WSC BELIEVES OPERATION SAFE COMMERCE NEEDS MORE CLARITY
The World Shipping Council said an initiative led by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to test supply chain security processes and technology needs more clarity.
Congress, through the 2002 Supplemental Appropriations Act, has recently appropriated $28 million for Operations Safe Commerce to improve the security of international and domestic supply chains against terrorism through pilot projects involving container load centers in Los Angeles-Long Beach, Seattle-Tacoma, and New York-New Jersey.
An interagency executive steering committee provides oversight and guidance to Operation Safe Commerce. The TSA said the initiative would serve as “a technology and business practice ‘laboratory’ to identify and explore innovative solution sets” that support federal transportation policy.
The World Shipping Council, which generally supports Operation Safe Commerce, said “sound and clear guidance from both the load centers and the steering committee will be needed to ensure that these federal dollars are spent prudently on projects that will effectively examine security gaps and meaningfully evaluate ways to effectively meet the government’s defined security requirements.”
Operation Safe Commerce began in New England as a local public/private partnership where federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, and key private sector entities combined efforts to design, develop and implement a means to test available technology and procedures in order to develop secure supply chains.
The New England test considered a containerized shipment moved from Eastern Europe to New Hampshire. The container was fitted with onboard tracking, sensors, and door seals and was constantly monitored through the various transportation modes as it moved through numerous countries and government control functions.
“It would seem appropriate that the funded projects should be evaluating such technologies based on whether they meet specifically identified security gaps and requirements, and they should evaluate the product not just in isolation, but in comparison to other means of achieving the same security objective,” the council said.
The World Shipping Council is not opposed to tests of electronic seals, but said “they should simultaneously test and evaluate high security manual seals so that a comparative assessment can be made of whether and how an electronic seal provides a level of security protection that meets agreed-upon security requirements more effectively and more reliably than ‘off-the-shelf’ non-electronic devices.”
The council also emphasized that Operation Safe Commerce needs international support and acceptance to succeed. “The conclusions reached from well-done OSC evaluations are likely to receive more favorable consideration from other nations that would have a direct interest in their implementation if the process used is inclusive and open,” the World Shipping Council said.