CUSTOMS TO INSTALL AIR AMS CHANGES SATURDAY; TEMPORARY OUTAGE TO ACS

CUSTOMS TO INSTALL AIR AMS CHANGES SATURDAY; TEMPORARY OUTAGE TO ACS    U.S. Customs will temporarily shut down its Automated Commercial System on Saturday, Feb. 17, while its Office of Information Technology adds new enhancements to its Air Automated Manifest System.
   The so-called “Air AMS Restructuring” is a complete redesign of the system and will correct several operational problems. One of the most significant enhancements will prevent the submission of duplicate air waybills.
   During the outage (starting at 12 p.m. on Saturday and lasting until about 3 a.m.on Sunday), transactions submitted to the Automated Broker Interface, Ocean and Rail AMS will be held in queue until the system is up and running again.
   Customs said its Office of Field Operations is aware of the outage and will coordinate cargo clearance efforts with industry. “To minimize the implementation risk, Customs has conducted two full dress rehearsals simulating over 90 implementation steps in a fully replicated system environment,” said the agency, which has been developing the changes to Air AMS for the past year and a half.
   To supplement the thousands of test cases, Customs allowed seven companies, representing a variety of local systems and communication protocols, to test the systems enhancements for three weeks. “The feedback from these efforts has been praise and appreciation for the attentiveness that Customs has paid to the needs of its automation partners,” the agency said.
   “It’s a minor inconvenience for our customers compared to the benefits that they’ll get from these updates,” said Steven R. Graham, vice president of Micro Software Services, a Miami-based Air AMS software developer.