While technology has transformed the economic and trade landscape, whittling away the demarcation lines between physical, digital, and biological components, Customs stands on the cusp of the line with a unique mandate to connect and coordinate efforts along the supply chain, ensuring that the three Ts (Trade, Travel and Transport) are carried out swiftly and under smooth conditions. Against this background, the World Customs Organization (WCO) has declared 2019 as the year of “SMART borders” in an effort to make Trade, Travel and Transport seamless.
Estimates show that passenger numbers are expected to double by 2034, reaching 7.3 billion, and that freight will quadruple by 2030. This will place considerable strain on Customs and relevant government agencies, as well as posing new threats to security and new challenges to facilitation. Customs is, however, poised to play a major role in ensuring coordination with other players who share the common objective of facilitating legitimate trade, easing the flow of passengers and conveyances and protecting frontiers against a plethora of safety and security/biosecurity threats, including terrorist financing, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), dual-use goods, and firearms.
Customs stands on the frontline, studying the impact of new technologies and their use to enhance and measure performance, automate Customs processes and adopt a risk-management based approach that enables effective decision-making at all levels. The WCO is also exploring opportunities to develop a new performance-measurement tool to further assist the Customs community in identifying bottlenecks and taking prompt and reliable decisions.
Data, together with its availability, reliability, and quality, underpins all border operations. This is the reason why Customs administrations are looking into new opportunities for exploiting Big Data available in the digital ecosystem. To achieve the transformation toward “SMART borders,” Customs will work hand-in-hand with other partner government agencies and private sector stakeholders to explore new partnerships, promoting the benefits of using data analytics to map and conceptualize the avalanche of data.