Systems for Import in the Netherlands
A huge quantity of goods enters the EU through the ports and airports of the Netherlands. Some 400.000 of these shipments per year require an inspection by the Veterinary or the Phytosanitary Autority. Importers had to apply for these inspections on paper. Conducting these inspections was difficult to coordinate between Customs and Inspection Services. The result was that the logistics of the importers and the airports and the ports were seriously hampered. For that reason, the importing business asked the government of the Netherlands to improve the processes for import. The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality together with Customs defined in 2001 a program Client Import to solve these problems.
The government agencies each designed their own system for administration purposes and to support their own inspections. Moreover, together they created a joint architecture with message definitions in order to support their cooperation. In the domain of the importing businesses “port community systems” were developed, making it possible for importers to apply for inspections with the reuse of data from transport and cargo information. These systems were implemented in 2003 – 2004. After the succesfull implementation, a booklet was published to describe the project and the results.
Already in 2004 the Ministry of Agriculture conducted a pilot in the use of veterinary certificates from New Zealand in an electronic (XML) form. This pilot promised great advantages in the inspection process. Now, in 2010, the standards for the XML-messages and the exchange mechanism are stable. And more exporting countries make their veterinary and phytosanitary certificates available in the XML-format. In the Dutch import systems functionality is added now to collect those XML-certificates from the third country autority and to use the information in the inspection process. This functionality will be available in Q1 2011.
