Please be advised that the ICS will be unavailable for a 6 hour period on 2-3 February 2013.

The outage period will be Saturday 2 February 23:00 AEDST until 05:00 AEDST Sunday 3 February.

Industry clients should make arrangements to have cargo cleared outside of these hours.

The ICS is rejecting Progressive Discharge Reports and Sea Cargo Outturns that are reported as completed in 2013. Investigations are continuing however, a resolution timeframe is not yet known. The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Malaysia-Australia Free Trade Agreement (MAFTA) Entry Into Force

MAFTA will enter into force on 1 January 2013. For further information please refer to ACN no. 2012/69

and the MAFTA web page : http://www.customs.gov.au/site/trade_malaysia.asp

As advised yesterday, a change was being deployed into the new CCF production environment last night in an attempt to increase the throughput performance for messages being sent to those clients that batch their outbound messages from the ICS. To minimise any impact on industry this change was only deployed on to the industry test queues within the CCF and an artificial message load was created to mirror peak production loads.

Analysis of the system behaviour has identified that the expected performance gains were not realised and as such the change will not be implemented on to the production queues at this stage. Customs and Border Protection will continue to closely monitor system performance and will continue to work with our IT partners to improve performance to cope with the current message volumes being experienced.

For the latest update on the Customs Connect Facility please visit the Cargo Support Website.

As a result of analysing a number of components and configuration settings within the new CCF it has been determined that by changing a setting in the CCF Queues we may significantly increase the throughput for those clients that batch their outbound messages. Messages for these clients are processed through two queues and we have the ability to change settings on one queue at a time. Without changing this setting users, that batch their outbound messages, will experience delays such as those experienced on Monday. This has been reflected again this morning with delays up to 80 minutes for those clients. These delays have been caused by a surge in message volumes, particularly relating to air cargo consignments.

As such we will be scheduling a change for the configuration setting on one of the queues at midnight tonight. No outage is required to effect the change.

The results of this change will be monitored and if successful will replicated on the other queue at midday tomorrow. If not successful the change will be reverted. Using this approach we will only be impacting one of the queues at a time. These configuration settings have been tested thoroughly in our test environment. It has been determined, through testing and expert advice from technicians, that this change is deemed as a very low risk and will only impact those clients that batch their outbound messages.

An update will be provided on the implementation of the change in the morning.

Currently we are experiencing delays with Outbound EDI messaging. Clients should expect to experience delays with EDI responses until further notification. We will continue to monitor performance.

Customs and Border Protection apologises for any inconvenience during this time.

Please be advised that the ICS is now processing messages normally. Please contact the CI&SC if you have any further problems with the clearance of cargo.

Customs & Border Protection apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Please be advised that the ICS is now processing messages normally. Short delays can be expected.

Please contact the CI&SC if you have any further problems with the clearance of cargo.

Customs & Border Protection apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Please be advised that the ICS is now processing messages normally. Slight delays can be expected until 18:00. Phase 1 of BCP has now been revoked.

Please contact the CI&SC if you have any further problems with the clearance of cargo.

Customs & Border Protection apologise for any inconvenience caused.