DHS Announces CIPAC Meeting – 11-5-13

The DHS National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) published a meeting notice in today’s Federal Register (78 FR 57644) for a meeting of the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC) in Washington, DC on November 5^th, 2013. The meeting will be open to the public.

The notice provides only a very sketchy agenda, noting that CIPAC topics will include:

• Executive Order for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity;

• Presidential Policy Directive 21—Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience; and

• Critical Infrastructure Program Updates

Public participation is being solicited by DHS. There will be a limited period for oral comments from the public at the end of the meeting. Such comments will be limited to matters involving critical infrastructure security and resiliency. The limited comment time will require first come first serve registration at the meeting site. Written comments will be accepted and should be received by CIPAC by September 24^th. Written comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # DHS-2103-0050).

BTW: Once again DHS fails to provide web coverage of a public advisory committee meeting.

DHS Announces CIPAC Meeting

Today DHS announced in the Federal Register (77 FR 59203-59204) that the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council would be holding a public meeting on October 3^rd, 2012 in Washington, D.C. CIPAC represents a partnership between the Federal Government and critical infrastructure owners and operators and provides a forum in which they can engage in a broad spectrum of activities to support and coordinate critical infrastructure protection.

Agenda

This meeting will focus on efforts to enhance critical infrastructure resiliency. Topics will include:

• Physical and Cyber Critical Infrastructure Protection;

• Industrial Control Systems Security;

• Opportunities in Mitigating Aging U.S Infrastructure;

• Social Media's Role in Critical Infrastructure; and

• Critical Infrastructure Program Updates

It is interesting to see that ICS security is receiving special mention as a topic separate from cybersecurity. This is extremely unusual for a general topic advisory panel such as this. Since this is an open forum I wouldn’t expect that there will be anything new mentioned on threat information, but it will be interesting to see how industry representatives approach this topic in this venue.

Public Participation

The public is invited to observe the Council’s deliberations. Advance registration to attend is not required; there will be registration at the door. Public oral comments on the topics above will be limited to a 30 minute public comment period at the end of the meeting, with each speaker being limited to 3 minutes. Speaker order will be determined by registration sequence.

Apparently there are no provisions being made to web cast this meeting; DHS certainly needs to work on this area of their information sharing. Opening the CIPAC meetings to a wider audience would do much to alleviate publicly expressed concerns about this panel being a method of giving special interests (industry) private access to DHS>

Written comments on the topics may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # DHS-2012-0051).

CIPAC Meeting 10-13-10

The National Protection and Programs Directorate of DHS published a notice in today’s Federal Register announcing that the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC) will be holding a meeting on October 13th in Bethesda, MD. CIPAC represents a partnership between the Federal Government and critical infrastructure owners and operators and provides a forum in which they can engage in a broad spectrum of activities to support and coordinate critical infrastructure protection.

This public meeting will include a panel discussion regarding “Regionalization and Resilience and Information Sharing”. While the meeting is open to the public, participation in the discussion is limited to Committee members and invitees.

DHS Renews CIPAC Charter

Earlier this week DHS published a notice in the Federal Register announcing that the Secretary had renewed the charter of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Advisory Council. The CIPAC aids the coordination between government officials at the federal, state, and local levels and the private-sector owner-operators of critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) identified in the National Infrastructure Protection Program. CIPAC was originally chartered in 2006. Because “of the sensitive nature of the subject matter involved in the CIPAC's activities” (CIPAC Charter, pg 1) the Secretary has exempted the Council from the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (PL 92-463). This means that most of the CIPAC meetings are not open to public participation or observation. Past meeting agendas are archived and accessible from the CIPAC web page The CIPAC Charter renewal notice also includes information on how the public can find out the membership of each of the 18 CIKR Committees (Council Members). Additionally, the notice outlines how the recently formed State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Government Coordinating Council has been represented in CIPAC.