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Further to our escalation of members' recent concerns on Integrated Cargo System (ICS) performance, Freight & Trade Alliance (FTA) has received the following from the Department of Home Affairs (DoHA) and the Australian Border Force (ABF).
To ICS users
The Department of Home Affairs (DoHA) and the Australian Border Force (ABF) acknowledge some current issues with processing of EDI messages when communicating with the Integrated Cargo System (ICS). The issues are intermittent, yet recurring, and when they do occur, may result in delayed responses to users.
Investigation is focussed on the messaging 'gateway', the Common Connect Facility (CCF) as this is the primary area of concern. Two main contributors to the cause of the issues have been identified.
ICS - Sea Cargo Performance - Due to an increased usage of sea cargo over the utilisation of air cargo, we are now seeing a pattern of demand on systems resources as industry makes greater usage of the sea import channel. Traditionally sea cargo receives 20k messages per day, currently it is receiving 90k/100k messages per day creating a five-fold increase.
In an effort to improve system performance, DoHA and ABF are reviewing the application code and, through fine tuning (creation of indexes and recoding logical pathways, etc.) aim to smooth the demand on system resources.
ICS - Repeated Bulk Messaging - Due to the CCF not having functionality to enable prioritisation of messages it processes messages in order (it is effectively First-In-First-Out). When large volumes of certain message types (such as sea cargo reports) are received, it means all other message received subsequently must queue before they are able to be processed.
Exacerbating the situation is the continual 're-sending' of message by users when they do experience delays.
We are currently analysing the EDI messaging processes, including the time it takes for messages to pass from the CCF to the ICS, which will assist in investigating potential solutions.
The Department is working on short term workarounds and permanent fixes to resolve the ongoing issues with the ICS and apologise for the inconvenience caused.
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