The smooth implementation of National Single Window (NSW) for importers and exporters would depend on five critical factors ie financial resources, strong government and management support, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) coordination with other departments, legal framework, and sustainable business model and Project Management Office at FBR.
This was stated by Chan Fook Seng, a Chinese expert of NSW while sharing National Single Window-Blueprint and Implementation Program at a two-day conference on the establishment of a National Single Window (NSW) for trade organised by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). The conference brought together more than 100 government officials from key trade regulators to better understand the challenges involved in institutionalizing Pakistan's National Single Window for trade.
According to the expert, he discussed the implementation Strategic Programs-Pre Implementation Framework, governance model, funding options and business model, resource requirements and implementation activities and timeline. He said a prudent governance structure is imperative to ensure successful implementation of an NSW within the budgeted time and cost. The overall structure would be expected to steer, monitor and implement the project.
He said a high-level steering committee would be responsible for the administration, implementation and management of the NSW. The committee would approve, prioritise and coordinate proposed process changes and relevant organizational and legislation adjustments and approve proposals regarding strategy adjustments, timelines and specific actions to be taken.
The steering committee would be responsible to coordinate and approve the deliverables provided by Project Management office according to the National Single Window Roadmap; confer power upon project Management office for specific tasks, such as setting up working groups; ensure cooperation of the ministries and intervene when major issues arise; supervise and monitor the overall implementation of actions against benchmarks, milestones and targets in roadmap and agreed supplementary action plans.
The Project Management Office of the NSW would manage the cooperation and coordination among government departments and business community and monitor the efforts, time and cost to implement the NSW; analyze the NSW roadmap and specific actions working plans by setting timetables, milestones, and deliverables; appoint specific members of the Project Management Office to monitor and supervise working groups; approve deliverables from working groups; carry out monitoring and assistance to the activities of the working groups; cooperate with private sector and OGAs in appointing appropriate staff for each working group; define goals and deliverables for each working group and supervise them; report to the steering committee on a regular basis, usually monthly; propose necessary process, organizational and legislation changes and manage and approve financial resources allocation.
He said under the plan, several permanent working groups will be set up consisting of people with specialized skills or knowledge in key areas, such as business process analysis (BPA), standardization and data harmonization, architecture and technology and legal matters. In addition to the permanent working groups, ad hoc working groups can be set up on an ad hoc basis eg to make a detailed screening on a specific area, to resolve an issue, to implement specific activities outlined in the action plan, he shared.
In case of fully funded by government-traditional model of the NSW, the advantage of this option would ensure that NSW shall be neutral facility owned and operated by the government; ensure alignment of government's strategic objectives, and not be subject to any financial objectives of service providers and allow government freedom to introduce new measures without exposure to possible claims by the industry of unduly benefiting any service providers.
In case of second option of public-private partnership (PPP) funding of NSW, he said the main reasons for a PPP model would be to motivate continuous service enhancements that will increase the value to users; only setup investment is needed from the government; balanced views between the government and private sector that can check against over-investment and promotes a close partnership between the government and private sectors.
He said the setting up of Service Centers in strategic and convenient locations in the country is important as the transition period from paper to electronic submission may range from six months to several years. While the various agencies can shut down the service counters for accepting hardcopy documents, the trade community must have an avenue to continue to submit such documents until such time when they are ready to fully adopt electronic submission.
The service centre will serve this purpose will by providing data entry service at a fee, he added. The capital expenditure for the project would include hardware servers, firewall security, hypervisors and virtualisation racks, monitoring tools, cooling, integrated fire safety system, security access, installation, setup and configuration cost.
Besides there would be operating expenditures, he said, that include hardware, software, network maintenance cost; data centre and disaster recovery centre maintenance (or cloud service fee); system enhancements; ongoing training; change management and mass adoption; operating entity management cost; operating entity operations staff cost and operating entity office expenses.
The Project Management Office of this project would be staffed with appropriate personnel and vested with the necessary mandate to project manage and coordinate with the various stakeholders, as well as oversee all the implementation activities. He also shared the project execution phase activities including development and implementation of a single window; infrastructure hosting and managed services development of institutional, technical capacity; regulatory framework and implement change management strategy, Chan Fook Seng added.
Comments
Comments are closed.