Customs' Operating Environment

New Zealand is an island nation with over 15,000 kilometres of coastline. Everything and everyone that comes to or leaves New Zealand does so by air or sea. The border management environment involves a number of agencies that facilitate and control these flows across the border. Customs’ extensive presence, capability and infrastructure support at the border means we are a significant contributor to border management. These enable us to support other agencies in meeting a range of government objectives at the border.

With Customs’ broad range of activities, it is a challenge to identify and prioritise the critical things Customs will do to make the best contribution to overall border management assurance. We recognise the need to have a strong understanding of our operating environment to enable us to anticipate and respond to changes.

Customs’ operating environment is affected by a number of core, long-term drivers of change. These are:

• Increasing demands relating to increasing service expectations, volumes of trade and travel, and increased requirements of border controls;
• Changing requirements particularly stemming from international developments in relation to trade supply chains and trade practice; heightened security concerns; and sustainability responses needed to reduce environmental impacts; and
• Changing capabilities relating to rapid technological change; increasingly complex and diverse criminal offending and other threats.

These drivers are influenced by New Zealand’s and other countries’ economic and foreign policies and alliances, the international trade environment, and global threats such as terrorism and trans-national organised crime. While we cannot predict the specific threats, risks or opportunities New Zealand might face in the future, we envisage they will come from the drivers above.

Increasing demands

While New Zealand continues to benefit from the growth in tourism, and international trade, the projected growth in both areas poses a risk to Customs’ ability to maintain security of the border from risks and threats without compromising trade and travel facilitation standards. This is particularly so in light of increasing service expectations and risks that government is seeking to manage by utilising border controls. These factors are compounded by a competitive labour market, impacting on our ability to ensure an adequate supply of capable staff at an affordable cost. There is also the risk to Customs’ border management Information Technology system in its ability to process the transactions from increasing volumes of trade and travel.

In order to effectively respond to increasing demands, we need to be sure Customs’ interventions are focused on the people, goods or craft that are likely to present risk to New Zealand’s interests. This requires an ability to identify those things likely to present risk as early as possible in the process.

Changing requirements

Since 2001, Customs, along with other agencies within the external sector, has responded to heightened international security concerns, particularly in relation to the global threat of terrorism and the trafficking of weapons of mass-destruction.

Associated with these threats is the increasing expectation of key trading partners that New Zealand will meet more stringent trade security requirements. New Zealand’s reputation as a secure nation to trade with is important to advancing New Zealand’s economic transformation.

More recently, there have been changing expectations, both internationally and domestically, of the way in which international supply chains and border controls will interact. This includes a trend towards integration – both in international supply chains and in domestic border management – to improve the efficiency of cross-border trade and travel movements. This is being reflected in an ongoing programme of work across the border sector to improve coordination and collaboration, and meet international standards relating to aspects of border management*.

* - A recent example, in relation to the border management Information Technology system is the need to adopt data standards as determined by the World Customs Organisation (WCO) SAFE Framework (currently under development), to support New Zealand’s international supply chain security agreements with key trading partners.

In addition, the growing global concern for the negative impacts of climate change has led to collective responses from nations to counter the influences on climate. In New Zealand, the Government’s responses include its aim for a Carbon Neutral Public Service. Customs needs to continue to focus on reducing the risk of adverse environmental impacts through appropriate sustainability responses.

Changing capabilities

While technology is changing rapidly and providing opportunities for improving Customs’ security and facilitation services, such as screening technologies; and others to improve the speed and effectiveness of border processing, these are also equally capable of being utilised for criminal purposes. Lucrative rewards for some crimes, particularly illicit drugs, have led to increasingly diverse, complex, and highly organised criminal activities, and an increased level of risk relating to the integrity of Customs’ staff.

We need to both ensure that Customs is able to take advantage of relevant technological developments to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of our operations, and have the appropriate technology and intelligence capability to monitor and counter criminal use of new technologies. In relation to people capability, we need a continued focus on recruiting high calibre staff, training, and developing leadership.

Mitigation of Risks