ECDP

ECDP

ECDP has been conceived, designed and implemented by EUROPEAN DYNAMICS to address in an optimum manner the requirements of Customs 2007, Customs 2013, as well as a wide range of the needs of national Customs applications of EU’s member states administrations and even beyond.

Customs 2007 and 2013, amongst others, aim to the creation of a European paperless Electronic Customs environment. Their supporting applications are heavily characterized from:

  • A Common Legal Framework and Control Mechanisms.
  • A Common Business Model, Rules and Practices.
  • Common Functional and Technical Specifications.
  • The Heavy exchange of electronic messages via CCN/CSI between EU member states Customs administrations.
  • Common target Audience (External Users, MSA Officials, etc.).

The ECPD encapsulates all these common characteristics and behaviour in a flexible platform (Design, Architecture, Components and Services), while it retains simultaneously all the necessary flexibility for accommodating national requirements and integration with existing national Customs applications. While its components and services are fully compliant with the relevant Customs 2007 and 2013 technical and functional specifications, the Customer still has the freedom to influence the final shape of the applications to best serve its own needs.

The ECDP’s unique architecture, services and components allow the quick assembly of custom-made Custom’s applications from a number of services and components which offer:

  • Cutting edge technical solutions.
  • Full Technical and Functional Compliance with the EC’s Customs 2007 and 2013 specifications and requirements.

Most importantly, the ECDP comes almost “ready” with the core EMCS application pre-assembled and pre-configured. Similar assemblies for ECS-2, NCTS-4, AEO and EORI are under preparation and they are scheduled for the near future.

Consciously and by design decision, ECDP is a Platform and not a Product. Reality proved that this decision is absolutely correct, since in numerous occasions the EC’s specifications call for the national Administrations to decide on the implementation, to choose from a number of suggested implementations or to integrate with national existing applications. No COTS product like the ones known in the market and based on a rigid approaches, can foresee this.

The ECDP approach is a best breed between the two worlds: Product and Bespoke Development. The required assembly time (development) of a Customs Solution based on ECDP is particularly short and significantly lower in comparison to bespoke development.

Moreover, the ECDP’s flexible architecture and design allows the addition of Customs applications like NCTS-4, ECS2, etc. without disturbing or re-designing the existing applications. All these are possible thanks to the innovative data repository design and the common services application bus. The seamless addition and integration of new Customs applications does not stop here. A common master user interface handles the main functions be it EMCS or NCTS or ECS.

The ECDP aims to provide all the necessary mechanisms and services for the optimal development of Customs Application Systems through a modular, service-oriented architecture which, amongst others, provides and supports:

  • The communication via all suitable and applicable CCN/CSI channels.
  • The exchange of all applicable predefined messages, while ensuring absolute conformance to the structural, technical and business rules that govern them.
  • Homogeneous management of the various data formats and unified method for accessing and presenting message information, independently of the original message format.
  • The definition and easy re-organisation (as requirements change) of all necessary workflows and operational rules.
  • The integration of additional workflows and operational rules (business rules) required for compliance with national practices and requirements.
  • Both EU and National Movements via the same procedures and mechanisms.
  • The flexible interconnection (loose application coupling) with third party application systems, both in terms of Public Information Systems and the level of interconnection with private entities (Economic Operators, citizens, etc.).
  • Integrated Management Services Mechanism for the Supervision, Auditing, Logging and Administration of every process and process.
  • RBAC Compliant Authentication and Authorization Mechanism.
  • Extended support for External Users via Multiple Input Channels (Web Forms, XML File Upload, Web Services).

The ECDP supports the core notion of “Business Movement”, where a Business Movement may be any Customs Movement, ranging from an EMCS movement to an ECS or NCTS movement, etc. The system monitors Business Movements while the User can drill down to the individual messages. In all cases the User may opt for a message based view, as opposed to a movement view, retaining simultaneously the references and a tight correlation with relevant movements.

The ECDP is smart enough to create a Calendar with “to-do” lists, and to politely remind the user on pending activities, expired timers and for cases where immediate actions are required. The same pattern applies for errors and warnings.

An innovative Web User Interface emulating the richness of Client-Server applications utilizing AJAX calls ensures that users have a smooth, pleasant and effective experience. Thanks to iSEE, ECDP’s Web Form Generator, the process of developing rich and highly interactive web user interfaces, which meet the user requirements, fully exploiting the capabilities offered by modern navigation software (Web Browsers), while taking into account their limits and restrictions, is greatly simplified.

