Back in December the DHS Infrastructure Security Compliance
Division (ISCD) published
a 60-day information collection request revision notice for proposed changes to
the personnel surety program (PSP) for the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism
Standards (CFATS) program. Comments on the proposed extension of the
anti-terrorist screening requirement to Tier III and Tier IV facilities were
solicited. The first comments
were received this week.
Comments were received from (links are .PDF downloads):
• The
Fertilizer Institute; and
Rather than the general opposition to the PSP process that
marked many industry comments on earlier iterations of the PSP ICR process,
these three comments raised some interesting questions (and generally provided
potential solutions) arising from the expansion of the PSP terrorist vetting
program.
Some detailed questions were raised about the assumptions
that were made by ISCD for calculating the average burden estimate. It would
seem that ISCD has a better basis for making these estimates now that they have
worked closely with Tier I and Tier II facilities in implementing the PSP
submissions, but legitimate questions have been raised about differences
between the types of facility included in the two different risk categories of
facilities.
There close of the comment period is Monday, so there is a
decent chance that there will be more comments posted to the www.Regulations.gov web site for this
ICR. ISCD will take some amount of time to review the comments and address them
as they determine appropriate. ISCD will then publish a 30-day ICR notice
before sending the ICR to OMB for approval. It could still be six months to a
year or more before OMB approves the expansion of the PSP terrorist screening
process. And we have to remember that Congress will have a chance to weigh in
on the process (again) when they (hopefully) reauthorize the CFATS program
later this year.
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