CFATS Knowledge Center Update 12-31-13

Yesterday the folks at DHS Infrastructure Security Compliance Division (ISCD) updated the response to one of their Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on the CFATS Knowledge Center page. There is no mention of the change in the Latest News section of the page, but given the type of update made, that is probably reasonable.

FAQ # 1281 (originally published in January 2008) asks: “What are the requirements to be a reviewer?” and the answer provides a link to the CSAT Users Registration Manual. The revision to the response simply corrects a bad link to that manual. The earlier link (actually - https://csat.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/,danaINFO=www.dhs.gov+chemsec_csatuserregismanual.pdf#page=39) took one to a virtual extranet log-in screen, not the manual. The new link is actually what is printed on the page and it does take you directly to the manual. 

This error dates back to at least November 2010.

DHS Updates CSAT Registration Manual

Yesterday the folks at the DHS Infrastructure Security Compliance Division (ISCD) updated their web page for the CSAT registration process. The description for the CSAT User Registration User Guide changed from “(PDF, 31 pages - 2.22 MB)” to “(PDF, 31 pages - 1.4 MB)”; this indicated a change in that manual. Sure enough, the link now takes you to version 5.1 of the manual dated October 2011.

As you would expect from a change in version numbers from ‘5.0’ to ‘5.1’ the change in the manual is rather small. On page 17 of the manual (page 14 on the .PDF viewer page number; I hate it when document preparers don’t take the effort to link actual document page numbers to .PDF page numbers) the new version removes the following language from the end of paragraph 3 in the discussion about verifying facility location on the Google Maps web site.

“Google Maps converts the decimal representation of the latitude and longitude coordinates to degrees, minutes, and seconds; the decimal representation is shown in the Search Box. Do NOT change the latitude and longitude coordinates to decimal representation in the Facility Information box in the CSAT User Registration application.”

I would assume that this means that it doesn’t make a hill of beans difference if you use the ‘decimal’ or the conventional (old style) representation of the facility latitude and longitude. Since they are both methods of expressing the same information, I should hope that the folks at ISCD should be able to convert back and forth between them. Or, rather, they should be able to use the Google Map function that does the same.

BTW: ISCD is still refusing to provide management of change documentation on their manuals. I had to do a line-by-line comparison of the two manuals to find this change. There used to be a management of change blurb at the beginning of these CSAT manuals describing the changes in versions of the manuals. It was a GIANT DECREASE in department professionalism when the practice was discontinued.

ISCD Updates CSAT Registration Manual

I was doing my daily click-around the DHS Chemical Security web site today and clicked on the link to the Register to Access CSAT page, a page that I don’t look at very often. To my surprise it was updated last week to reflect a link to a new version (June 2011) of the CSAT User Registration User Guide.

No Other References on ISCD Web Pages

There is no indication on the Chemical Security Assessment Tool page that there was a change to the registration manual; it still shows a July 208 date for the manual in the Key Documents section of the page (though the link does go to the new manual).

There is no indication on the CFATS Knowledge Center page that there has been a change in this manual. If you click on the ‘User Registration’ button on the page the link in that page’s ‘Related Documentation’ section to the User Guide takes you to the new manual, but none of the FAQ’s listed on the page have been updated to reflect the new manual. Alert readers might remember a brief note in my blog from August 20^th that discusses a minor change to FAQ #1544 that addressed registration issues, but it had nothing to do with the new manual.

As I noted in that blog, the registration manual is probably one of the least used manuals today as most facilities are already registered. A new facility would find this new manual in the normal course of things from any of the above sites and they would not need to know that it is a new manual. Already registered facilities will have little use for this manual. Experienced consultants who are working with new clients getting them ready to register should certainly review the new manual, however.

New Manual

There is no management of change documentation in this version of the manual, so it is difficult to determine what changes were made in Version 5. I don’t have a copy of the old manual with me to compare against and I don’t see anything obvious. Once I’ve had a chance to do a detailed comparison I’ll let my readers know here.