U.S. Customs and Border Protection states that effective July 14, 2011, the State Department recognizes the new country of South Sudan. CBP has updated the ACE and ACS country files for both Sudan and South Sudan. The ISO and Customs Country Codes for Sudan are SD 7320, and for South Sudan SS 7323. Questions may be directed to Ms. Lisa Nguyen at (202) 863-6225.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has provided more details about the unplanned Automated Commercial System (ACS) database outage that occurred the weekend of August 20, 2011. CBP states that the ACS outage was caused by a failed database routine that took the system down for approximately 14 hours.

At the August 18, 2011 COAC meeting, CBP officials and COAC members provided an update of their work on CBP’s broker revision project, which could include more robust broker vetting of importers and restricting the off-shoring of customs business.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a CSMS message announcing that due to an unplanned ACS database outage the weekend of August 20, 2011, CBP delayed implementing its planned code drop for M1 (ACE e-Manifest: Ocean/Rail) until August 27, 2011.

Broker Power is providing readers with some of the top stories for August 15-19, 2011 in case they were missed last week.

On August 18, 2011, CBP and other officials presented their draft proposals for modeling new simplified entry, summary, and financial processes for imports at a COAC¹ meeting, achieving their first project milestone on time. Finalized models are due by September 16, with a final report and proposal slated for delivery on September 30.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection stated on August 19, 2011 that it was set to deploy new code for capabilities related to rail and sea manifest (M1) on August 20, 2011, and that there would also be code for new ACE Portal capabilities that would be available to the trade in a phased approach. However, CBP issued a new message on August 21 stating that due to an unanticipated technical difficulty, deployment would be delayed one week. CBP also stated that a CSMS message would be issued with the new deployment date as soon as the schedule is confirmed.

On August 18, 2011, a COAC¹ meeting was held in Long Beach, CA where CBP and COAC members discussed plans to develop recommendations for broker reform by October, roll out full-blown Centers for Excellence and Expertise in October, pilot simplified entry and financial process in October, expand the air cargo advance screening pilot to additional types of carriers and countries, and add export processing to the Automated Commercial Environment.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an updated version of its spreadsheet of ACE ESAR A2.2 (Initial Entry Types) programming issues.

On August 16, 2011, U.S. Customs and Border Protection posted an update on the status of the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). CBP outlines and provides certain statistics on deployed ACE capabilities, such as ACE Secure Data Portal, Periodic Monthly Statement (PMS), Participating Government Agency access to ACE, electronic filing of e-Manifest: Truck, entry summaries, and Importer Security Filing (ISF).