Unified Agenda – Spring 2013 – Published

Yesterday the Office of Management and Budget posted the Spring 2013 Unified Agenda on their Reginfo.gov web site. This includes the individual agency lists of rule makings that are planned and/or in various stages of completion. It includes links to the ‘Current Long Term Actions’ list of rulemakings that are under consideration.

DHS Rulemakings

Table 1 below shows the current list of DHS rulemakings on the Unified Agenda that will be of specific interest to the chemical safety and security communities. Chemical safety is not normally considered an DHS concern, but it is one of the missions of the Coast Guard so some chemical safety rulemakings are included on the DHS list.

OS	Final Rule	Ammonium Nitrate Security Program	1601-AA52
OS	Final Rule	Classified National Security Information	1601-AA68
USCG	NPRM	Updates to Maritime Security	1625-AB38
USCG	Final Rule	Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC); Card Reader Requirements	1625-AB21
USCG	Final Rule	Bulk Packaging To Allow for Transfer of Hazardous Liquid Cargoes	1625-AB63
USCG	Final Rule	Revision to Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) Requirements for Mariners	1625-AB80
USCG	Final Rule	2012 Liquid Chemical Categorization Updates	1625-AB80
TSA	NPRM	General Aviation Security and Other Aircraft Operator Security	1652-AA53
TSA	NPRM	Security Training for Surface Mode Employees	1652-AA55
TSA	NPRM	Freight Railroads and Passenger Railroads--Vulnerability Assessment and Security Plan	1652-AA55
TSA	NPRM	Standardized Vetting, Adjudication, and Redress Services	1652-AA61

Table 1: Current DHS Chemical Safety/Security Rulemakings

Comparing this latest Unified Agenda with the previous version published last December there are no major deletions or additions on the list of regulatory actions that the chemical safety/security communities will be specifically interested in on the DHS list (I’ll take a quick look at DOT and EPA lists in a separate post). The TWIC Card Reader rule did move into the ‘Final Rule’ category since the NPRM for that rulemaking has been published.

It hasn’t really struck me until today, but there are no cybersecurity specific rule makings on the DHS list.

There was some movement from the long term actions list to the current Unified Agenda, those items have been marked in BOLD in the table above.

The only changes within the rulemaking plans for these items are changes to the expected dates of the next action. The dates included in the Unified Agenda are, at best, hopeful guesses and the further they are in the future the less accurate they become.

In fact, the only date provided for the rulemaking activities listed above that is worth discussing is the July 2013 date for the Bulk Packaging To Allow for Transfer of Hazardous Liquid Cargoes rulemaking by the Coast Guard. The NPRM was published last year and the ‘expected date’ for the Final Rule is this month. If it is published by the end of July I will be surprised and I will be disappointed if it isn’t published by the end of September.

Long Term Actions

The Long Term Actions list is shown in table 2 below. There are no new additions to this list.

USCG	Top Screen Information Collection From MTSA-Regulated Facilities Handling Chemicals	1625-AB64
TSA	Protection of Sensitive Security Information (SSI)	1652-AA08
TSA	Drivers Licensed by Canada or Mexico Transporting Hazardous Materials To and Within the United States	1652-AA50

Table 2: Long Term Actions

The last two items in the table already have interim final rules in place and just require TSA to respond to comments filed on that action and update the rule. The interim final rules date back to 2004 and 2006 and there is no incentive for TSA to take any action to ‘complete’ these rulemakings.

The Coast Guard Top-Screen for MTSA facilities rule is a slightly different story. This was initiated as part of a congressionally mandated harmonization of the chemical security rules under CFATS and MTSA and keeps moving back and forth between the Unified Agenda and the Long Term Actions list. I doubt that any action will ever be taken on this unless there is an attack on a chemical facility covered by MTSA.

BTW: The Pending DHS Security Rules page on this blog has not been updated in a while; it is hard to get motivated to update it since DHS is SOOOOO slow in moving their rules along. The Obama Administration’s resumption of periodically publishing the Unified Agenda will provide the needed impetus for getting that page updated.