One of the IT systems central to the Australian international trade sector is the Customs & Border Protection Integrated Cargo System (ICS). Whilst the ICS has been relatively stable over the last few years, there have been ongoing problems since the migration to a new electronic messaging gateway (Customs Connect Facility) during September 2012. This has caused significant issues to the airfreight sector due to the time sensitive nature of export and import consignments.
Whilst the erratic nature of the ICS EDI messaging has caused operational issues, each actual outage period has been relatively short in duration meaning that the impact has not been too severe on the sea freight sector. But what would happen should we experience a significant delay in ICS availability? We saw the impact of the problems in 2005 when the ICS was first introduced bringing our airports and ports to a standstill.
Customs & Border Protection (in partnership with the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) have developed a comprehensive Business Continuity Plan (BCP) to deal with scenarios of ICS and / or industry systems outages. Customs & Border Protection also offer frequent BCP trials.
In an envionment where the ICS / CCF remains unstable, it is highly recommended that industry take the time to become familiar with the following BCP processes.
Paul Zalai - FTA
Source http://www.cargosupport.gov.au/site/icsBusContinuity.asp
In the event of an ICS outage, ICS slow response times, ICS specific issues, and/or client system problems it is critical that industry be able to continue normal daily business with minimal disruption through alternate cargo reporting procedures. A contingency period can be either when an ICS outage occurs or a client's cargo system outage occurs.
Customs and Border Protection, in partnership with Industry and AQIS has developed an Integrated Cargo System (ICS) Business Continuity Plan (BCP).
ICS Business Continuity Plan (390KB)
For general information on the ICS BCP, including who to contact to find out more, refer to
Australian Customs Cargo Advice 2006, Number 27.
What do I do in an outage?
Depending on the urgency of the cargo clearance you can decide whether to lodge a contingency file or wait for the ICS problem to be resolved.
Note: All contingency files submitted to Customs and Border Protection MUST be submitted in the ICS within 24hrs of it becoming operational.
Refer to the following folders for detailed procedures to follow when submitting transactions for clearing cargo during a contingency period. These folders also contain the electronic contingency file
IMPORT - ICS Import Business Continuity Folders
EXPORT - ICS Export Business Continuity Folders
Contacts
All contingency files should be emailed to the BCP Mailbox.
Email: ICSBCP@customs.gov.au
All other BCP queries or issues should be directed to the Customs Information and Support Centre (CI & SC).
Email: cargosupport@customs.gov.au
Phone: 1300 558 099