ICS Processing Issues - Update 1 (NNF 2017/126)

Further to the below advice received from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (Department) the Customs Brokers and Forwarders Council of Australia Inc (CBFCA) have now spoken to the Department in relation to these matters.

The Department has advised that the ongoing issues whilst not entirely related to the maintenance outage seem strangely coincidental that the two occur consecutively, an issue that has surfaced in the past.

The issues are centered around the re start of the system after any new code base updates are made and it would appear the system has restarted using inefficient access paths

The Department has assured us that they are working as best they can to resolve the issues and the latest advice is that whilst the system could be running efficiently within 3 hours that it will take a longer period to reduce the backlogs.

At the time of speaking to the Department they advise that a further internal meeting is currently being held at which they will decide if the system is back to acceptable standards and start to address the backlog or to enter phase 2 of the BCP.

The CBFCA will continue dialogue with the Department to provide ongoing advice to members and also post the event to seek advice on what the actual issues were and to reduce the possibility of this re-occurring. We will also express our concern that a maintenance outage of the nature that was previously advised to members to address  GST changes on low valued goods was scheduled for midweek and not the weekend when any protracted outage would have had less of an impact on members / industry.

The following updates have been provided by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and are forwarded for your attention.

Latest update:

"The database issues affecting the ICS are continuing.

As such, Phase One of BCP for the processing of Air Cargo Underbonds & Export Declarations and Sub Manifests due to be exported in the next 24 hours has now been invoked.

Anyone with urgent clearances should contact 02 62756100

Please refer to your individual BCP plans."

Earlier update:

"ICS is currently experiencing significant processing issues affecting many Import and Export documents, notices, Status', etc. User access to the system via Cargo Interactive (CI) is also impacted.

We are investigating as a matter of urgency and will continue to provide updates as appropriate.

Clients whose cargo meets the urgent clearance criteria should contact 02 62756100.

DIBP apologises for any inconvenience at this time.​"