Koch slams ISO on supply chain security standards
Christopher Koch, president of the World Shipping Council, last week repeated an earlier charge that the International Standards Organization is rushing to develop supply chain security standards without adequately consulting government and industry stakeholders.
Speaking to the Singapore Shippers Association, Koch accused security consultants of hijacking the ISO process in an effort to create self-serving international standards in the hope that the World Customs Organization would find the ready-made guidelines suitable to implement its recent framework proposal on global cargo security and trade facilitation practices.
“These ISO efforts are certainly being supported by security consultants who see the ISO standards as the basis of potential business,” Koch charged in a Sept. 15 speech on container security issues.
In June, the WCO membership approved a document laying out common cargo security standards and simplified customs procedures that nearly 100 countries subsequently committed to implement. A high-level WCO policy group is scheduled to meet in October to formulate implementing guidelines to present to the full WCO Policy Commission in mid-December. The ISO hopes the International Maritime Organization will endorse its supply chain security standards in December before the WCO Policy Commission meets, Koch alleged.
Last spring, the Washington-based World Shipping Council, along with several groups representing shippers and ocean carriers, loudly complained about an ISO technical committee’s efforts to get supply chain security standards quickly adopted by the ISO without their input or that of other importers, exporters and transportation intermediaries. The coalition also said the committee’s timeframe for deliberations was too short for such a complex subject and for gathering broad feedback.
Koch said at the time that the technical committee’s approach stood in contrast to other ISO working groups, such as one developing radio frequency identification (RFID) standards for electronic seals, which conduct business in an open and transparent manner.
The ISO is a internationally recognized standards-setting body which typically brings together industry experts representing suppliers, users, government regulators and other interest groups to achieve voluntary consensus on specifications and criteria for classifying, producing, testing and defining business processes and products.
Koch told the ship-owner group in Singapore that in its rush to develop standards, the ISO neglected to get the input of governments to make sure the proposed guidelines meet the security requirements of customs authorities.
“It is not clear implementing customs authorities have determined to what extent, if any, they would want validation under a national partnership program be done through third party certifiers based on standards they have not developed,” Koch said.
The ISO needs to recognize that ocean carriers and port terminals already must comply with the International Ship and Port Security code and “should not be subjected to overlaying auditing and certification requirements under these ISO documents,” he said.
In other matters, Koch said he expected U.S. Customs and Border Protection to soon announce a requirement for importers to file entry data 24 hours prior to vessel loading at a foreign port to coincide with the timetable for carriers to file manifests. The agency has been studying ways to augment the information it plugs into its automated targeting system for identifying suspicious containers that may have terrorist links because manifest data does not offer as much detail about the cargo’s contents and origin.
Koch, who is a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations (COAC), also suggested that the long-anticipated rule for a secure mechanical seal on all ocean containers could be pushed off several more months, saying DHS officials have indicated such a requirement is likely to be proposed by the end of the year. Some DHS officials had raised expectations in January that such a rule could be drafted as early as last spring.
Koch, echoing comments he made in April before the American Association of Port Authorities, also threw water on the potential use of container security devices and other technologies under development to monitor the status of a container during transit.
“Application of such technologies at the container level are proving difficult because the security requirements are not clear, the costs are high, application of the technologies is not simple, information system and ownership issues are complex, and the benefits are often unclear or exaggerated,' he said.
“Technology vendors’ proclivity — for understandable profit optimization motives — to try to create proprietary solutions that are not interoperable with other vendors’ products makes the issues even more difficult,” he said.
Koch also repeated his qualified endorsement of a non-intrusive X-ray system being tested by terminal operators in Hong Kong for inspecting all containers entering a terminal as holding potential for determining whether cargo contains any smuggled terrorist weapons.
The technology, if proven to work, could scan containers without the normal delays to commerce associated with current X-ray systems, he said.