WASHINGTON – President Obama today is set to release a makeover of the US export control system.

The new system establishes a single control list, a single primary enforcement coordination agency, a single IT system, and a single licensing agency.

The reforms, which were first announced in August 2009, involved an interagency taskforce that included all departments and agencies with roles in export controls. That group’s assessment found that the current US export control system's structure is overly complicated, contains too many redundancies, and tries to protect too much.

The current system is based on two different control lists administered by two different departments, three different primary licensing agencies, none of which sees the others’ licenses, a multitude of enforcement agencies with overlapping and duplicative authorities, and a number of separate IT systems, none of which are accessible to or easily compatible with the other, or agencies with no IT system at all that issues licenses. 

The tiered system eliminates the current two-list structure in favor of a three tier system based on the significance of the technology. However, despite the additional tier, pilot programs indicate that the paperwork will be significantly less for the vast majority of products. The Administration will also establish licensing harmonization to allow export authorizations within each control tier. The new system is expected to significantly reduce license requirements. The current system is so fragmented, that combined with the extensive list of controlled items, almost 130,000 licenses were issued last year alone.