On 18 October 2023, the World Customs Organization (WCO) held a refresher workshop for accredited, recognized and pre-accredited experts on post-clearance audit (PCA). In total, some 40 WCO PCA experts actively participated from their home administrations in this online event, covering various time zones.
During the workshop, the participants were able to familiarize themselves with the new WCO Accredited Experts (ACE) Portal which was launched in September 2022. The ACE Portal is a web-based platform that facilitates the WCO's management and mobilization of experts from a global perspective, putting at the centre the experts who can use the new platform to manage their expert profiles.
As part of the training, the Secretariat gave presentations on the CLiKC! e-learning platform, on PCA-related tools due to be released in 2023, and on capacity-building activities. The future schedule of capacity-building activities was also shared with the participants.
A key pillar of the workshop was an overview of activities and experiences shared by the experts. Four experts highlighted noteworthy aspects of their experiences and shared them with the participants. This sharing exercise proved very useful for the experts at all stages of accreditation and will serve as encouragement to colleagues in the same field. Although the challenges faced by PCA experts may be similar, each expert brings their own valuable expertise to the activities.
One expert put forward the following expression: "we have to unlearn old thinking". This expression truly captures the nature of capacity-building activities in the PCA domain. It is a challenging endeavour in which both the beneficiary country and the experts work together to achieve international standards by adopting a different way of thinking. What is more, these activities sometimes require flexibility and adaptability on the part of the experts, and would not be successful if the experts remained entrenched in outdated ideas and fixed beliefs.
The experts attending the meeting were very positive about the capacity-building activities undertaken and the Secretariat felt consistently supported by the ongoing presence of the PCA expert team.
The Secretariat conveyed its hope that the experts would maintain their ongoing collaboration in PCA activities in the foreseeable future.