Four-way border governance group
The main border agencies – Customs, MAF Biosecurity New Zealand, the Immigration Service, Aviation Security Service and Maritime New Zealand – have begun to work much more closely in recent years in response to new work challenges.
The rise in global terrorism, avian influenza, red imported fire ant and other biosecurity threats have all demanded detailed responses in the face of steadily increasing passenger and trade volumes.
These pressures have led to significant changes in work practices, including the deployment of more sophisticated technologies. This requires a coordinated approach across the border agencies to ensure that the benefits of technology and efficiency improvements can be realised.
This inter-agency coordination is overseen by the Border Sector Governance Group. The work programme is being led by Comptroller of Customs, Martyn Dunne, but also involves the Chief Executives of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the Department of Labour and the Ministry of Transport.
The project's scope is not about setting up a single border agency; rather, it is about finding efficiencies and opportunities for greater cooperation, including shared investment, within the existing framework.
The Comptroller of Customs and the Director-General of MAF convened and co-chaired well-attended forums with industry stakeholders in Auckland and Wellington last month, and stakeholders' initial response to the initiative was positive.
A separate forum was held with the more than 20 other government agencies that have a role or an interest at the border. These agencies come from a wide range of perspectives. For example, the Ministry of Fisheries is interested in the movements of foreign fishing vessels, while the Ministry for Culture and Heritage needs to know that no protected objects are being smuggled out of the country, and the Ministry of Health that no pandemic diseases are being admitted.
The governance group covers the three work streams – strategic, operations and information systems. The first step has been to establish what is happening now, as a baseline for building better work processes.
For the strategic work stream, this has meant developing an agreed definition of 'border' and 'border management'. This is not as simple as it sounds – the respective agencies tend to see the border differently, and even to locate it in different places.
The next step is to develop a conceptual framework to guide a more integrated 'whole-of-New Zealand' approach and to improve service delivery and effectiveness from a 'border system' perspective.
The operations work stream has done an exhaustive analysis of the processes currently in use at the border. From this, four areas have emerged as likely to offer the most scope for closer inter-agency integration:
- intelligence/risk assessment
- common functions (for example, primary and secondary processing at air and sea ports and vessel clearance)
- support functions (including shared investments in equipment and office space and greater cross-agency standardisation)
- trans-Tasman, especially potential improvements in process efficiency and the move to a seamless system.
Customs, Immigration and MAF are all engaged in significant upgrades to their information systems infrastructure. Key to the work in this stream is ensuring that the various design proposals permit the greatest possible inter-operability and alignment between systems by following agreed international and New Zealand standards.
- Denise Hing, Project Manager, denise.hing@customs.govt.nz
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Page last updated: 30 April 2008