Australia’s new customs system still experiencing problems
By SwizStick • Oct 11th, 2006 • Category: 3PL, Integrators, Misc LogisticsLate last year Australia unveiled the implementation of a new customs clearance system called the “Integrated Cargo System”. In short, it was a disaster. More background here, here, and here.
12 months later customs brokers and 3PLs are still dealing with a system rife with problems that is subject to constant upgrades and fixes as Australian Customs tries to resolve the situation once and for all. It appears it will take them some time to work out all the problems:
The agency, freight forwarders and software developers have spent the past year working on fixes for the system, which went live on October 12, 2005.
The system was riddled with problems and threatened to derail last year’s Christmas shipments as cargo containers piled up in ports around the country.
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Bob Wallace, managing director of Wallace International and chairman of the Customs Brokers and Forwarders Council of Australia, said there had been two major outages since June and he expected work-arounds to remain in place for some time.
“We’re 12 months down the track and we’re still using work-arounds. We’re still 20 per cent down on productivity, but we’re making the cargo move by dealing with the process in place at the moment,” Mr Wallace said.
“Work-arounds will probably be in place for at least another two years. Customs is telling us that because of fundamental design problems it’s not going to be easy to change them all.”
Two years is a long time to be working on system problems. Meanwhile, Australian Customs has a mountain of compensation claims to work through:
Customs was processing the $9 million in compensation claims it had received relating to the system’s introduction, he said.
It had made 425 full or part offers to settle the claims and 250 of those offers had been accepted.
Stumble it!
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You would think they would have run this parallel to
the old system for a while to do any debugging.