Provisioning of IT Infrastructure by Custodians of Customs Stations as per "Handling of Cargo in Customs Areas Regulations, 2009"- reg. - Customs - F.No. IV(26)/123/2009-Systems

DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF SYSTEMS DATA MANAGEMENT CUSTOMS CENTRAL EXCISE HOTEL SAMRAT, CHANAKYAPURI NEW DELHI - 110021 F.No. IV(26)/123/2009-Systems Dated: 12 th October, 2009 To All Commissioners of Customs All Commissioners of Customs Central Excise Sir/Madam, Subject: Provisioning of IT Infrastructure by Custodians of Customs Stations as per "Handling of Cargo in Customs Areas Regulations, 2009"- reg. Reference is invited to CBEC Notification No. 26/2009-Customs(N.T.) dated 17 th March 2009 bringing into effect the "Handling of Cargo in Customs Areas Regulations 2009" (referred in short as 'Regulations') and Circulars Nos. 13/2009-Customs dated 23 rd March 2009 and No. 21/2009-Customs dated 4 th August 2009 . 2. The above Circulars issued by the CBEC prescribe that the networking, communication equipments, Uninterrupted Power Supply System, Computers/Personal Computers/Thin Clients, servers, printers and other computer peripherals as specified by the Directorate General of Systems shall also be provided by the custodians. It has further been provided that these instructions apply to all the Custodians of ports, airports, Inland Container Depots (ICDs), Container Freight Stations (CFSs) and Land Customs Stations (LCSs) except the major ports notified under the Major Ports Act 1963 and the airports notified under the Airports Authority of India Act, 1994. 3. In pursuance to the same, a detailed document "CBEC Partner Connectivity Solution" has already been circulated to all concerned Customs Commissionerates. Copy of the document is available at www.cbec.gov.in and www.icegate.gov.in. Salient features of the specifications prescribed are as under: 3.1 Computing Infrastructure 3.1.1 The Custodian would be required to provide reliable Internet connectivity to the Customs officers through a 2 mbps connection from a service provider of his choice. 3.1.2 The Custodian would be required to provide all the computing infrastructure including office space and furniture, desktops, service centre, LAN, File print server, printers (including Line Printers as may be required), routers (if required), LAN Switches, air-conditioning, generator back-up and UPS. The annual maintenance for these equipments would also be his responsibility. 3.1.3 Thin Client based Solution: Custodian is required to provide Linux based thin clients to the customs officers posted in his CFS/ICD. Specifications for the thin Clients are given below: Flash Memory 512 MB ( Expandable upto 1 GB) Main Memory 512 MB ( Expandable upto 1 GB) Processor 1 GHz OS Support (a) Unix + Derivatives (b) Linux Details of the "Image" or software required for use with the thin clients may separately be obtained from Directorate of Systems Data Management. 3.1.4 Alternatively , the Custodian can provide PCs, with Pentium Core 2 Duo/1 GB RAM/ 40 GB HDD and Windows XP/ Vista and Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers, in place of thin clients. In such cases CD drive / USB Drive (for storage functions) must be disabled. OS hardening /Password policy /Access control must be implemented in compliance with CBEC's Information Security Policy. Besides these PCs should be updated with latest antivirus Signatures. This is important since any violation would imply that the connectivity to the data center would be disallowed. 3.1.5 The Custodian would be required to have maintenance engineers for the IT equipment who would also act as the interface for technical issues. VPN Client software download and installation, configuration settings (including Username Password), step By step Procedure for accessing the applications through VPN client will be provided by TCS the implementation will be carried out by the local maintenance engineers provided by the Custodian. 3.1.6 The Custodian should ensure that the CBEC LAN is Insular and isolated from the custodian LAN. The CBEC LAN would also incorporate requirements if any for service center. The Custodian will also ensure a separate connectivity to the Internet for CBEC. 3.1.7 All custodians communicating with CBEC's Datacenters will be governed by CBEC's Information Security Policy. This would be provided separately by the Directorate of Systems. 3.1.8 Custodians would be required to sign a "Non Disclosure Agreement" with the local Commissioner of Customs in the format enclosed at Annexure 'A'. 3.2. Connectivity/Infrastructure for Message Exchange: 3.2.1 Further the Custodians are required to enable connectivity for Message Exchange with ICEGATE (CBEC's e-Commerce portal). There are two available options for Custodians' message exchange to connect to CBEC's data centers. These include: Connectivity through Internet : In this case custodians can connect to the CBEC's datacenters through Internet by establishing secure connection to Datacenters. Each partner will arrange the Internet Connectivity locally at their locations. For Customs officials users working at these locations, controlled access for the VPN users will be managed by TCS limited. Connectivity through the Multi-Protocol Label Switched (MPLS) networks of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL)/Tata Communications Limited (TCL): In this case the custodians can connect with the MPLS Cloud of either BSNL or TCL. The last mile /local cross Connect of BSNL/TCL would be terminated on the CBEC's switch in the Public Zone. CBEC has no objections to any other service provider being engaged by the partner subject to agreement between the service provider and TCL who are CBEC's data center providers. In both the options listed above, CBEC will only work as a facilitator and the responsibility for arranging the actual connectivity remains with the partner agency. CBEC is only suggesting various options, which have different techno-commercial implications. Secure file transfer protocol ( SFTP) will be used for Message Transfer. With Secure file transfer Protocol, Users can pickup and drop files on the dedicated FTP server in the directories assigned to their respective user ids in a secure manner. Message formats for ICES 1.5 are available at www.icegate.gov.in. 4. The Regulations also provide that the existing custodians also must comply with these requirements within a period of 3 months from the date of coming into force of these Regulations (notified vide Notification No. 26/2009-Cus (NT), Dated 17-03-2009). In this context, it may be noted, however that as part of the CBEC's Consolidation initiative, the computing infrastructure including LAN, thin clients, printers (Line Laser Network), Scanners, UPS and DG sets, has already been provided at certain ICDs/Ports/ ACCs etc. for use by Custom Officers and service centre operators. 5. While in such cases there may not be any immediate requirement to comply with these requirements in respect of Customs/Service Centre staff, any subsequent expansion/ modification/replacements required in the IT infrastructure in such cases whether for Customs/Service Centre or Custodians' own use shall be provided by the Custodians. Further, since the present LAN infrastructure is provided by CBEC is covered by a maintenance contract entered into by CBEC; all such expansion/modification/replacements required during the validity of the maintenance period shall have to be carried out in consultation with the Directorate General of Systems. The cost of maintenance in respect of all such additional acquisitions will be borne by the Custodian. 6. For detailed specifications of the IT equipment and/or documents referred to above in the partner connectivity document, Shri Jayant Sahay or Shri Ruchin Gupta, Deputy Director, Directorate General of Systems Data Management, Hotel Samrat, Chanakyapuri New Delhi may be contacted at Telephone : 011-26877965/67/68 Fax: 011-26877958 email: jayant.sahay@icegate.gov.in; ruchin.gupta@icegate.gov.in. This issues with the approval of Director General Systems Data Management. Yours faithfully, (Yogendra Garg) Additional Director Systems Tel: (011) 2611 3618 Fax: 011-2687 7958 Email: yogendra.garg@icegate.gov.in Copy to: All Chief Commissioners Customs All Chief Commissioners of Customs Central Excise All System Managers Webmaster, CBEC Website