Key Principles

To understand how presentation and routing work, it is important to understand how the solution handles the entire process of goods arriving at the customs area. For arrival, presentation, routing, and entry, the solution is based on some key principles:

In addition to these key principles, the solution must be able to support exceptions. There are several exceptions that lead to deviations from the basic concept in various scenarios:

1. Automatic detection of arrival and provision of routing not possible.
2. Businesses have received permission, upon application, to present goods at a location other than the border crossing point.
3. In exceptional cases, Norwegian Customs may grant conditional entry pending the completion of document control. The relevant goods should remain untouched and stored at an agreed location.
4. Norwegian Customs decides to physically inspect a consignment at the unloading location or the location of presentation instead of the border crossing point.

Review of a "standard" process based on the key principles

For the modes of transportation covered by the Digitoll solution, namely road, train, and air transportation, the same main process will apply:

1. Businesses submit a complete set of messages covering transport, master consignment(s), and house consignment(s) for a transport that is set to arrive at the customs area in advance and no later than upon arrival.
2. When the means of transportation arrives at the customs area, Norwegian Customs will attempt to automatically detect it.
   • For road transport, this is done through ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) at Ørje and Svinesund, camera 1, or other border crossing solutions (currently under development/testing).
   • For air transport, this is achieved by using services from Avinor, or manually by customs officers at airports not operated by Avinor.
   • For train transport, the solution is not yet fully defined, but a similar approach as for air transport is assumed.
3. Once Norwegian Customs has registered the arrival of the means of transportation, on behalf of the sender (in practice, those who have submitted transport, master consignment, and house consignment messages), the goods will be digitally presented.
   • This means that in "normal cases", businesses will not need to perform their own digital presentation.
   • Other variations will be described separately (see Why a separate interface (API) for presentation?).
4. Norwegian Customs will then provide routing for the consignments, allowing businesses to access this information.
   • The routing interface is a "pull" interface, where the business identifies itself and receives all routing information for the consignments relevant to the business.
   • The business that submitted a house consignment message, or is mentioned in the message as the customs representative can retrieve routing for the house consignment(s).
   • The business that submitted a master consignment message or is mentioned in the message as the customs representative can retrieve routing for all house consignments associated with the master consignment.
   • The business that submitted a transport message or is mentioned in the message as the customs representative can retrieve routing for all consignments associated with all master consignments connected to the transport.
5. Norwegian Customs will then, at a time depending on the mode of transportation, allow entry to the customs area and transition to the chosen customs procedure for all consignments listed in the transport.
   • For air and train transports, this occurs immediately after routing is made available.
   • For road transportation, this happens when the transport leaves the customs area (camera 2).

Presentation in Digitoll

As mentioned above, the main principle for presentation is that all goods arriving at the customs area are automatically digitally presented by Norwegian Customs on behalf of the carrier of the means of transport. The carrier is, as known, in most cases not the one who submits the information. In practice, this means that the presentation will be done and the result of the presentation will be made available to the carrier (where practically possible) and to those who represent the carrier. This means that for road transport carriers, routing will be made available in the form of a light signal. Routing is explained in detail in the next section.

Why a separate interface (API) for presentation?

This interface allows an actor to present consignments digitally on their own initiative. Presentation can therefore be done by actors who are not pre-registered in the transport, master consignment, or house consignment messages. By presenting consignments digitally, this actor can retrieve routing for the presented consignments.

The idea here is, for example, a "ground handler" who handles goods arriving by air, where the airline has submitted the notification and information data and where the airline itself acts as the customs representative. In such a case, this actor ("ground handler") may need to "sign up" to receive information so that they can handle the consignments upon arrival.

The main rule is that there should be no need to use the presentation interface. This is an interface that can be used if needed. If an actor still wants to use the interface, they can do so without causing problems.

Submitted question:

1. At what point should the presentation be used? Is it based on polling, or is there a specific time when data becomes available? Who should use it? Are there criteria for when it should and should not be used? Similarly for routing. Is it such that any party (e.g., the sender of house consignment no. 15 on a truck with 100 consignments) should use it, and thus be responsible for the entire truck acting based on the routing information that comes back?
   The information can be interpreted to mean that if a truck is registered through movement-road, it should not be necessary to use the presentation API, because Norwegian Customs has automatically carried out the digital presentation, but the routing API should always be used?
   • Answer:
     As mentioned above, it is not necessary for businesses to submit the presentation. The exception is in very specific cases where the actor needs to retrieve routing without having been involved in the submission of messages in advance.
     Regarding routing, it will be necessary for actors who receive consignments/master consignments upon arrival to retrieve routing. This can be at an airport (typically a ground handler), or if the actor has permission to transport consignments from the arrival location to their sorting facility (postal services, express companies).
     Other actors may wish to retrieve routing to obtain information they want to use in their logistics flow.

