Facilitating Trade:
Improving Customs Risk Management Systems
In the OIC Member States
45
decisions, based on data prediction, help CRM to predict forthcoming events, prevent
irregularities, delegate, and allocate the resources and to provide an accurate and timely
response.
3.1.6 Information Technology (IT)
Information technology is one of the most important things when it comes to increasing efficient
implementation of CRM system. The IT plays an important role related to data collection, data
exchange and data analysis and reporting. The importance of this trend can be seen through
different IT solutions developed by WCO available for their member states to be used in the
collection, exchange, and analysis of data.
3.1.6.1 Data Collection
The data sources are usually stored in many different structured and unstructured databases on
different heterogeneous platforms from different vendors. Querying different data sources is a
complex task, and requires allocation of human and IT resources. Data must also be available
from external data sources, many of which are stored in a heterogeneous data environment.
Many vendor products can more easily enable accessing and acquiring the data from these
sources and use them for updating the data warehouse.
The DW is a solution to organize the data sources stored in different data layers. A data
warehouse is a common data layer that is organizing the associated data models in cubes and
dimensions frommultiple data sources. Data must be extracted from the Operational Data Store
(ODS) (CDPS, LE IT, etc.) and other available data sources. The data must be cleaned, mapped,
and transformed before being load in the data warehouse. When the conditions are met, the DW
can be used for query processing and analysis.
The importance of data collection process in intelligence and effective CRM system can be seen
by the WCO Customs Enforcement Network (CEN) developed by the WCO to assist the Customs
enforcement community in collecting data and information for intelligence purposes. The CEN
is a central depository for enforcement-related information provided by all WCO Members. The
CEN application is an analytical tool that allows users to mine data that can be used to define
strategies, create intelligence reports, find modus operandi, locate customs non-compliance
risks, prepare risk indicators and identify trends. It is important for customs administrations to
be part of the RILO and have access to the WCOs CEN application through their NPCs to:
 Record seizure data electronically into the CEN, or submit the data to the RILO by fax or
mail;
 Obtain/provide photographs of significant seizures or new and interesting concealment
methods for incorporation into the CEN Concealment Picture Database which could then
use to produce alerts;
 Analyze information collected at the national level to identify new or unusual smuggling
methods, consistent patterns, smuggling trends;
 Use CEN database to mine data.
Also, the WCO has developed National Customs Enforcement Network (nCEN) to assist CAs to
collect and store law-enforcement information at the national level. The system also possesses
the additional capability to exchange this information at the regional and international levels.
Through the adoption of nCEN, the CAs can manage information about seizures and offenses,
suspected persons or business entities at the national level, to assist all their law-enforcement
functions. This is the easiest way for countries to ensure a national system accessible through
the Government network securely. nCEN can communicate with the CEN, and information on