Govt defends JBMS against its critics as the Aust-NZ trusted trader MRA heads for the wire
AirCargo 240 archive stories
Saturday, 16 January 2016
NEW Zealand is small in size and population but is disproportionately important to Australia as a trading partner with almost no barriers - including in trade, transport, logistics and border processing.
So while the mainstream media for the most part ignored a November Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) signing in Canberra by NZ Customs and the Australian Border Force, it was a lot more than merely ceremonial.
The document was a statement of intent to deliver a MRA covering Australia’s Trusted Trader program and NZ’s Secure Export Scheme and it will (by July 2016, if all goes well) have the effect of each country recognising the other’s supply chain security program.
Wielding the pens were Australian Border Force commissioner (and comptroller-general of Customs) Roman Quaedvlieg and NZ Customs comptroller Carolyn Tremain.
The MRA will be Australia’s first, while NZ already has such joint recognition deals with the US, Japan and the Republic of Korea.
It’s all part of the far-reaching efforts on both sides of the Tasman to overhaul Customs and biosecurity processing, focused on the increasingly sophisticated use of IT to make things simpler for everyone in the loop.
So it was a real worry as 2015 wound down towards the summer break that mutterings became louder in NZ that the country’s Joint Border Management System (JBMS) was in trouble as costs escalated and deadlines were pushed back.
JBMS merged NZ Customs and Ministry for Primary Industries IT systems, working towards integration of Customs and biosecurity systems.
The mutterings went public at a parliamentary select committee hearing when David Shearer, the NZ Labour Party’s foreign affairs spokesman and once a short-lived leader of the opposition, grilled Tremain on the over-runs and delays.
He claimed that the old system - CusMod – was running alongside the new because the government was terrified of another Novopay disaster.
Novopay was designed to sort out the Ministry of Education’s complicated payroll system but went berserk at a huge cost in both dollar and political terms, as well as aggrieved education sector workers.
Tremain, who is regarded very positively in the industry as a good operator who pays attention to industry input and has been transparent with JBMS, responded politely but very firmly, saying that just wasn’t so.
“This is a system that has over 2.7 million transactions through it. It has been operating for two years. It doesn’t have the hallmarks of a failing system.”
She pointed out that it had been decided in June 2012 – as we reported at the time – to split the first stage of JBMS into multiple steps because of the risk of problems if too much was transferred at once.
Tremain later confirmed that she was satisfied with the roll-out (“I think we have significantly de-risked it,” she said), IBM as vendor and the extra cost, noting that funding had been sourced from with the two agencies’ existing capital investment baselines.
Countering allegations that the JBMS governance structure changes – it now has an independent chair – indicated unhappiness within the commissioning partners, Tremain said there was no tension or problems.
“Originally the chair of the governance arrangements was a Customs person. Obviously we are balancing issues between Customs, MPI and what
IBM wants to do as our vendor, and sometimes having somebody who is neutral is a good thing.” The Labour Party was having none of that. Customs spokesman Rino Tirikatene claimed JBMS was costing the taxpayer tens of millions of dollars. “The delays and debacle are so bad that the old import-export system continues to be used in many circumstances. This week Treasury labelled the Customs project ‘high risk’ and potentially ‘unachievable’ while behind the scenes MPI is suggesting the new system may not be needed after all, with more than millions already spent.”
MPI – which is headed by former Customs chief, diplomat (he was NZ high commissioner to Australia) and senior army officer Martyn Dunne - wisely kept out of the fray but industry support for JBMS does not appear have been dented.
The Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders Federation (CBAFF) was quick to come to the defence of NZ Customs. JBMS delays were not having any adverse effect on the industry, said executive director Rosemarie Dawson.
“Customs keep us fully updated regarding progress of the JBMS.
“While introduction of the second phase has been slower than expected, we have not heard of any adverse impacts on our member businesses or any outages in the supply chain.”
