The purpose of the project is to develop a recommendation and guidelines for designing and implementing an approach to “Systematically Important Single Window Systems (SISWS)” SISWS are systems which have the characteristic that a failure of these could potentially endanger the operation of the whole economy of country as trade facilitation measures put in place would / may be unable to function.  The project will endeavour to provide a basis for designing strategies, identifying strengths and weakness and enhancing policies related to strengthening the resilience of Single Window and associated systems.

A SW is often exposed to regulatory risk and therefore it must be able to adapt quickly to changes in the national and international regulations.  The Project will review the Single Window Suite of recommendations (Rec 33-35, and 36 pending) and build upon those to look at Systemic risk of and to SW and associated systems. Systemic which could be defined in the context of SWS as the risk provided by the inability of one or more of the stakeholders to meet its obligations, or a disruption in the system itself which could result in the inability of other system stakeholders or of institutions in other parts of the economy to meet their obligations as they become due. Such a failure could threaten the stability of the system or of the economy. 
The scope of the project will therefore consider:
•	The legal environment relevant to this principle.  This could include the general legal infrastructure in the relevant jurisdictions (such as the law relating to trade, ports operations, security, safety, banking, customs,..) as well as specific statutes, case law, contracts (for example, single window rules) or other relevant material;
•	The determinant of risk and where the risks are borne should be the rules and procedures of the system. These should define clearly the rights and obligations of all the parties involved and all such parties should be provided with up to date explanatory material. In particular, the relationship between the system rules and the other components of the legal environment should be clearly understood and explained. In addition, key rules relating to risks should be made publicly available
•	The stakeholders environment including, system operator, and other involved parties - in some cases including customers – to clearly the different risks in the system and where they are borne. 
•	The risk management and repository approach.  Whereby identifying the need for a key risk management tool to handle different types of risk and to manage this within a repository being maintained by stakeholders who must also participate in its evolution and its keeping up to date.
The Project will consider these core elements as well as other related elements and create a picture of the complex SW environment and develop a generic recommendation / guidelines to support in identify and managing risk of SW operations.

The project deliverables are as follows:
a)	Recommendation on Systematically Important Single Window Systems (SISWS)
b)	Guidelines on Systematically Important Single Window Systems (SIWS);
c)	Repository of case studies

The exit criteria that will indicate the deliverable has been completed, are specified as below.
a)	Recommendation on Systematically Important Single Window Systems (SIWS)
•	Internal and external review logs showing how comments have been addressed.
•	Final draft of text ready for publication.
b)	Guidelines on  Systematically Important Single Window Systems (SIWS)
•	Internal and external review logs showing how comments have been addressed.
•	Final draft of text ready for publication.
c)	Repository of case studies
•	Model template for repository submissions
•	At least two or three examples of submissions

Membership is open to experts with broad knowledge in the area of trade facilitation and single window systems and their implementation. In addition, Heads of Delegations may invite technical experts from their constituency to participate in the work. Experts are expected to contribute to the work based solely on their expertise and to comply with the UN/CEFACT Code of Conduct and Ethics and the policy on Intellectual Property Rights.

The geographical focus of the project is global.

Initial contributions include the UNECE Recommendations 33, 34 and 35 as well as the ongoing work on Single Window Interoperability (Proposed Recommendation 36 project).

Participants in the project shall provide resources for their own participation. The existence and functioning of the project shall not require any additional resources from the UNECE secretariat. The project will be prepared in between Forums, in face-to-face meetings, as feasible, and using conference call facilities (provided by the UNECE secretariat).

Milestones

Recommendation, Guideline, Repository

2016-04-28

2016-04-28 

2016-08-31

2016-12-31

2017-04-30

2017-04-30