NARA Announces NISSPPAC Meeting – 3-19-14

The National Archives and Records Administration published a notice in Monday’s Federal Register (available on-line today; 79 FR 7711) announcing a public meeting of the National Industrial Security Program Policy Advisory Committee (NISPPAC) on March 19^th, 2014. There is nothing in the notice that would indicate what is on the agenda or where an agenda might be found.

The regulations governing the public notice requirements for Advisory Committees are quite clear that the public notice announcing a meeting of such an organization must include a “summary of the agenda, and/or topics to be discussed” {41 CFR 102-3.150(a)(3)}. I suppose that the lack of that information in this notice is an oversight caused by habitually having to keep things secret. After all, NISPPAC advises NARA’s  Information Security Oversight Office on all matters concerning the policies of the National Industrial Security Program (NISP), the organization that is charged with establishing the standards for sharing classified information with the private sector and ensuring that that information is adequately secured while in the hands of the private sector.

Past public meetings of this organization have included discussions of such topics as:

• Measures being taken to lessen the impact of delayed periodic reinvestigations for security clearances;

• A necessary change to the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual

(NISPOM) required by §941 of the fiscal year (FY) 2013 National Defense Authorization Act establishing the minimum standards for insider threat and the cyber intrusion reporting requirements; and

• A discussion of the progress made to date on the establishment of standards for protecting unclassified but sensitive information.

It will be interesting to see if there is an amendment issued to this notice providing the required information on the proposed agenda or at least a listing of the topics to be addressed. We all know (SARCASM Warning) that the Executive Branch assiduously complies with all of the requirements found in the Code of Federal Regulations.