The ECPD is developed using Oracle’s latest Development Tools and Technology achieving remarkable overall integration, stability, security, and performance.

The ECDP can, utilizing Oracle Technology optimally, scale easily and effortlessly to the needs of the customer’s performance and availability.

The ECDP constitutes an advanced backbone solution for all Customs applications.

EUROPEAN DYNAMICS in the field of Customs

EUROPEAN DYNAMICS is since 2006 the ICIS (Integrated Customs Information System) contractor of the Greek Ministry of Finance (General Secretariat for Information Systems – GSIS), addressing all the IT activities of the Ministry related to Customs. EUROPEAN DYNAMICS is responsible for the Maintenance of ICIS and the Development of New Applications related to it.

EUROPEAN DYNAMICS maintains and further develops the various ICIS systems with its team established at the premises of the GSIS. EUROPEAN DYNAMICS’ project team works closely with the GSIS staff supporting and advising it in running and operating the system. This close daily co-operation with the GSIS’ Business and Technical staff offers to our team hands on experience related to the operation and operational support of a national wide Customs System, while it updates it with the latest developments in the Customs Area and the guidelines of the EC. We present below details on the scope of ICIS system and the missions assigned to our company related to the maintenance and mainly to the development of new applications.

EUROPEAN DYNAMICS has put in place an advanced team of experts with extended experience in Taxation and Customs Systems. Indicatively, we point out that our company has already implemented applications for ECS, SEEDv1, QUOTA2, TIR, etc. in the framework of ICIS. We present in section 4. below more details on them.

Furthermore, our company comprehended very early that the Customs Services of the various EU member states function under a complex workflow, driven by a set of EU directives, implemented in a manner to satisfy the national specificities of each country.

A fundamental requirement imposed by the European Commission (EC) has to do with the existence of business transactions that involve two or more EU countries via a reliable messaging system. Such business transactions are executed in a common framework of strict and predefined rules.

The EC provides analytical specifications for the operation of these applications and each member state has to implement and incorporate them to the national processes in place. The EC has also fixed a set of conformance tests in order to verify that the systems implemented at national level comply with its requirements.

All these processes are quite frequently subject to changes and revisions, while new supplements are also published. They all need to be addressed timely and in an optimum manner.

Our company decided to capitalize on its experience, know-how and internal team of particularly qualified experts, and it decided to provide a global solution to this problem, allowing national Customs authorities to implement and manage a very powerful platform, relying on modern and state of the art technologies and on a modular and expandable design allowing smooth adaptation to any new requirement which may occur in the future.

EUROPEAN DYNAMICS decided initially to develop a Customs Product (COTS software) covering the whole spectrum of the functional areas of common interest as specified by the EC, in order to capitalize the expertise acquired in the field of Tax and Customs and in advanced technological environments and tools.

Our experts proceeded to a detailed analysis of the whole field and took into consideration the particularities of Customs Systems both at national and EU level. This exercise led us to the conclusion that any attempt to build a Software Product on a COTS basis cannot offer the optimal approach, especially in terms of flexibility and costs related to development and maintenance.

In this context, we took into consideration the existence of specialised customs needs in each country and the need to ensure compliance with EU regulations and the IT applications of the EC. In order to address this situation in an optimum manner, we designed and developed a global platform which is now offered to the market under the code name ECDP (European Customs Dynamic Platform). ECDP is not an independent Customs Product; it is is a platform comprising all the essential low level services and components required for the implementation of the full spectrum of Customs applications, covering both the requirements of the EC and the specific needs of each member state.

EUROPEAN DYNAMICS produced among others a core EMCS application based on ECDP. The following sections present details on EUROPEAN DYNAMICS’ ECDP platform and the ECDP based EMCS application. The design of EMCS is based on certain basic criteria. These include the need to deliver a robust, flexible and expandable software solution, as well as the need to comply with the EMCS Conformance Tests.

To achieve this, we relied on the experience of our company’s project team in the characteristics of the Conformance Tests provided by the EC. Our team has already been involved in Conformance Testing for ECS, SEEDv1 and Quota2. Apart from the technical knowledge of the Conformance Environment, our project team possesses all the necessary experience to organise, prepare and execute the EMCS conformance tests relying on state of the art methodologies.