For International Trade and Customs the implementation of Norms and standards has been recognized for a long time as an essential factor for trade facilitation and customs modernization. From the outset promoting and implementing such standards are among ASYCUDA’s main missions. 

The ASYCUDA Programme has participated for many years in various working groups and organisations for normalisation and is particularly involved with the WCO working group on the Custom Data Model that has now become simply Data Model after its opening to Other Governmental Agencies (OGAs).  

The main objective of the WCO Data Model is to define a set of standardized Data usable by both Customs Administration and trade operators, for electronic data exchange within the Customs Clearance process (manifest, declarations …).

Version 2 of the data model is currently valid while version 3 is under preparation by the Working group within which ASYCUDA participates. This new version will include data related to Customs transit.  

Within the main working group, four sub-groups exist whom are in charge of the following topics:

•       Other Government Agencies (OGAs),
•       Messages,
•       Customs response,
•       Transit. 

The question has been raised regarding the compatibility of the ASYCUDA system with the WCO Data Model.  

For WCO each country or organisation is responsible for defining if its database or its system is or not compatible with the WCO Data model.

The ASYCUDA database is designed taking into account these existing norms and standards including of course WCO Data model. It is fully compatible with the current version 2 of the WCO Data model for the manifest and import and export declarations.

The ASYCUDA system is perfectly able to communicate with all systems that are compatible with the WCO data model.

The ASYCUDA programme participates regularly in the activities of the WCO working group for the development of the next version 3 Data Model in view of extending this compatibility to transit data.