ISCD Publishes Updated and New Fact Sheets

Today the DHS Infrastructure Security Compliance Division (ISCD) updated the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) Knowledge Center. The ‘Documentation’ section of the page now includes links to four new CFATS fact sheets for industries that are not normally considered chemical industries. They have also updated their two inspection fact sheets.

Industry Fact Sheets

The four new industry fact sheets are for:

• Pools and Water Parks;

• Wineries;

• Breweries; and

• Fisheries and Hatcheries.

Sharp eyed readers will note that three of these are included in the list of fact sheets that I mentioned in my earlier blog post about the CFATS Outreach Implementation Plan FY 2018. The last three fact sheets were reportedly released in 2017, but that I had not seen them published on the CFATS web site. The pools and water parks sheet was not mentioned in the earlier document. The lab factsheet that I had also mentioned earlier as not having been seen was not included in today’s link publication.

Much of the information provided in the four fact sheets is identical. Not surprisingly, the lists of ‘typical’ DHS chemicals of interest (COI) used by the facilities is slightly different in each case. Three of the factsheets (not the one for breweries) listed included brief comments about the agricultural exemption; mainly for fertilizers applied to land associated with the facility. The fisheries factsheet however, notes that fisheries and hatcheries are not included in that exception.

Inspection Fact Sheet Updates

The two new inspection updates deal with preparing for:

• Authorization Inspection; and

• Compliance Inspection

These are both complete re-writes of fact sheets written in 2014 and 2016 respectively. As with the previous versions, neither of these documents real information valuable for passing of the respective inspections, but they both provide valuable information that will be helpful in preparing for the conduct of the inspections.

One interesting piece of information is included in the compliance inspection fact sheet and it relates to the scheduling of those inspections. It notes that:

“ISCD compares eight factors (seven static and one dynamic) in an automated calculation to schedule CIs. Facilities with a higher score are prioritized. Static factors included in this calculation are a facility’s tier, number of planned measures [emphasis added], the time since the last inspection, and compliance history. The eighth factor changes based on new and emerging requirements.”

The issue of planned measures has been an issue since compliance inspections were started in the CFATS program. ISCD gave facilities credit for security measures that could not be implemented immediately for some reason; usually dealing with capital expenditure, long lead time equipment and the such. As long as the facility had budgeting in place and a firm schedule for completion documented, credit was given for those measures in the approval of the facility’s site security plan. During a large number of the initial compliance inspections chemical security inspectors found that facilities were not complying with their planned implementation schedules. While mitigation measures had to be in place for these planned measures to be approved by ISCD, facilities would not be fully secured until those planned measures were completed. ISCD is obviously taking these planned security measures very seriously.

To my disappointment the Expedited Approval Program appears to have been short changed in its mention in these two documents. It is briefly mentioned in a footnote in the authorization inspection document (mentioning that an authorization inspection is not required), but it is completely missed in the compliance inspection fact sheet. The consequences for a failed compliance inspection for EAP facilities is completely different from those for a facility that has gone through the standard site security plan approval process and should have been mentioned in the compliance inspection fact sheet.

CFATS Knowledge Center Update – 06-17-14

Today the folks at ISCD published two new outreach documents on the CFATS Knowledge Center web site. Both are documents that deal with Authorization Inspections; unfortunately they both have the same title – “What to Expect from a CFATS Authorization Inspection”. The CFATS Knowledge Center calls the second document: “Prepare for a CFATS Authorization Inspection Fact Sheet”.

The Fact Sheet

This is a short, two page document, which briefly outlines what the CFATS authorization inspection covers. While it is written mostly in generalities, it does provide a good overview. No one is going to ‘pass’ an authorization inspection solely based on information found in this document, but facilities would be foolish to ignore it.

What to Expect

This document is a set of presentation slides on the topic of Site Security Plan (SSP) authorization inspections. It provides more detail about how the inspection will be conducted, what information to have available, and a very short list of specific things that inspectors will be looking for.

Helpful, but…

I’m glad to see that ISCD is reaching out to help facilities through this critical portion of the SSP approval process. I don’t think, however, that either of these documents is going to provide significant assistance to the facility security team.

I’m disappointed, because I have had some interesting conversations with a number of Chemical Security Inspectors over the last couple of years and they have almost universally indicated that they have documents that they share with facilities that have been prepared by other facilities (with permission of the authors I have been vigorously assured) that provide much more detailed information about the inspection process and outline security procedures that have already been approved by DHS at other facilities.

Now I understand that ISCD has been forbidden by Congress from providing that kind of detailed guidance as to what constitutes an ‘approved practice’, but surely there is some level of detail greater than that provided in these documents that would provide actionable information without transgressing the mandate boundary.

BTW: I am sure that I have seen earlier versions of these documents before, but I can’t find them in my files. Today’s publication is not the first time that ISCD has attempted to reach out to covered facilities to try to make the authorization process easier.

NOTE to Webmaster: If you are not going to provide back copies of all of the CFATS Update fact sheets in the document center of the CFATS Knowledge Center, you might as well not list any of them. It would make the list shorter and easier to manage.