Having survived a two-hour verbal beating from angry industry representatives during crisis talks Thursday night, the Australian Customs Service will keep its besieged Integrated Cargo System (ICS) running rather than revert to its old system.

Customs CEO Lionel Woodward has phoned senior IT executives in the retail and transport industries to advise the ICS system will not be turned off, despite demands from the Customs Brokers and Forwarders Council of Australia.

The decision comes after a week of angry and bitter criticism of the agency over the final cut-over of its A$200 million (US$150 million) cargo processing system, which has seen electronic transaction messages between customers suffer delays as long as five hours in processing, with other messages sticking in the system for more than a day at a time.

Other problems identified include a security glitch which allowed users to see parts of each other"s import documentation, an issue Customs CIO Murray Harrison told Computerworld Thursday has been resolved.

However, industry sources who saw the security glitch in action told Computerworld commercially sensitive information, including pricing for goods, was able to be viewed.