Digitalisation at Customs

The world is changing and Finnish Customs is being renewed. Presently, Customs is going through the biggest development programme in its history.

The work we do at Customs is very traditional and appreciated. We protect society and we enable smooth foreign trade. The strong growth of online trading and the globalisation make sure that our services and control tasks are needed in the future as well.

Finnish Customs is ranking well in international comparisons and almost all of our services are already digital.  We are renewing our systems, as we want to maintain our position as one of the most efficient customs administrations in the world. The growing online trade and flow of goods challenge us to digitalise the rest of our services and to enhance our activity.

New customs clearance system

The core of digitalisation at Finnish Customs is the new customs clearance system, introduced in September 2020, and related background services. Currently, other Member States are also harmonising their customs clearance systems in order to adapt them to the new EU legislation. Work by Customs to develop the new customs clearance system and related background services is still going on.

Simple web services

The digitalisation of Customs facilitates the customs clearance processes for about 18 000 businesses, as well as the work of almost 2 000 customs officers, and helps the internet customers to declare consignments.  

The customers themselves clear purchases ordered from non-EU countries. We have developed for them easy-to-use web services and customs clearance instructions to make it as easy as possible to clear goods through customs.

We have opened, for example, the Import Declaration Service for private persons and the Customs Duty Calculator for individuals, and the “My details” service and the Fintaric commodity code service for the businesses. The popular Customs Duty Calculator is used by some 300000 users annually in estimating costs of online purchases.

In this context, we have created technological capacity allowing customers to transact with us when and where they wish to do so.  We also strive to ensure that our digital services work without disruptions and are dependable.

Information efficiently

The work we do here at Customs has more and more to do with information. We need efficient tools for processing goods and the growing flow of information. We have developed new analytics and reporting solutions for our experts.

Customs has a considerable amount of data, which we recently centralised into a data storage service. This way, we enhance the utilisation and sharing of data within Customs as well as from us to different interest groups.

Artificial intelligence

Our objective is to automate routine functions. This way, customs officials have more time for customers and for demanding expert work. 

We value open-minded and brave ideas from our officials and from our customers. We analyse questions posed by customers to the Customs Information Service, and we have introduced the Hippu chatbot that uses artificial intelligence.   

Here are some of our services opened for customers:

 

  • 4/2021 – National imports for also other businesses apart from customers in customs warehousing (New customs clearance system)  
  • 3/2021 – Security data declarations and presentation of goods based on the Commission’s ICS2 requirements 
  • 2/2021 – National imports for customers in customs warehousing and private persons, extension of the import declaration service due to the VAT Directive  
  • 2/2021 – Customs duty calculator; the customs duty calculator service facilitating customs duty assessment (reformed) 
  • 10/2020 – The Hippu Chatbot
  • 6/2020 –  Businesses’ “My details” service 
  • 3/2020 – Electronic application service to be used for applying for transit authorisations
  • 2/2020 – Import declaration service for private persons, online postal and freight clearance services for individuals (new customs clearance system)    
  • 6/2019 – Search function by MRN  
  • 3/2019 – Web service for customs warehousing  
  • 3/2019 –  Printouts based on the new printing system (decisions in the authorisation register, authorisation application, UTU customs warehousing)   
  • 5/2019 – Deployment of messages within the customs warehousing service
  • 5/2019 – Search function by EORI
  • 3-11/2019 –Licence management services (message exchange, comprehensive guarantee authorisation, payment deferment, warehousing authorisations, simplification authorisations)  
  • 2/2019 – Fintaric distribution service (distribution of commodity code details in machine language) 
  • 10/2018 – Commodity code service Fintaric (interface-based)
  • 10/2017 – Statistical declaration service Intrastat