Antiquated systems and a lack of infrastructure are just some of the issues the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) faced when it came to collection of duty on imported goods, merchandise processing fees, or user fees. With millions of passengers and pedestrians passing through every global CBP point of entry, whether it be from air, sea or land, CBP realized it had to put measures in place to modernize its infrastructure and ensure the best financial practices were implemented.

In response to the Department of Homeland Security initiatives requiring the adoption of purchase card support and Purchase Card Industry (PCI) security compliance, RYAN Consulting Inc. (RYAN), a NITAAC CIO-SP3- Small Business contract holder, was identified to provide comprehensive IT solutions designed to modernize the CBP National Finance Center global currency collections and financial management technology through the Electronic Cashier Systems (ECS) project.

RYAN began by meeting CBP’s ECS Project Team to establish roles, responsibilities, and creating a preliminary POAM, that covered high level project goals. RYAN’s ECS Liaison was appointed to serve as a single point of contact for the ECS Project Team to utilize whenever they encountered technology hurdles. Very quickly, RYAN and CBP’s ECS Team became a single entity with a common goal and the resulting rapport eliminated the potential communication, collaboration, and change aversion issues that can commonly disrupt the flow of mission critical operations performed by contract staff.

Together with CBP, RYAN planned, designed, procured, configured, and oversaw the global distribution of over 2,000 Point of Sales (POS) systems. These PCs and associated POS software systems were required to be compliant with Section 508, Energy Star, National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS), and PCI security standards.

As the POS systems did not initially meet standards, the majority of this project centered around making the hardware and its data output compliant with government legacy accounting systems and 508 standards. RYAN did so by creating an entirely new GOTS software, a tracking and reporting database coincidentally named Credit Cards, that transformed the POS system outputs into 508 compliant data and linked them to CBP’s legacy accounting systems.

Concurrently, RYAN provided cybersecurity oversight, compliance support, guidance on CBP and DHS policy, procurement assistance and oversight, as well as clerical support to gain CBP Enterprise approval for the complex hardware, software, and networking configurations required for the success of the project. “We also worked with the ECS Leadership team to develop the operations and training manuals for each aspect of the program including the ECS helpdesk and cashier operations,” said Michael Prophet, CBP Program Manager of RYAN Consulting Group Inc.

Due to RYAN’s commitment to forming and maintaining long term partnerships, the ESC program was completed under budget and two months ahead of schedule. “Our support of the ECS program allowed for the rapid deployment and development of a critical CBP financial system,” said Prophet. The project is currently in its 3rd RYAN-supported life cycle iteration which focuses on the transition of ECS data reporting from its original database storage schema to the CBP cloud.

If you would like to learn more about how NITAAC can help reimagine solutions for you like the ECS program, simply call our Customer Support Center at 1-800-773-6542 or email NITAACsupport@nih.gov. You can also use our electronic-Government Ordering System (e-GOS) for research or to submit a Request for Information (RFI) on this and other electronic solutions.