CIPAC Annual Meeting October 6th

Today the DHS Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC) published a notice in the Federal Register (76 FR 55693) announcing that their Plenary Meeting will be held on October 6^th, 2011 in Washington, DC. No agenda is currently available, with the Notice explaining that the Council “will meet to discuss issues relevant to the protection and resilience of critical infrastructure”.

While the meeting is open to the public, participation in the discussions will be limited to Council members, DHS officials and invited personnel. There will be a limited period available at the end of the meeting for public comments of up to 3 minutes on first come basis. Personnel wishing to make on-topic comments during that period need to register that intention at the meeting location.

Written comments may be submitted at any time before or after the meeting. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket #  DHS-2011-0055).

As I have commented about any number of DHS public discussions, I think that DHS and CIPAC would be better served if public meetings like this were available as a webinar-type internet broadcast. Complaints by a number of public advocacy groups like Greenpeace that CIPAC gives industry ‘undue influence’ on the operations and policies of DHS would certainly be diminished if the public deliberations of this group were truly made public.

NOTE: A copy of this blog post will be submitted as a comment on this Docket.