Customs. A real hassle and a nuisance at times, but also a necessary evil in international trade. “Evil” is perhaps the wrong word here, although having been questioned by customs officers at Melbourne airport once, playing the Devil’s Advocate seemed to be their favorite game, so evil isn’t that wrong, as far as my experience goes. Anyway, every global supply chain must at some point cross some border and that is where customs comes into play. You might think that customs is not much of a field for academic research, but in fact it is, and every year since 2006 the World Customs Organization WCO has held a conference where practice and theory can meet. The WCO Partnership In Customs Academic Research and Development Conference 2011 or PICARD Conference 2011 will be in Switzerland Geneva, 14-16 September, with a focus on these four issues: Co-ordinated Border Management, Performance measurement of Customs, Economic security and poverty reduction, and Integrity.
Supply chains and borders
Having posted on the Gower Short Guide to Customs Risk and issues in cross-border supply chains on this blog previously, it is only natural to follow up with promoting PICARD 2011, especially since I was given a heads up on this conference by Juha Hintsa at cross-border.org, which has the main responsibility in organizing the conference, jointly with the World Customs Organization, WCO and The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, UNECE. FYI, Hintsa’s papers on drivers of change in cross-border supply chains and supply chain security management were reviewed on husdal.com earlier this year.
About WCO PICARD
The WCO PICARD programme was launched in 2006 to provide a framework for cooperation between Customs and the academic world. In parallel, through PICARD, academic institutions have created the International Network of Customs Universities (INCU) and a rich vein of research in the field of Customs, generated through its flagship publication – the World Customs Journal. Working together, the WCO and INCU have progressed a range of initiatives in the areas of educational programmes, strategic management development, professional standards, and academic research and development.
PICARD 2011
A key aim of the annual PICARD Conferences, held since 2006, is to promote high-level exchanges on Customs education and professionalism and to encourage more academic research into topics relevant to Customs, an the 2011 PICARD Conference will focus on the following four topics and themes:
- Co-ordinated border management
- co-ordination among the different regulatory authorities responsible for import, export, transit and other aspects of global trade
- co-operation between Customs administrations internationally
- co-operation in relation to risk management, trade facilitation, e- Customs/e-border management
- Performance measurement of Customs
- identification of methods to measure and benchmark Customs performance
- Economic security and poverty reduction
- the relative dependence of economies on Customs revenues
- potential responses to declining revenue collection caused by, for example, the global financial crisis and a general reduction in duty rates
- Integrity
- ways in which integrity may be actively promoted by the WCO and its Members, in partnership with the private sector and other interested stakeholders
Submission deadline
Don’t forget to submit your paper before 30 May 2011.
Download
- Read the call and author instructions in full: PICARD2011
Official website
- eiseverywhere.com: PICARD 2011
Related links
- wcoomd.org: World Customs Organization
- worldcustomsjournal.org: World Customs Journal
- cross-border.org: Supply Chain Security Management Research
Related posts
- husdal.com: Gower Short Guide to Customs Risk
- husdal.com: Cross-border supply chains
