Target Evaluation Update: Biosecurity – General update to agents

Increased processing times for eBACCa 

Processing times haven’t changed significantly since my last update in October – this is still between 7–10 days for sea cargo. I have completed hiring additional staff. They will start training in mid-March 2019.  In the meantime, I will be doing some forecasting of future volumes and potentially start another recruitment for more staff as required to manage the upcoming BMSB season.

Manifest inbox pressure and subject header Improvements

Please only use this for urgent applications. We are dealing with approximately 150–300 urgent applications each day through this process so it is really important that we don’t have to spend time turning down requests.

We are currently looking at different ways of managing this inbox to improve the flow of this work. To help us prioritise your request, we ask that you use the following subject header line (if applicable):   

• Urgent application: demurrage / perishable items/ dangerous goods/ thermograph (Select one).  Eg - Urgent Application: perishable items.

Please avoid lodging an application and then immediately using the manifest inbox without a good reason for the delay in submitting the lodgement.

Lodgement information

Please make sure that the lodgement clearly states the transitional facility number you wish the goods/containers to be moved to.

Communications with industry

I am currently working on a project to improve our external communication. We have moved to a third-party cloud-based system (called Campaign Monitor) to send email updates directly to you.

We are also publishing the updates on the web for you to refer to whenever you need

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