Single Window Systems
In the OIC Member States
26
Box 4: Integrated Risk Management
Integrated Risk Management
Increased volume of international trade also increases opportunities for avoidance, evasion and fraud of
regulatory requirements in an increasingly sophisticated and organized international manner. International
security risks also increase due to international terrorism.
Governments increasingly use risk-based compliance management for Customs or other purposes such as food
safety and protection of animal, plant and human health and life approaches to deal with these risks.
Currently, only few Single Windows support risk management and approaches are often limited to transactional
Customs risk management and risk selectivity during customs clearance. Single Windows now integrate risk
management services, namely Integrated Risk Management (IRM).
IRM supports the operational risk management processes of government agencies that are involved in the
approvals of permits and certificates (pre-arrival), control of goods and post clearance control. The IRM engine
is a rule-based approach to risk analysis, whereby the individual analysis objects (traders, permits, declarations
etc.) are assessed for risk, primarily by assigning scores based on rules (risk indicators). Within this approach,
the starting point of risk analysis is the definition of a structured rule base.
A cross-functional design requires the use of integrated common process design and business
architecture, instead of an agency, procedure or business process centric design. Such a common
process design allows for the comprehensive simplification and, reengineering of the business
processes and, the re-use of IT services and processes for business processes with similar
requirements. The trend towards common business process inventories can be observed in
recent Single Window projects, such as the Cameroon second-generation project.
2.1.4. From Single Data Entry Location to Single Submission
Single Windows were designed to provide a single data entry point. A single portal was often
understand to fulfil the objective of a single data entry point, even if the user still needed to
prepare separate requests and data submissions for each regulatory requirement. Inmost Single
Windows, users collected approvals and documents separately and linked these
approvals/documents to the customs clearance at the moment of submission of the Customs
documents. Each procedure/document has a specific data set and which uses a common data
definition, in line with international standards, such as WCO Data Model and UNCCL and
UNTDED.
The current trend is to adopt a single submission, whereby the Single Window will process a
single data set and automatically launch applications for authorisations and permits based on
the Harmonized System (HS) code, authorisations, registrations and other rules. Traders no
longer have to launch individual requests and collect the approvals and no longer have to submit
different data sets. This set up allows applying integrated risk management on submission, pre-
arrival and on-arrival.