Routing in Digitoll

As mentioned above, routing will be made available based on automatic arrival and digital presentation. Routing will not be available until the transport is registered as arrived. The routing interface is a "pull" interface, where the actor identifies themselves and retrieves all routings for consignments relevant to the actor. In practice, this means that the interface only has one parameter, a marker, so that the actor can retrieve all new routings since the last routing was retrieved. Consignments are retrieved based on who identifies themselves in Maskinporten (organization number) and the marker for which routing was last retrieved.

Who can retrieve what?

In principle, it is the sender of the message and any mentioned customs representative (if it is another party) who can retrieve routing for consignments. In addition, actors who need it can present consignments and thus gain access to routing signals for these.

1. The actor who has submitted a message for a consignment, or is mentioned in the message as the customs representative, can retrieve routing for this consignment.
2. The actor who has submitted a message for a master consignment, or is mentioned in the message as the customs representative, can retrieve routing for all consignments associated with the master consignment.
3. The actor who has submitted a message for transport, or is mentioned in the message as the customs representative, can retrieve routing for all consignments associated with all master consignments connected to the transport.

The routing will, for each consignment, contain a reference to the consignment and a routing signal.

Examples

Example 1

In principle, none of these parties should need to submit a presentation message. Since this is about road transport, it will, in principle, not be required for any of the actors to retrieve routing.

1. In a normal case, the driver will get a green light at the customs office and all consignments are given transition to the chosen customs procedure (the one submitted in the consignment message).
2. If one or more consignments, or the transport itself, are selected for physical control, the driver will get a red light and must report to the customs office.
   In normal cases, the control will then be carried out at the customs office. Alternatively, the driver may be instructed to drive to another customs office to carry out the control.
3. If one or more consignments, or the transport itself, have deficiencies in the submission of information, the driver will get a red light and must report to the customs office.
   In normal cases, this must be resolved before the transport can continue.
   In exceptional cases, Norwegian Customs may decide that the transport can continue to a customs warehouse for storage there.

The relevant parties can, if they wish, request routing through the interface. They will then receive information about any discrepancies and the status of those given transition to the desired customs procedure, for example, free disposal or storage in a customs warehouse.

In this scenario:

• "Norsk Transport AS" can retrieve routing for all consignments reported to arrive on the transport.
• "Speditør 1 AS" can retrieve routing for all consignments reported to arrive on the transport and linked to master consignment A and B
• "Speditør 2 AS" can retrieve routing for all consignments reported to arrive on the transport and linked to master consignment C and D

Example 2

Norwegian Customs has received and processed information about transport, master consignment, and consignments, including information on the transition to the next customs procedure for 1533 consignments. Based on the received data, one consignment is selected for physical control and one consignment is selected for document control (based on missing customs procedure).

At 06:25, Norwegian Customs retrieves arrival information from Avinor at regular intervals and discovers that flight EX0836 with a scheduled time of 06:00 has arrived. Norwegian Customs has received a message about this transport and carries out a digital presentation on behalf of the carrier (in practice on behalf of Express AS). Routing is immediately made available for 1534 consignments. 1532 consignments are given transition to the chosen customs procedure, in this case, free disposal. One consignment is routed to physical control and one to document control (see note /A/ below).

Express AS uses the routing interface and retrieves routing, thus receiving routing for 1534 consignments. Express AS' customs processing department becomes aware that one consignment lacks submitted information. The routing information is fed into Express AS' sorting facility.

Express AS retrieves the consignments at Gardermoen and drives them to their sorting facility at Helsfyr. Meanwhile, the customs department at Express AS has found the missing information for the consignment selected for document control and submitted the correct customs information. Norwegian Customs receives and processes this information and provides routing for the consignment. Everything is in order, and the consignment is granted entry permission and transition to free disposal.

Express AS retrieves routing information and now receives the updated information on the release of the consignments that were to document control (see note /A/ below). The updated information is loaded into the sorting facility.

The consignments are loaded at the sorting facility as the transport from OSL arrives at Helsfyr 35 minutes later. 1533 consignments are sorted for further distribution to Express AS' customers since they are released for free disposal. One consignment is sorted for physical control, and Express AS transports this to Norwegian Customs for control.

Note:
/A/ Document control is not implemented in the solution today but will come within a relatively short time. Currently, only the codes TO_ENTRY, TO_CONTROL, ENTRY_DENIED are active.