Jan
08

Better Late Than Never, I Suppose

Posted by Clif Burns at 1:42 pm on January 8, 2008
Category: DDTC

Trilogy Circuit BoardFrom our unfortunate press release department:

Richardson, TX - Trilogy Circuits announced the completion of registration under the US Department of State’s International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

Administered by the Office of the Defense Trade Controls Compliance (DDTC), under authority established by the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), ITAR regulates the manufacture, export, import and transfer of defense related articles and services.

“As a provider of mission critical military electronics design and manufacturing services, we felt it was necessary to take additional steps to safeguard defense related data for our customers as well as our nation. Receiving the ITAR registration represents our commitment to providing a more secure business environment for our customers.” said Trilogy Circuits President Charles Capers.

I suppose the company couldn’t have said this instead:

Receiving the ITAR registration represents our belated commitment to complying with a regulatory requirement even though we’ve been providing mission critical military electronics design and manufacturing services for some time.

Even so, I’m still scratching my head to figure out how registration with DDTC has anything to do with safeguarding defense data and “providing a more secure business environment.”

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5 Comments »

  • Given the number of non-exporting manufacturers of defense articles who are completely clueless about their registration obligations, this is not surprising. In recent months, also, DDTC has become increasingly interested in “front end” issues in dealing with 2032s, and has interposed numerous requirements as conditions for registration, none of which can be found in Part 122.

    Comment by John Liebman — January 8, 2008 @ 1:47 pm

  • Lately, I am constantly asked if my company is “ITAR Certified” or not, and I now see these press releases trumpeting this all over the place. Apparently the word is out that non-exporting defense manufacturers need to be registered, and I see that contract language now requires this “certification” in many cases. The word ‘certification’ is a misleading spin word. There is no such thing, and it implies a level of expertise where none exists.

    Comment by Philip Zerbe — January 8, 2008 @ 2:43 pm

  • Sigh. I can speak to the misleading “certification” term from personal experience. My company has an internal ITAR certification program whereby we require anyone that needs to touch technical data first take an ITAR training class. We used to call someone who had been through the training an “ITAR-certified” employee. When that term got published into some marketing literature, we put a stop to it right away. Now we call our trained employees just that: ITAR-trained. It’s really a matter of education. Take your marketing and PR people out to lunch sometime. It’s a win-win. :)

    Comment by Evelyn Morales — January 8, 2008 @ 3:38 pm

  • It’s interesting to see that the “press release” is not on the Trilogy website - granted I did a very quick search - but is on a newsletter type site.

    Clif was the release ever on the Trilogy site? It would be interesting to find out if the newsletter took a tidbit garnered somewhere else and ran with it. As Philip and Evelyn point out we’re all having to “certify” that we’re ITAR registered.

    Comment by An Old Hand — January 8, 2008 @ 7:40 pm

  • Oh what chaos this could be causing for all of their competitors! I saw this announcement via an email news brief and I am sure that many more saw it as well. I took a look at their website and there wasn’t anything there, although I half expected to see “ITAR Registered” on the front page!

    Comment by Ladyx — January 9, 2008 @ 8:06 am

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