Govt defends JBMS against its critics as the Aust-NZ trusted trader MRA heads for the wire
AirCargo 240 archive stories
Saturday, 16 January 2016
NEW Zealand is small in size and population but is disproportionately important to Australia as a trading partner with almost no barriers - including in trade, transport, logistics and border processing.
So while the mainstream media for the most part ignored a November Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) signing in Canberra by NZ Customs and the Australian Border Force, it was a lot more than merely ceremonial.
The document was a statement of intent to deliver a MRA covering Australia’s Trusted Trader program and NZ’s Secure Export Scheme and it will (by July 2016, if all goes well) have the effect of each country recognising the other’s supply chain security program.
Wielding the pens were Australian Border Force commissioner (and comptroller-general of Customs) Roman Quaedvlieg and NZ Customs comptroller Carolyn Tremain.
The MRA will be Australia’s first, while NZ already has such joint recognition deals with the US, Japan and the Republic of Korea.
It’s all part of the far-reaching efforts on both sides of the Tasman to overhaul Customs and biosecurity processing, focused on the increasingly sophisticated use of IT to make things simpler for everyone in the loop.
So it was a real worry as 2015 wound down towards the summer break that mutterings became louder in NZ that the country’s Joint Border Management System (JBMS) was in trouble as costs escalated and deadlines were pushed back.
JBMS merged NZ Customs and Ministry for Primary Industries IT systems, working towards integration of Customs and biosecurity systems.
The mutterings went public at a parliamentary select committee hearing when David Shearer, the NZ Labour Party’s foreign affairs spokesman and once a short-lived leader of the opposition, grilled Tremain on the over-runs and delays.
He claimed that the old system - CusMod – was running alongside the new because the government was terrified of another Novopay disaster.
Novopay was designed to sort out the Ministry of Education’s complicated payroll system but went berserk at a huge cost in both dollar and political terms, as well as aggrieved education sector workers.
Tremain, who is regarded very positively in the industry as a good operator who pays attention to industry input and has been transparent with JBMS, responded politely but very firmly, saying that just wasn’t so.
“This is a system that has over 2.7 million transactions through it. It has been operating for two years. It doesn’t have the hallmarks of a failing system.”
She pointed out that it had been decided in June 2012 – as we reported at the time – to split the first stage of JBMS into multiple steps because of the risk of problems if too much was transferred at once.
Tremain later confirmed that she was satisfied with the roll-out (“I think we have significantly de-risked it,” she said), IBM as vendor and the extra cost, noting that funding had been sourced from with the two agencies’ existing capital investment baselines.
Countering allegations that the JBMS governance structure changes – it now has an independent chair – indicated unhappiness within the commissioning partners, Tremain said there was no tension or problems.
“Originally the chair of the governance arrangements was a Customs person. Obviously we are balancing issues between Customs, MPI and what
IBM wants to do as our vendor, and sometimes having somebody who is neutral is a good thing.” The Labour Party was having none of that. Customs spokesman Rino Tirikatene claimed JBMS was costing the taxpayer tens of millions of dollars. “The delays and debacle are so bad that the old import-export system continues to be used in many circumstances. This week Treasury labelled the Customs project ‘high risk’ and potentially ‘unachievable’ while behind the scenes MPI is suggesting the new system may not be needed after all, with more than millions already spent.”
MPI – which is headed by former Customs chief, diplomat (he was NZ high commissioner to Australia) and senior army officer Martyn Dunne - wisely kept out of the fray but industry support for JBMS does not appear have been dented.
The Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders Federation (CBAFF) was quick to come to the defence of NZ Customs. JBMS delays were not having any adverse effect on the industry, said executive director Rosemarie Dawson.
“Customs keep us fully updated regarding progress of the JBMS.
“While introduction of the second phase has been slower than expected, we have not heard of any adverse impacts on our member businesses or any outages in the supply chain.”
Wielding the pens were Australian Border Force commissioner (and comptroller-general of Customs) Roman Quaedvlieg and NZ Customs comptroller Carolyn Tremain.
