TEXT: Customs administrations throughout the world have undergone tremendous reforms to match the changing demands of international trade as well as the emerging trends in the international security paradigm.
This re-defined domain is more focused on implementation of trade policies, money-laundering, immigration and border management, counter-terrorism, anti-intellectual property piracy, anti-smuggling operations including human and drugs trafficking, cyber-crimes, safeguarding public health and morality and a myriad of other issues. Such engagements bring alongt he wealth of multi-stream data that can ultimately lead to digital transformation by embracing a data culture and building a data ecosystem. Therefore, most of the developed countries are now embarking upon Coordinated Border Management (CBM) through a single agency at the national entry/exit points. The concept of a“ single face at border” is used to facilitate bonafideprassengers and cargo while interdicting only the risky ones which essentially forms the basis of a National Targeting Centre (NTC).
NTC concept is based on linking all the available data streams and to provides a single platform for multiple law enforcement agencies (LEAs) for identifying and profiling of any suspicious passenger, baggage, cargo or conveyance based on an “Integrated Risk Management System”. The basic functional model consist of data sources, operational modules, core NTC analytics module and inter-agency linkages. The operational support is provided using risk related information exchange and subsequent tactical analysis through stakeholders cooperation and coordination.
Most of the developed Customs Administrations adopt a monolithic approach to raise an NTC from the scratch due to their extensive financial and technological reources and they can build multiple modules from a single platform. However, developing countires like Pakistan have to adopt an integrated approach while linking data provided by many off-the-shelf and easily available information systems and then integrating the information using a collating platform.
In order to cater for the above objectives, establishment of Pakistan Customs National Targeting Centre (NTC) has been envisaged as a National Single Window for Enforcement for all LEAs under the lead of Pakistan Customs and in line with International best practices. The NTC will have a Central Command and Control Centre at Islamabad and will be linked to various field targeting teams embedded in different field formations.Information on specific roles of different LEAs will be shared on real-time online basis in order to ensure a complete 360o coverage. Besides trend analysis, the system will be capable of generating alerts to all teams operating at different entry/ exit points to ensure a quick interdictions.NTC at the later stage will also be linked to the Pakistan Single Window (PSW) to provide the necessary trade related linkages. In wake of our weak financial resources, restricted technical expertise and with limited time at hand, an integrated approach has been used, being an easy and doable solution. For this purpose all the available resources available with the International Organziations and development partners are being explored.
At present, Pakistan Customs has already indentified the basic data modules for NTC. A few have been developed and deployed in-house such as the Currency Declaration System (CDS) and Customs Interdiction Module (CIM) relating to foreign currency declarations and anti-smuggling seziures respectively. Additionally, the World Customs Organization (WCO) has provided some of its modules free of cost for the NTC such as; the modules pertaining to Advance Passenger Information System (Global Travellers Assessment System - GTAS) as well as Customs Seizure database (WCO National Customs Enforcement Network-nCEN) have already been deployed through funding from US Customsand UK HMRC respectively. Deployment of another module for cargo profiling (WCO Cargo Targeting System –CTS)is underway with the funding from UK Border Force. It is hoped that once these basic modules are fully deployed and operational, the central collating platform will be developed to inititate alert generation and trend analysis hence making the NTC fully operational.
Syed Asad Raza Rizvi
Collector of Customs-Exports, Karachi/
Project Director- National Targeting Centre
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022