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Subject:  AES Commodity Redesign

AES Broadcast  05/10/2004             Broadcast  #  2004027

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Automated Export System (AES) Commodity Redesign

AES Outage

The AES will experience a 78-hour outage during the cutover of the AES 
Redesign requirements.  The outage will take place from 12:01 AM EST 
June 5, 2004 (Saturday morning) to 06:00 AM EST June 8, 2004 (Tuesday 
morning).  

During this outage, the AES queues will be down, thus preventing 
incoming transmissions from being received and outgoing messages from 
being generated.

Exports of Non-Licensed, Non-ITAR shipments, or Commerce Control List 
shipments (not requiring a license) during the Outage:

     The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) requires that all filers 
     transmit transactions no later than 11:59 PM EST Friday June 4th 
     for shipments exporting on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday for which 
     they have the completed information to do so.  Any transactions 
     that cannot be filed by Friday for shipments leaving Saturday 
     through Monday, must follow the interim downtime policy below.

          Cite the following exemption statement on the air waybill, 
          bill of lading, or other commercial documentation: "AES" 
          followed by the external transaction number (XTN) (filer's 9
          position ID number followed by a dash and the shipment 
          reference number), followed by "REDESIGN DOWNTIME."

               For example: AES 222256789-MIA12345 REDESIGN DOWNTIME

          Once the AES is back up on Tuesday morning, all AES 
          transactions for shipments that moved under the downtime 
          policy must be filed along with any new AES transactions.

Exports of Licensed Shipments (Office of Foreign Assets Control, 
United States Munitions List (licensed or exempt), Commerce Control 
List licensed shipments):

     CBP (Customs Border and Protection) requires that all licensable 
     or ITAR exempt shipments be filed no later than 4:00 PM EST on 
     June 4, 2004.

Testing in the Education Region:

     Filers are reminded to test the new AES Redesign requirements as 
     soon as possible.  Filers that have already tested have noticed a 
     large number of new business edits that were not applied before.  
     Of particular note is the number of new edits against information 
     contained in the party profiles.  For example: filers must remove 
     special characters, such as periods from the address, contact 
     name, and phone number.  Also, if a shipment is filed with a 
     single character in the party first name field it will receive a 
     fatal error.

     Please refer to the system requirements located at
     http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/export/aes/tech_docs/ 
     and to AES Commodity Redesign Fact Sheet, Frequently Asked 
     Question list and Common Error Messages Generated list located at    
     http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www

Another Option:

     If you will not be ready for the June 8th implementation, please 
     consider the Census Bureau's free Internet Application at 
     http://www.aesdirect.gov as a viable option for filing your 
     export shipments.

Contacts:

     Randy Mitchell, CBP Client Rep
     telephone:       415-782-9445
     email:           robert.r.mitchell@dhs.gov

     Census AES Branch
     telephone:       1-800-549-0595
     email:           askaes@census.gov 

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