterly report available at http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/trade/automated/modernization/ace/quarterly_reports/ace_status_report_to_congress_march_2008/ace_appendixg.ctt/ace_appendixg.pdf