Human Resources and Organizational Issues in Customs

The contributions of Michael Lane and the assistance of Melanie Faltas are gratefully acknowledged.

Customs is a unique organization among government agencies in that it is neither a domestic agency nor an international agency. It is poised on the international borders,1 not only as an expression of a nation's sovereignty, but also as the nation's guard against external threats to health,safety,and the environment protecting (for better or for worse) domestic industry and collecting revenue to support the government. It must be aware of the border implications of national priorities concerning domestic crime,immigration,labor,the economy,and agriculture.At the same time, it must maintain an awareness of international issues and their potential impact on the nation, and it must be knowledgeable about national obligations to trade and transport treaties and conventions. In many ways, customs organizations relate more closely with their counterparts in other countries than they do with other agencies in their own government. They frequently look to customs administrations internationally and in neighboring countries for assistance and for ideas on how to improve operations or enforcement, as well as to exchange information on emerging threats.

The first section of this chapter deals with the modern management of human resources (HR) in customs. The second section addresses issues related to the more traditional customs organization, while the third and fourth sections discuss two recent organizational issues that have received considerable attention in recent years: Autonomous Revenue Authorities (ARAs) and management contracts. The final section provides operational conclusions and recommendations. The annexes provide checklists for issues of human resources management, management contracts, and ARAs.

Human Resources: An Organization Is Only as Good as Its Staff

Good management of human resources is probably the single most important issue that affects the efficiency and effectiveness of customs, irrespective of its organizational structure. This cannot be overemphasized as all aspects of customs management and customs clearance, including the application and maintenance of modern information technology (IT), will require that staff is qualified to operate the existing systems efficiently and to prepare the existing services for the introduction of new processes and techniques. In doing so, staff must be attuned to developments in international trade logistics and must adjust to shifts in emphasis with respect to customs' mandate.

Historically, customs work consisted of the manual labor of inspecting cargo, vessels, and passengers, and patrolling long stretches of border between ports of entry. Customs management was close to higher ranking government officials, while its staff was often poorly educated, trained, and compensated. This arrangement undermined professionalism and integrity in customs.

Increasingly, government services are being held to higher standards. The imperatives of a globalized economy on customs have become clear. A modern customs administration, responsible for protecting and representing the government at its country's borders and ports, must use a professional work-force and an enabling technology to accomplish its mission. Managing human resources at customs can be broken down into several phases:

* defining the desired staff profile

* establishing a recruitment process that ensures that customs has the desired staff on board

* training incumbent staff to maintain skill levels

* ensuring that the compensation package enables customs to motivate and retain staff

* ensuring that poor performance and integrity failures are promptly sanctioned.

Staff Profile

A modern customs administration needs to define the profile of its desired staff. The general educational background of all staff should be sufficiently high to ensure that they can acquire and maintain the skills required by a customs service. Such skills are bound to change over time and will increasingly require expertise in accounting, intelligence gathering, finance, investigation, analysis, training, planning, and HR management. All these functions will increasingly adopt procedures that rely heavily on the use of IT. Modern workflow ...

If you are already a vLex customer, Access Here