ACE Downtime Procedures Issued by CBP

ACE Downtime Procedures Issued by CBP

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a document intended to provide guidance on CBP processes during ACE system interruptions and to help trade partners develop their own downtime policies and procedures. CBP officials have also said they are working to minimize outages.

The guidance is a document that will be revised as necessary to adapt to changing circumstances. It outlines the documents required for manual clearance of entry, the procedures for processing cargo (including specific procedures for truck, rail, vessel, air, and air express shipments), and the responsibilities of CBP and traders during downtime.

While this guidance reflects CBP’s expectation that ACE will experience periods when it is unavailable to users, they have also said the agency is working to minimize the frequency and impacts of such occurrences. Officials have said that CBP is working to make ACE more “bulletproof” by improving its redundancy and resiliency – And added that CBP is working to implement a cloud-based disaster recovery system and developing software to allow automated processing when the ACE portal goes down.

Please see CBP Downtime Policy