BIS Sends Marine Toxins List to OMB

Yesterday, the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had received a request for information from the DOC’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) on “Commerce Control List: Proposed Controls on Certain Marine Toxins; Request for Comments”. According to the Fall 2021 Unified Agenda listing for this rulemaking:

“The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is publishing this final rule to amend certain Export Control Classification Numbers (ECCNs) on the Commerce Control List (CCL) to reflect recent updates to the Australia Group (AG) Common Control Lists.”

That direct final rule is ‘forecast’ (Unified Agenda action dates are aspirational at best) to be published in October of this year. So, I would presume that this ‘request for comments’ is an attempt to find potential problem areas before the final rule is published. BIS has run into problems with more than one of their control list rulemakings because of unexpected issues being raised at the last minute because of the direct to final rule process used for implementing international agreements.

OMB Approves 2015 Wassenaar Final Rule

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had approved the Department of Commerce’s direct final rule implementing the Wassenaar Arrangement 2015 Plenary Agreements. This rulemaking was submitted to OIRA on July 29^th.

The Unified Agenda entry for this rulemaking notes that: “Because this year's WA agreements include the total restructuring of Category 5 part 2 [Information Security], BIS is taking this opportunity to also streamline and update license requirements and policies associated with Category 5 part 2 in this rule.”

Note: The current Category 5 part 2 of the US Commerce Control List (CCL) can be found here (.PDF Download) and the new version proposed in the 2015 Plenary Agreement can be found on pages 85 – 90 here (.PDF).

There is no telling when this will be published in the Federal Register. There have been significant delays between the OIRA approval and subsequent publication for a number of rules in the last couple of months. This is probably due to additional political reviews to ensure that rulemakings do not get labeled as midnight rules in the last six months of the Obama administration.