Facilitating Trade:
Improving Customs Risk Management Systems
In the OIC Member States
69
Figure 21: Australian Customs percentages of inspected and examined shipments
Source of data: Australia Customs and Border Protection Report 2014-2015, 2015-2016, 2016-2017
3.2.3.7 Use of IT
In 1996, the Australian Government in collaboration with the private sector developed the Cargo
Management Strategy (CMS) to address the international trade trends on the increasing trade
volumes (3-4% average yearly rate) and the developments in international supply chains.
The implementation of the Australian Integrated Cargo System (ICS) also motivated a review of
the effectiveness and the efficiency of risk management processes within the Customs. In this
context, it was suggested that customs should re-engineer the cargo management processes. Re-
engineering was expected to facilitate cargo movements with the implementation of an
enhanced risk management system. The CMR application includes two main components: the
core processing system ICS and the embed risk management module. The EDIFACT
standard is used between the ICS and third-party software for the electronic communications
between importers, exporters, customs brokers, stevedores and freight forwarders. Up to 40
modular packages communicate with the ICS over the Internet or via dedicated lines. Besides,
ICS could be directly used through Customs Interactive (CI), a web-based user interface. The
CRMmodule became operational in 2003. However, both the exports and imports modules were
delayed more than two years. Then the ICS and CRM module displayed slow performances. The
principal cause of the slow performance was the unexpected processing load because of
mismatching of data and by profiles. Moreover, this had a very poor usability, which in turn
created further delays on the user while submitting the data. In 2005, under the Cargo
Management Re-engineering project, the Integrated Cargo System (ICS) was introduced
. For the first time, import and export processing and risk assessment for cargo were
integrated into a single system. Till now, the ICS had three major upgrades.