CFATS Update – June 2013

As I noted in a lunch-time addendum to this morning’s post about the bad link to the CFATS Update, ISCD has corrected that bad link. The new link takes one to the most up-to-date information that ISCD has provided to date about the CFATS program.

Updated CFATS Status

The table below shows the data from the new update as well as the similar numbers from the initial two updates.

	April 2013	May 2013	June 2013
Facilities currently covered by CFATS	4382	4351	4331
Removed, reduced or modified COI holdings	2900	3000	3000
Facility Assistance Visits	1202	1242	1253
SSP Authorized	280	380	469 (10.8%)
SSP Approved	53	85	125 (2.9%)

This new data shows continued improvement in the SSP approval process. At the current rate of authorization, it will take a little more than 43 months (3.6 years) to get all facilities authorized (3862 Remaining/89 authorized last month). Looking at approved SSPs the same way, it will take about twice as long (8 years) for all facilities to get their SSP approved (3862 Remaining/40 approved last month.

Data Problems

There is a minor problem with that analysis. The June update says that the data was correct as of June 6^th. There was no such note on the April or May updates. I had assumed that they were up-to-date as of the first of the month. If that is true, then the approval rate has slowed just a little bit over the last month and the extrapolated completion dates would move about by some unknown, but small, amount.

Information

 The written portion of the update sheet was modified a little bit this month; removing the ‘CFATS Guiding Principles’ section found in the previous report. The freed-up space was filled with a brief description of the facility types for the first 100 SSP approvals. It notes that 26% of those were semiconductor manufacturing facilities and the balance included: chemical and non-chemical manufacturing facilities, distribution warehouses, industrial gas plants, research and development facilities, waste management facilities, food processing plants, pest control facilities, and one university. Given the resistance DHS got from educational facilities from the very beginning, the last facility on the list impresses me somewhat.

One final Issue

There is one small untruth in the data reported above. There are actually no facility SSPs approved. The Personnel Surety standard has not been met by any of these facilities because no one has been able to vet their employees or unescorted visitors against the Terrorist Screening Database. All of the ‘approved’ SSPs are conditional approvals pending the approval of the CFATS Personnel Surety Program.