National Drug Control System Operational Arrangements

1
National Drug Control SystemOperational
Arrangements
NDS Version 5.1 10 March 2003

• Maher Abu Ghali
• Global Systems Manager
• Information Technology Services
• United Nations Office at Vienna
• United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

2
Mandates

• 1994 INCB resolution
• Facilitate electronic reporting of statistics NDS
  1,2,3 3.3e
• 1999 GA resolution
• Development Account NDS 4.0 national and
  international drug control modules
• 2001 2002 CND resolutions
• CN.7/2001/L13, CN.7/2002/L18 NDS 5.0 enhanced
  modules

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Objectives

• Assist national administrations in automating
  drug control
• Import/Export Authorizations
• Pre-export notifications (precursor chemicals)
• Licensing
• Domestic distribution monitoring
• Assist national administrations in compliance
  with the requirements of the drug control
  conventions
• Tracking estimates and assessments
• Tracking licensed quotas to establishments
• Preparation and submission of statistical return
  data to INCB
• Facilitate electronic communication on national,
  regional and international levels

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NDS Tasks

• Develop a system that meets the objectives
• Gather, verify and implement changing
  requirements from competent authorities and
  update the system accordingly.
• Deploy the system and provide training in its use
• Support competent authorities using the system
  and provide service releases
• Maintain the standards that the system is based
  on such as EDI, HS and CAS

5
NDS Team

• 1994 1998 No staff members working full time
  on the system
• 1999 2001 1.5 Staff members full time working
  on the system
• 2001 2002 2 Staff members
• 2003 3 staff members
• We have a high degree of reliance on contractual
  services

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Achievements

• NDS is accepted as a standard system for
  automating drug control
• Endorsed by individual evaluation reports done by
  several competent authorities
• Endorsed by regional organizations like OAS
• Endorsed by CND
• Endorsed by independent 3rd party evaluation
• Fully meets all user requirements and mandates
  assigned up to date
• The system has been installed in 38 countries in
  more than 70 locations
• NDS adapts to the needs of countries that have
  few hundred transactions per year up to countries
  that have millions of transactions per year.
• The system fully meets the requirements of
  domestic and international dug control.

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Challenges

• Huge task (a global system) in contrast with
  little resources
• Consistency of funding level
• Changing requirements
• Lack or inadequacy of national IT support at some
  competent authorities
• High turn over of personnel at some competent
  authorities

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Lessons Learned

• Allocate more human resources to the task NDS
  team size is increasing
• Transfer IT know how to competent authorities
• Discuss funding arrangements with donors and
  recipients
• Establishing a schema to prioritize response to
  requests received from competent authorities

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The Plan Forward

• Concentrate on increasing the number of countries
  in production with limited number of new
  installations
• Continue maintaining the system according to user
  requirements
• Propose advanced technologies to streamline the
  processes

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• Questions?