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The
U.S. Department of Agriculture importation regulations
provides for the importation of agricultural commodities
exempt from quality inspection under certain specific
conditions.
The exemption is applied for through the
use of the “FV6 Form”. The exemption is granted, denied, or waived
(import is deemed “not regulated”) based on certain
well defined business rules.
In an effort to reduce paperwork, cost,
and time required and increase efficiency the
department contracted with Solutions Engineering
to devise a method for performing this operation
in a more automated fashion.
We designed, proposed, and built the “FV6
Automated Certificate” system. The system enables Shippers/Brokers/Importers
to register on the site and subsequently apply
for FV6 Certificates on the web.
All of the registration information is
used to automatically fill in all the information
which the system already knows about the applicant
(reducing work, time, and expense on the part
of the public sector).
The Certificate is immediately Granted,
Denied, or Waived based on the information provided
with full explanation provided for Denied or Waived. The user may print the certificate, producing
as many copies as needed, right on their local
printer.
The Certificate which is produced is an
Adobe PDF image with all of the application information
on the Certificate and a unique Certificate Number. This Certificate looks virtually the same
as the paper-based certificate. The Shipper/Broker can then clear their
shipment with U.S. Customs by presentation of
the FV6 e-Certificate.
What used to take days (even with overnight
handling charges and prompt human action), now
takes minutes without any additional costs and
no human factor.
Additionally, all Certificates are recorded
in the database. When the shipment arrives at its exempt-use
destination, the Receiver logs-on to the site,
completes the Certificate by registering the “Receipt”
of the shipment. The data is collected for analyses at
any time by USDA personnel. Through a secure link on the Internet,
the appropriate USDA personnel can run reports
from their desktop which accesses the FV6 database.
At any point in time they can monitor the
Certificates which were granted, denied, and waived;
they can group or summarize this information by
Port of Entry, for any Date Range of interest. They can also group these by Agricultural
Commodity type and run totals for weight and market
value. All
of this is done by simply selecting the report
and providing the range values.
View
the architecture.
This application
is a great example of how solid, stable, affordable technologies
can provide a tremendous benefit to the hosting organization
and the user clientele. The Department liberated the time and
talent of at least 2 full time personnel, through the implementation
of this application.
The entire
FV6 Automated Certificate system was written in HTML, ASP,
and JAVA accessing data managed under MS SQL Server 7.0, running
on IIS/NT4.0 and using SMTP services for supporting “Forgot
Password” e-mailing.
All of the reports were written in Crystal Reports.
Changes to referential rules and data which changes
very infrequently (once every 3 to 5 years) are supported
through data import mechanisms from Access which supports
changes to the reference tables.
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