The 1st Meeting of the WCO Technical Working Group on Non-Intrusive Inspection (TEG-NII) was held on 21-22 September 2016 in the Russian Customs Academy, St. Petersburg Branch. The meeting brought together more than 50 participants from WCO Member Administrations and NII Industry members. The meeting was opened by the Rector of the Russian Customs Academy Professor V. B. Mantusov, who welcomed the participants to St. Petersburg and highlighted the importance of the NII images issues that the Group was mandated to discuss. The Meeting was co-chaired by Mr. Joris Groeneveld from Dutch Customs and Mr. Timothy Norton from Smiths Detection.

During the Meeting, the document outlining the Terms of Reference of the TEG-NII was amended to include a new phase – Phase 3 of the programme aimed at developing a standard NII data format, to extend the scope to other NII technical issues as proposed by members of the Group and to open the membership in the Group to all WCO Members and relevant NII Industry members.

The members of the TEG-NII were informed about the results of Phase 1 of the Unified File Format (UFF) Development Programme, as well as the current situation and achievements in the field of NII equipment interoperability in the Customs Administrations of the Russian Federation, Colombia and China. The Meeting concluded that Phase 1 of the UFF Development Programme was successfully completed and outlined the way forward for phase 2 of the Programme. The WCO Secretariat encouraged Members from all 6 WCO regions to join the Phase 2 Pilots.