specifications will gradually be completed, reviewed, agreed, and aligned. The final product will visualize business processes, with textual descriptions for more comprehensive understanding. The tool is also intended to maintain the business logic, both in rules and in associated conditions needed for future operations. The end product will then be used to obtain system process models, which will be the basis for further technical specifications. The goal is to automate the process as far as possible, drawing upon this work for soft ware development and for automating all activities related to ICT (including testing) as far as possible in the European Commission and in EU member states. Technical architecture
The first category of ICT technical architecture is centralized. A cluster of databases located centrally, at the European Commission, holds reference information necessary for the functioning of the EU customs union. These centralized systems make the required information available throughout the EU, to ensure that all administrations and all customs offices are synchronized and are using correct and updated reference information. An example of these centralized systems is the electronic integrated customs tariff, which holds the tariff nomenclature, tariff rates, and additional tariff related information (such as antidumping measures). An electronic fi le transmission update—in practice a daily fi le—updates the national tariff databases of EU member states. The national tariff system contains the information received from the European Commission along with national information (such as national prohibitions and restrictions) and national measures related to taxation (such as excise duties). The second category of ICT technical architecture uses electronic information exchanges with formats and procedures harmonized between partners. Such exchanges are used for the customs transEuropean system. The NCTS is based on a distributed architecture: each EU member state has its own national application, which processes the data in a workflow environment. Processing is based on the national validation process for an incoming message. The outcome can be the sending of a message to another member state or the completion (in part or in
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full) of the workflow. The European Commission operates no central business application, but it operates central services such as monitoring, the maintenance of common reference data, and the coordination and compiling of statistics on the overall system. Both categories of systems use a secure common systems interface network for data transmission. The network provides telecommunications services as well as the monitoring and support services that enable the interface among various technologies. Methods and tools
A specialized methodology for ICT system development and operations—Tempo—is based on industry best practice for systems development and project management. Closely following the recommendations of the world’s most widely accepted ICT service management approach,9 Tempo includes a set of guidelines and document templates. The quality assurance team working for the European Commission keeps Tempo up to date, taking into account factors such as experience, technical evolutions, and state of the art methods elsewhere. The use of Tempo is mandatory for the European Commission but available as an option for EU member states. For tools—in systems development, operations testing, and management reporting—the European Commission has a policy of using commercial off the shelf (COTS) solutions as much as possible. Research is being done on tools to draft business process models with the help of computers. Such models can be used by vendors to develop solutions with their products using compliant Web service interfaces.10 A standard executable language allows users to deploy mission critical processes on a reliable technical platform, assuring performance and scalability. A standard modeling notation11 allows businesses to understand their internal business procedures in a graphical notation. The notation enables organizations to communicate the procedures in a standard manner, while it also facilitates the understanding of performance collaborations and business transactions between organizations. The powerful combination of modeling notation and executable language allows migration from a graphical model to computer code—without the need to actually write code.