The Philippine Bureau of Customs (BOC) will be shutting down its electronic-to-mobile (e2m) system server for 24 hours, from May 21 to 22 as it transfers the location of the system’s hardware.
In a memorandum dated May 18, Management Information System and Technology Group (MISTG) deputy commissioner Dr. Dennis Reyes said the shutdown—from 6am of May 21, 2016 until 6am of May 22, 2016—is in “connection with the ongoing BOC Data Center and Network Rehabilitation Project.”
All MISTG production support staff, site managers and site personnel will be on site during those times, Reyes said.
In anticipation of the shutdown, the scheduled e2m transaction windows was lifted on May 18, 2016, allowing all stakeholders to process all types of transactions, according to BOC-accredited value-added service provider Cargo Data Exchange Center, Inc. (CDEC).
The order to schedule transaction windows for e2m, contained in a draft memorandum order dated April 8 and signed by Customs commissioner Alberto Lina, is meant to address limitations in the BOC’s technology environment, reducing “transactional latencies experienced by all external and internal stakeholders connecting to the e2m environment.”
Piloted last April 25, the initiative effectively restricted e2m transactions to certain time slots.
Reyes, during a forum hosted by the Chamber of Customs Brokers, Inc. on May 12, acknowledged congestion in the e2m and noted that the scheduled transaction window was designed to cull data on the type of transactions causing the congestion.
“This step (lifting of scheduled e2m transaction window starting May 18) will ensure that e2m will have a minimal or zero back log by Friday (May 20), as it prepares for the server shutdown of e2m application on 21 May 2016 6am until 22 May 2016 midnight,” CDEC said an advisory to clients.
“The shutdown is due to the location transfer of e2m hardware,” CDEC added.
Customs commissioner Alberto Lina, in a memorandum dated May 16, said BOC “is addressing the cause of the slowdown and taking corrective measures which include migrating the e2m Customs System to a multi-core virtual computing environment.”
Reyes earlier said that the BOC is subscribing to a virtual computing environment to distribute e2m processes among multiple servers in a bid to minimize congestion.
The MISTG chief added this initiative was BOC’s way of stabilizing the e2m while the agency remains unable to replace or upgrade its system following a court injunction filed against the bureau by one of its bidders. – Roumina Pablo
