What each role can do

Everything you can see and do in the ITS portal comes from two things:

• your role, a named set of permissions that an administrator puts on your account; and
• your organisation: the AfCFTA Secretariat, a State Party, or a Regional Economic Community (REC).

The role decides which screens and buttons you get. The organisation decides whose data those screens show. Two people with the same role, one at a State Party and one at a REC, get the same screens with different data in them. This page covers the first. For the second, see the "What you see depends on who you are" boxes in each chapter.

If a menu item or a button in this manual is missing from your screen, your role does not include it. Nothing is broken.

The roles people hold

Role (as the portal names it)	Who holds it	What it is for
System admin	The operator who runs the ITS deployment. The built-in its.admin account holds it.	Everything, including the roles screen. Nobody can grant it from the portal.
Secretariat admin	The AfCFTA Secretariat's administrator. The built-in afcfta.admin account holds it.	Governance, every report, the customs office register for all of Africa, and the Secretariat's own users. It reads declarations but cannot lodge or stamp them.
Organisation admin	The administrator of a State Party or a REC.	The organisation's own users, its customs offices, every report, and read-only access to declarations, all limited to the countries it administers.
Partner	The technical contact of a State Party or REC.	The organisation's integration workspace. It usually comes together with Organisation admin.
Customs officer	An officer at a customs station, usually working in a national customs system rather than in the portal.	Lodging declarations and stamping them along the corridor, plus two report areas.
Departure authority	The customs administration of the departure country.	Amending and cancelling its own declarations.

Most declaration work happens outside the portal

For now, ITS is used system to system. A national customs system lodges, stamps, amends and cancels declarations through the ITS API, not through the portal. The declaration permissions below belong to those systems and to officers whose systems act for them. In the portal a person reads declarations; there is no button to lodge one.

The roles systems hold

The roles list also shows roles that are not meant for people. They let a connected customs system, or a part of ITS itself, do its job. Never give one to a colleague.

Role	What it is
Partner system	A State Party's or REC's customs system calling ITS: it reads declarations, acknowledges what ITS sends it and reads a few reports.
Notification publisher, Reporting publisher	Used by ITS's own services to send messages and publish report definitions. They grant nothing in the portal.
Sandbox onboarding reconciler, Trust bundle reader	Used by ITS internally for onboarding and certificates.
State party admin	An older name for Organisation admin. It grants no permissions. See the caution below.

An old role is still in the list

State party admin is the old name of Organisation admin. It still appears on the roles screen with 0 permissions, and on the development system one account still holds it. Somebody who holds only this role can sign in and do nothing. Give Organisation admin instead.

How to read the tables

Mark	Meaning
Yes	The screen or button is there and works.
Read only	The screen opens and you can search and filter, but the buttons that change something are not there.
No	Not shown. The portal hides what you may not use instead of greying it out.
System	Done by a connected customs system through the API, not in the portal.

Screens

Screen	System admin	Secretariat admin	Organisation admin	Partner	Customs officer	Departure authority
Overview	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Declarations list and declaration pages	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Failed transmissions	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Notifications and the bell	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Reports: Transit volumes, Time & delays	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Reports: Register	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Reports: Integration	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Reports: Workforce	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Governance	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
Customs offices	Yes	Yes	Yes	Read only	Read only	Read only
Users	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Roles	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Track a consignment, Verify a document	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Track and Verify are public: anyone can use them, signed in or not.

Reports opens on the first area you may read

If your role reads some report areas but not others, Reports shows only the tabs you may open. Each tab opens completely or is not shown, so an empty tile always means "nothing happened", never "you may not see this".

Declarations

Action	System admin	Secretariat admin	Organisation admin	Customs officer	Departure authority	Partner system
Read a declaration, its history and its transit document	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	System
Lodge a declaration	System	No	No	System	No	No
Stamp it along the corridor	System	No	No	System	No	No
Amend it	System	No	No	System	System	No
Attach documents	System	No	No	System	No	No
Cancel it	System	No	No	No	System	No
Acknowledge an announcement from ITS	System	No	No	No	No	System

The Secretariat reads declarations but never lodges goods into the system. That is intended.

Customs offices

Action	System admin	Secretariat admin	Organisation admin	Everybody else who can open it
Read the register for all of Africa	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
New office, Edit, Withdraw, reopen	Every country	Every country	Only the countries it administers	No
Bulk Upload	Every country	Every country	Only the countries it administers	No
Export	Yes	Yes	Yes	No

A REC administers only the members that have delegated their submissions to it, not every member of the community. See Governance.

Governance

Only the Secretariat (System admin and Secretariat admin) can open Governance. It records which countries take part, which RECs exist, who their members are and who submits for whom. Organisation admin cannot see it at all.

Users

Action	System admin	Secretariat admin	Organisation admin
See the organisation's users	Yes	Yes	Yes
Add user, Edit	Yes	Yes	Yes (see the caution)
Bulk Upload	Yes	Yes	Yes
Deactivate and reactivate	Yes	Yes	Yes
Record a duty station posting	Yes	Yes	Yes

Who may give which role. An administrator can only give the roles their organisation is allowed to give:

The administrator works for	They can give
The Secretariat	Secretariat admin, Organisation admin, Customs officer, Departure authority, Partner
A State Party	Customs officer, Departure authority
A REC	Customs officer

System admin can never be given from the portal. A REC can staff its own gateway but not a member's customs service.

Add user and Edit do nothing for State Party and REC administrators

On the current version of the portal, Add user and Edit open nothing when an Organisation admin selects them: no window, no message. The permission is there; the screen does not act on it. Until this is fixed, ask the Secretariat to create or change accounts in your organisation. See Users.

The last administrator cannot be switched off

ITS refuses to deactivate the last active Secretariat admin or Organisation admin of an organisation, because nobody inside it could then give the role back.

Roles

Only System admin can open the roles screen, look at what a role grants, and create, copy, change or delete a custom role. Secretariat admin and Organisation admin have no Roles tab. Typing its address shows a page that keeps loading. See Roles and permissions.

The roles in plain words

System admin. The operator. Everything in the portal and the API. Keep it to the people who run the deployment.

Secretariat admin. The Secretariat's administrator. Governs who takes part and who submits for whom, maintains the customs office register on everyone's behalf, reads every report and every declaration, and manages the Secretariat's own people. It never lodges, stamps or amends a declaration.

Organisation admin. The administrator of one State Party or one REC. Reads the declarations and reports of the countries it administers, keeps its customs offices up to date, and manages its own people. It is the same role for a State Party and a REC. The data differs because the organisation differs.

Partner. The technical contact who connects the organisation's customs system. On its own it opens the integration workspace, the customs office register (read only) and notifications, and nothing else.

Customs officer and Departure authority. Roles for the people and systems that act on declarations: lodging and stamping (officer), amending and cancelling (departure country). Their work happens in the national customs system, which calls ITS.

Related pages

• Roles and permissions: how to read what a role grants.
• Users: giving roles to people.
• Governance: why a REC may act for some members and not others.