TSA Publishes 60-Day ICR Notice for Exercise Program

Today the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) published a 60-day information collection request (ICR) renewal notice in the Federal Register (79 FR 24742-24744) for their Exercise Information System (EXIS).

I provided a brief description of the system three years ago when the initial ICR 60-day notice was published. Since that ICR was approved I have been checking the EXIS web site weekly to see if there has been any sharing of information about the planning or conduct of transportation security exercises, and there has been none on the public web site. This public sharing of tools and templates for exercises appears to be a unfulfilled aspect of the program.

Data included in today’s notice, however, would seem to indicate that program is somewhat more successful away from the public portion of the web site. There are currently 364 registered users of the program and 35% of those (127) have used the site to plan or conduct an exercise. According to the notice TSA expects to increase the number of registered users to 12,998 over the next three years, a really impressive goal (a 3470% increase). There is no mention in how TSA expects to achieve that goal other than a vague mention of use of ‘outreach events’.

TSA is soliciting public comments on this ICR notice. TSA is not using the Federal eRulemaking Portal for their comment submission process, taking any possible submissions out of public view. Comments may be submitted via email (TSAPRA@dhs.gov) and should be submitted by June 30^th, 2014.