Export Control Redux

President Obama's fiscal year 2013 budget proposal includes a request for $3.5 million in additional funding for the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to add more staff in its export administration division as part of the administration's export control reform initiative, Inside U.S. Trade reports this morning:

The funding request is for 24 additional staff to handle the increased workload of approximately 30,000 export license applications that will become the responsibility of BIS as a result of the reform initiative, according to a budget summary for the bureau.

The reform effort plans to transfer thousands of items from the U.S. Munitions List, which is under the jurisdiction of the State Department, to the Commerce Control List (CCL) administered by the BIS.

The transfer of items will increase the licensing workload of BIS by 150 percent even though the net burden the U.S. government export control system imposes on exporters will decrease, according to the budget summary.

The additional staff will be added to the export administration division's 188 full-time employees, according to the proposal. BIS estimates that each new licensing officer hired will process up to 1,200 export licenses per year and will also be involved in performing compliance training, outreach and tasks associated with resolving control issues under the new system, according to the budget report.

For other divisions within BIS, Management and Policy Coordination and Export Enforcement, the budget proposal would decrease funding by $0.3 million and $2 million, respectively. These reductions reflect savings that the administration says would occur as a result of reorganizing the information technology system and using a single licensing system.

Savings in these divisions will also come from the reduction of main frame requirements as BIS moves to the Department of Defense's USXPORT System, which is the licensing system all government agencies will use as a result of the reform effort.