Don’t Panic, Just Enroll
If you are registered as an exporter or manufacturer of defense articles with the Department of State, Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (“DDTC”), you have by now probably noted reference to “DECCS”, the Defense Export Control and Compliance System, either on the DDTC website or in correspondence from or with DDTC.
Do you know what DECCS is?
More importantly, do you understand your responsibilities with DECCS today?
DECCS is DDTC’s new electronic portal for Export Licensing, Registration, Commodity Jurisdictions, Advisory Opinions, Retransfer Requests and in the future for Voluntary Disclosures.
DECCS is borne out of DDTC’s IT Modernization effort which began almost five years ago. After much testing, discussion and work, all of which is still underway, DECCS will formally deploy on Tuesday February 18, 2020. Per DDTC, DTrade will cease to be available as of 6 PM EST February 14, 2020.
Don’t worry! All registrant information, licensing and digital certificate information tied to your company registrant’s registration code will be migrated to your account in DECCS. NOTHING will be lost.
If you have a valid ITAR registration with DDTC, you need to enroll in DECCS to continue your ITAR licensing or registration activities.
Over the last few weeks DDTC has contacted all registrants and holders of digital certificates via a 3rd party (OKTA) about registering in DECCS. Upon reviewing the email, you will find your user ID for DECCS and a link to start your enrollment process in DECCS.
Unfortunately, as the email did not come from DDTC, but rather OKTA, and references an application program “MyApps”, many exporters have either believed it is junk/spam and deleted it or the email was automatically filtered to junk/spam.
To add some more bad news, the email link/window to register with the link in the window was only 7 days from the date OKTA sent it. This means if you cannot find the email and have not actioned it by the time you are reading this communique you will have missed the window to respond. Do not fear! You can easily resolve this problem by contacting the DDTC DTrade/DECCS Help Desk and requesting that the email be resent. See email addresses below to make this request.
So now that you have completed step 1, your in the DECCS enrollment page, what comes next?
You will provide your user ID and first/last name and phone number.
Click Enroll!
You then will get a notification on the DECCS page that an email is forthcoming from OKTA to complete the DECCS enrollment.
The second email from OKTA will prompt users to create a password and provide a phone number to enable two factor authentications for access to DECCS through the DECCS portal.
Now you are all set… almost! Like any IT system conduct validation testing
Log in and see the two-factor authentication process work.
Once complete you will be able to log into the DECCS portal and conduct business with DDTC, whether it is managing your account and users, preparing or tracking license status, filing registrations.
And the good news is, all licenses submitted in DTrade prior to the conversion will continue to process, as will any registrations that have been submitted. When complete, they will be issued in DECCS.
The phone numbers to call DDTC and request resending of the initial email are 202-663-2838 or 202-663-1282. To submit requests to DDTC via email, we recommend submitting to the following:
deccspmddtc@midatl.service-now.com; DDTCResponseTeam@state.gov; and dtradehelpdesk@state.gov.