ISCD Publishes CFATS Update for December and January

Today the DHS Infrastructure Security Compliance Division (ISCD) published their Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorist Standards (CFATS) update for December 2018 and January 2019. Needless to say the Federal Funding Fiasco has had a major impact on the numbers being reported since the Chemical Security Inspectors were furloughed for 35-days straddling those two months. Sorry to say, this is going to play hell with statistical analysis.

The first table below shows the reported CSI activity data for December and January from today’s report (the November numbers come from the ISCD report in early December). The Authorization and Compliance inspection goose eggs are due to the fact that these inspections require more prior coordination than does a compliance inspection. The ‘NR’ notation means ‘not reported’.

CFATS Activities	Nov-18	Dec-18	Jan-19
Authorization Inspections to Date	3886	NR	3913
Authorization Inspections Month	14	18	0
Compliance Inspections to Date	4135	NR	4269
Compliance Inspections Month	143	97	3
Compliance Assistance Visits to Date	5065	NR	5131
Compliance Assistance Visits Month	53	36	0

The second table shows the status of covered facilities. ISCD did not report interim numbers for December.

CFATS Facility Status	Nov-18	Dec-18	Jan-19
Tiered	178		137
Authorized	454		426
Approved	2723		2766
Total	3355		3329

The sharp drop in the number of covered facilities (-26) since November is large, but not the largest two-month drop. That was -27 in June-July of 2018. Still it is rather impressive given that ISCD was not processing Top Screens for 35-days during the period and every one was kind of holding their breath until January 18^th, when the President signed the 15-month extension of the CFATS program authorization.

BTW: The CFATS landing page was updated to ‘report’ the signing of the extension.