The DMPT held its 57th Meeting in virtual mode. The overall virtual session consisted of two phases. The first phase was a document-based discussion which took place from 5 to 19 June 2020 via the WCO CLiKC! platform. The second phase was a web-conference session which took place from 29 June to 3 July 2020. As a result of efficiencies made, the web-conference session concluded ahead of schedule on 1 July 2020. The web-conference session was organized using the WEBEX platform and took place in English only.
The meeting was chaired by Ms. Louritha Green of United States Customs and Border Protection (U.S. CBP). Some 119 participants had registered for the meeting, of whom 65 representing WCO Members, international organizations and the private sector actually took part. Mr. Pranab Kumar Das, WCO Director of Compliance and Facilitation, and Mr. Brendan O’Hearn, WCO Deputy Director of Procedures and Facilitation, welcomed all the delegates.
The DMPT continued its discussion of and approved the code-list for Crew’s Effects and Ship’s Stores to be included in the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Compendium on Facilitation and Electronic Business. The Representative of the IMO thanked the WCO for its active contribution to the work on Customs and Maritime cooperation in general, and to data standardization in particular. The DMPT also discussed and approved the new annual Work Programme of the DMPT for 2020/2021. In addition, the DMPT took note of and supported the proposal made by the Representative of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) to include the alignment of the new update to postal data requirements with the WCO Data Model (DM) in the Work Programme. It also stressed the need to keep up to date with the process of reviewing the WCO DM publication policy.
The DMPT also discussed and supported the scope of version 4 of the WCO DM as recommended by a Mini Group that had developed the list of that version’s features during the intersession. The DMPT agreed to continue studying the feasibility of actual inclusion of the features, taking into account an analysis of the cost and benefit of each recommended enhancement to the WCO DM.
As part of the process of maintaining the WCO DM, the DMPT received, discussed and reached a decision about a Data Maintenance Request (DMR) submitted by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Furthermore, taking into account the prevailing situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the DMPT agreed to maintain the existing plan to finalize the new annual version of the WCO DM, namely version 3.10.0, by the end of 2020 (i.e. business as usual).
With regard to its ongoing work concerning the Framework of Conformity, the DMPT discussed the text of different WCO DM electronic message formats, agreed to continue developing the relevant text during the intersession and aimed to finalize the “Introduction to Conformity” document at its September 2020 meeting.
Mr. O’Hearn closed the meeting and thanked all the participants for their productive contribution during the virtual session.