OMB Approves TSA Rail Security ICR Revision

Last week the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs announced that it had approved an information collection request (ICR) from the DHS Transportation Security Agency (TSA) for their Rail Transportation Security ICR (1652-0051). The revision significantly increased the response burden estimate for the ICR and provides some broad insights into this surface transportation security program.

ICR Response Increase

This ICR covers four railroad security reporting requirements under 49 CFR 1580:

• Rail Security Coordinator (RSC) information (§1580.101);

• Location and shipping information (§1580.103);

• Significant security concerns reporting (§1580.105); and

• Chain of custody documentation (§1580.107)

The 60-day ICR Notice noted that:

“The total annual burden for this collection is approximately 112,764 hours, which is 67,320 hours higher than the current annual inventory. This change is primarily due to an increase in the number of responses of transfer of custody.”

 More detailed information is available from the Supporting Document that TSA submitted to OIRA with this ICR revision [.DOCX download] and the previous ICR update [.DOCX download]. Table 1 below shows the comparative date from the two Supporting Documents.

ICR Response Burden Information	Current ICR	Previous ICR
Rail Security Coordinator Information	475	804
Location and Shipping Information	655	330
Significant Security Concerns Reporting	4,971	5,475
Chain of Custody Documentation	107,000	78,000

Table 1: Comparative ICR Response Data

There is no information in the Supporting Documents to indicate why there is a decrease in the estimated number of RSC information submissions.

The ‘location and shipping information’ data is collected during TSA security inspections of railroads. The earlier ICR data was based upon the number of those inspections in FY 2013 (pg 7). The new ICR uses the average of the number of inspections conducted during the FY 2015 thru FY 2017 period (pg 8); that number is slightly skewed due to the high number of inspections in 2015 (876). A more appropriate number might be 544; still a significant increase (154%).

The almost 11% decrease in the estimate of ‘significant security concerns reporting’ probably does not reflect a change in the railroad security situation. The earlier ICR used an “approximately 15 reports daily” to computer the estimated number of responses. The current ICR uses the average from the last three reporting years (“reports from FY15 (4,529), FY16 (5,210), FY17 (5,145)”; pg 9) and those would average from 13 to 14 daily reports. Daily averages in that range would probably be well within the standard deviation of the data.

TSA breaks out the ‘chain of custody documentation’ down into four categories:

• Shipment originations;

• Placement at Hazmat receiver;

• Carrier Interchange inside HTUA (high-threat urban area); and

• Carrier Interchange outside HTUA w/path through HTUA

Table 2 shows the estimated reporting data for each of those categories from current and previous ICR support information submissions.

Chain of Custody Documentation	Current ICR	Previous ICR	% Increase
Shipment originations	48,000	18,000	166.7%
Placement at Hazmat receiver	12,000	10,000	20.0%
Carrier Interchange inside HTUA	18,000	6,500	176.9%
Carrier Interchange outside HTUA w/path through HTUA	29,000	4,500	544.4%

Table 2: Estimated Chain of Custody Submissions

TSA provides no data on how these estimates were prepared in either support document. Since the regulation only requires that the above listed chain-of-custody activities must be documented, but not reported to TSA, one has to assume that these estimates are taken from data obtained during TSA inspections of shippers and carriers. Shippers and carriers are only required to retain these chain-of-custody documents for 60-calendar days {§1580.107(h)}, so the TSA data upon which they base this estimate is incomplete at best and, looking at the % increase data that I calculated, statistically unlikely. What is clear, however, is that during whatever period that TSA ‘collected’ the ‘shipment origination’ data, they had stepped up their inspection activities of hazmat shippers and railroads outside of HTUA’s.

Electronic Incident Reporting

Currently ‘significant security concerns’ are required to be reported to be reported to TSA via telephone. According to the Supporting Document submitted to OIRA on the current ICR revision (pg 2): “TSA is revising the collection to include a proof of concept, to be conducted with 9 railroads, for option to submit significant security concern electronically.” No additional information about the collection format or the electronic process is provided. This electronic submission trial was not mentioned in the 60-day ICR notice, but it was briefly reported in the 30-day ICR notice.

Commentary

I have long complained about the TSA’s implementation of the ICR process. They are notorious for providing inadequate information in their ICR notices. This has made it nearly impossible for the public to reasonably comment upon revisions to the ICR. When I have formally complained about this lack of information in the past in response to TSA ICR notices I have been informed that the information would be made available when the ICR was submitted to OIRA and OIRA has accepted this explanation by approving the ICR’s in question.

This time TSA has gone one step further and failed to provide adequate information to OIRA explaining changes that have resulted in significant increases in the information collection burden. Simply reporting that increases have happened is clearly inadequate when those changes could only have happened because of the actions of the data collection agency. TSA needs to ensure that they explain why their actions have changed and whether or not that change will continue into the future.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that anyone (any congresscritters listening?) will take TSA to task for this lack of information. The OMB certainly has demonstrated that they feel no oversight responsibility in the matter.