Hooray! The Belgian Customs NCTS5 project is a success, and that’s thanks in part to our colleagues. The development team (35 people) was led by our colleague Yann Philippe from Oniryx and included, among others, three other colleagues from i’groove who contributed to this success: Matthieu Leclercq, Benoît Gosselin, and Benoît Maillard. For your information, the exchange platforms between the Ministry and businesses (ESB) are also maintained by some of our colleagues from Oniryx and i’groove: Pascal Lemaire as project manager, as well as Charles Julien and Julian Garcia Gutierrez for the Axway ESB, and Michael Desmet for the Artemis ESB.
Since January, Belgian Customs has been using a new European electronic system for registering packages entering and leaving the country. Declarations made via the NCTS (New Computerized Transit System) are primarily for outgoing shipments. But goods also arrive at port terminals under a transit declaration after being unloaded at another port. The application also manages the flow of “air” freight. Major economic operators unload goods in transit primarily at Bierset and Zaventem.
“Transit declarations include information about the goods being transported, their sender and consignee, the mode of transport, the intended route, and the customs offices involved. The holder of the transit procedure must also provide a valid guarantee. When a transit declaration is accepted, the NCTS generates a unique identifier called the Master Reference Number, which allows the movement of the goods to be tracked throughout their transit procedure. Customs officers at each customs office can track the movement of goods via the NCTS to ensure they are following the authorized route.”*
Today, this application is in production after five years of operation. The transit of maritime and air goods is currently proceeding without any major issues. With hindsight, external stakeholders acknowledge the success, stability, and smooth operation of the delivered application.
Technical Aspects
The solution is developed using Java microservices, the Spring Boot framework for the backend, and offers a shared Angular frontend for customs officials and operators.
Internal communication is handled by RabbitMQ queues, while external communication with economic operators is via a REST API supported by the Axway API gateway. External communication with the European Taxud platform is handled by the Artemis ActiveMQ service. Continuous deployment is managed by ArgoCD, which offers high flexibility and responsiveness.
This solution runs on FodFin’s cloud-like platform, Kubernetes (TKGi). It is integrated with FodFin’s IAM solutions.
*Source: Le Soir newspaper.
