2012 Unified Agenda Finally Published

Today the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) finally got around to publishing the 2012 Unified Agenda. It broke with the previous process of publishing Spring and Fall versions of the UA, apparently because it was so far behind in keeping up with that process. The last UA published was the Fall 2011 UA; published in January of this year.

Current DHS Rule List

Readers of this blog are going to be primarily interested in the DHS Rule list. This lists the currently active and planned rule making processes being pursued by the Department. I’ve extracted the ones of most interest to readers of this blog and posted it in Table 1 below.

Agency	Stage	Title	RIN #
OS	Final Rule	Classified National Security Information	1601-AA68
USCG	Proposed Rule	Cargo Securing on Vessels Operating in U.S. Waters	1625-AA25
USCG	Proposed Rule	Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC); Card Reader Requirements	1625-AB21
USCG	Proposed Rule	Updates to Maritime Security	1625-AB38
USCG	Final Rule	Bulk Packaging To Allow for Transfer of Hazardous Liquid Cargoes	1625-AB63
TSA	Proposed Rule	General Aviation Security and Other Aircraft Operator Security	1652-AA53
TSA	Proposed Rule	Security Training for Surface Mode Employees	1652-AA55
TSA	Proposed Rule	Freight Railroads and Passenger Railroads--Vulnerability Assessment and Security Plan	1652-AA56
TSA	Proposed Rule	Standardized Vetting, Adjudication, and Redress Services	1652-AA61

Table 1: Current Items on DHS Agency Rule List

I’ll discuss these proposed rulemakings in some more detail in future posts.

Rulemaking Missing from List

To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, what is interesting is what is not on the list. Comparing the 2012 UA to the Fall 2011 UA there are three rules of interest that are missing from the current list. Rulemaking has not been completed on these three so they were either removed from the list by the Obama Administration or were overlooked somehow. Those three rulemakings are listed in Table 2.

Agency	Stage	Title	RIN #
OS	Proposed Rule	Secure Handling of Ammonium Nitrate Program	1601-AA52
USCG	Proposed Rule	Top Screen Information Collection from MTSA-Regulated Facilities Handling Chemicals	1625-AB64
TSA	Proposed Rule	Sensitive Security Information: Disclosure in Federal Civil Court Proceedings	1652-AA54

Table 2: Rulemakings missing from DHS Rule list

Surely the Ammonium Nitrate Security Program (ANSP) was an oversight since this is a Congressionally mandated (and much overdue) rulemaking. The NPRM had been published in August of last year with the comment period closing on December 1^st, 2011. We have been waiting patiently for the final rule to be published. I expect that Rep. Thompson (D,MS) will be one of the first to question why this isn’t on the current UA.

The MTSA Top Screen rule was initiated as part of the process of harmonizing the chemical security rules between CFATS and MTSA. This was going to be essentially a data collection and analysis rule since there were no specific intentions (and no Congressional authority) to require MTSA covered facilities to comply with the CFATS rule. I suspect that this rulemaking was specifically removed from the UA.

The SSI Disclosure rule has been on the Agenda as long as I have been looking at it. The intent has been to establish rules for vetting a limited number of people involved in a Federal civil case to be authorized to view data that has been labeled Sensitive Security Information. This may have been removed because of conflicts between the SSI rules being developed under the President’s Executive Order on Controlled Unclassified Information. Actions on that EO have been delayed.

Next Step

With the long delayed publication of the UA we can now patiently wait for the President’s flexibility agenda to be published in the Federal Register. This will provide more details on how the above actions will be prioritized by the Administration. Earlier this year there was almost a month delay between the publication of the UA and the posting of the flexibility agenda.