AES Broadcast  07/14/2009          Broadcast  #  2009029

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 Extended Automated Export System (AES) Maintenance Outage 
         (July 25-26, 2009)

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The AES Production Region (shipments for live data) will undergo an 
         extended outage for  hours beginning at 11:00 PM Eastern Standard Time 
         (EST) Saturday, July 25, 2009.  The region will be restored by 
         4:00 AM EST Sunday, July 26, 2009.

During these outages, incoming AES shipments will be stored in a queue 
         and once the regions are restored processing will continue and messages 
         will be returned to the filers.  We strongly encourage you to file your 
         shipments prior to these extended outages when possible.
         
         The AES Development Team will be implementing a database feature called
         "Partitioning".  Although this feature will be transparent to the system's 
         end users, it will facilitate the Database Administrator's ability to 
         achieve maximum efficiency during regular database maintenance windows.

AES Filers may submit Non-Licensed shipments under the AES Downtime 
         Policy during the AES Production Region outage.  Licensed shipments 
         and license exemption shipments must be held until the system is restored 
         and an AES Internal Transaction Number (ITN) is received.  Once the 
         AES Production Region is restored all AES transactions for 
         shipments that moved under the AES Downtime Policy must be filed along 
         with any new AES transactions.
         
         If you utilize the AES Downtime Policy for export, please contact the 
         port where you will export from. In lieu of the AES Proof of Filing 
         Citation, please use the AES Downtime citation which consist of the 
         phrase AESDOWN, your individual company's Filer ID, followed by the 
         date of export. 

For example:  AESDOWN 123456789 07/26/09

 Please see the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) web site for 
         further information on the AES Downtime Policy:

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/trade/automated/aes/tech_docs/aestir/june04_intro/
       

 For further information or questions, contact the U.S. Census Bureau's 
         AES Branch at 1-800-549-0595, menu option 1 or at [email protected]
         or online at www.census.gov/trade.