ATF DEPLOYS NEW ELECTRONIC SYSTEM TO OBTAIN IMPORT
PERMITS FOR FIREARMS, AMMUNITION AND IMPLEMENTS OF WAR
Measure Will Reduce Regulatory Burden and Enhance National Security

WASHINGTON -- The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) announced today that it has deployed eForm 6, a system that for the first time will allow defense contractors and firearms importers to file applications for import permits electronically.

The eForm 6 system is the second key e-government application launched this year. The key industries that will use the new application are firearms importers, who are required to apply for an import permit prior to bringing any firearms or firearm parts into the United States, and defense contractors, who must also have permits to import parts and sub-assemblies which are classified as "implements of war." ATF received more than 15,000 applications for permits last year alone.

Marguerite Moccia, ATF's Chief Information Officer, said, "We're very pleased to be launching ATF's eForm 6 system. eForm 6 demonstrates the value of the e-government strategy by not only reducing the regulatory burden on industry, but also enhancing our national security through faster and more thorough analysis during the import application review process."

With the new system, importers can submit the ATF Form 6 electronically to ATF's Firearms and Explosives Imports Branch (FEIB) for review and approval. Previously, the Form 6 submission process was entirely paper-based and required importers to fill out a form and mail it to ATF for processing. ATF then would mail back the import permit for the importer to present to U.S. Customs at a port of entry. All paper Form 6's were manually transcribed into the ATF's internal tracking system prior to FEIB analysis, and all status inquiries had to be done by telephone.

In addition to providing an electronic method for submitting the Form 6 to ATF, the new eForm 6 system also provides the following benefits:

eForm 6 was developed under a contract between ATF and Idea Integration, a Fairfax, Va., software company specializing in web-based systems. Responding to the needs of the firearms import industry to develop an electronic filing solution for import permits, ATF hired Idea Integration in the fall of 2001, and collaborated with industry throughout the project.

The state-of-the-art eForm 6 electronic filing system is a fully compliant J2EE thin-client application. The product leverages a 3-tier architecture using Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) and the Jakarta Struts framework. eForm 6 is deployed on the Oracle 9i application server running JDK 1.3.1. Since much of the information transmitted through eForm 6 is proprietary data, the system is secured by using 128-bit encryption over a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection.

The eForm 6 system is available to importers who register with ATF's Imports Branch. To access the eForm 6 system, users may visit the ATF web site at www.atf.gov or www.atfonline.gov/eforms6. The site contains all of the instructions and forms necessary to become a registered eForm 6 user.

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