PHMSA Publishes 11 60-Day ICR Renewals

Today the DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) published a 60-day information collection request (ICR) renewal notice in the Federal Register (82 FR 18828-18831) for eleven separate existing ICRs. While the limited information provided in this notice would seem to indicate that there are no changes from the currently approved versions of these ICR, there is something odd going on with one of the ICRs.

The eleven ICRs are listed in the table below. The link in the title of the ICR is to its appearance in this notice and the link in the RIN is to the currently approved ICR.

Title	RIN
Hazardous Materials Security Plans	2137-0612
Rulemaking, Special Permits, and Preemption Requirements	2137-0051
Requirements for United Nations (UN) Cylinders	2137-0621
Response Plans for Shipments of Oil	2137-0591
Cargo Tank Specification Requirements	2137-0014
Container Certification Statements	2137-0582
Testing Requirements for Non-Bulk Packaging	2137-0572
Testing, Inspection, and Marking Requirements for Cylinders	2137-0022
Flammable Cryogenic Liquids	2137-0542
Approval for Hazardous Materials	2137-0557
Rail Carrier and Tank Car Tanks Requirements, Rail Tank Car Tanks—Transportation of Hazardous Materials by Rail	2137-0559

The odd thing about the Approval for Hazardous Material ICR is that earlier this month PHMSA submitted an ICR revision request to OIRA for the ICR. That ICR revision was to support a final rule published by PHMSA on March 30^th, 2017. That rulemaking simply reports that there are expected to be an additional 3,600 responses and an increase of 1,800 hours in the burden required by this new rule. A more detailed accounting of that change can be found in the supporting document [.DOC download] that was sent to OIRA earlier this month.

What seems likely is that whomever was responsible for crafting this ICR notice for PHMSA just copied the previous 60-day ICR notice submitted three years ago, made some cosmetic changes for dates and then submitted the revised document to OIRA. And I suspect that too many ICR renewals suffer the same problem; someone just going through the motions. It makes a mockery of the requirement for agencies to submit, and OMB approve, these ICRs to ensure that the regulated public is not unnecessarily burdened by the data collection demands of the Federal government.

At the very least, PHMSA needs to stop this ICR renewal and publish a new 60-day ICR notice without including the Approval for Hazardous Material ICR.

PHMSA is soliciting public comments on this ICR notice. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; PHMSA-2017-0018) I will be submitting a copy of this post as a comment.

FAA Publishes Drone ICR Renewal 60-day Notice

Today the DOT’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) published an 60-day information collection request renewal (ICR) notice in the Federal Register (81 FR 10702) to support their registration requirements for small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS). The original ICR was approved on an emergency basis for 6 months when the sUAS interim final rule was published in December, 2015.

The table below shows the burden data in today’s ICR notice and the burden numbers from the currently approved ICR. There is no explanation in today’s notice for the discrepancy between the two sets of numbers.

	Initial ICR	Renewal
Responses	3,793,666	1,900,000
Burden Hours	234,950	141,158

It is not unusual for there to be a discrepancy between an initial ICR and the first renewal. The agency has to rely on estimates for the initial ICR and can refine those numbers from actual data collected once the information collection is in place. The discrepancy noted above is just a tad bit larger than one would typically expect to see.

News reports indicate that the FAA had had about 320,000 registrations early in February, or just about two months into their registration program. Using six times that figure to get an annual number would give just about the 1.9M that is provided in the renewal notice. If that is the basis for the FAA estimates, they need to explain why the initial registration numbers are so much lower than their earlier estimates of the number of sUAS flying before the rule went into effect. That does not even include the ‘millions’ that were expected to be sold during the Christmas holidays and were used as a major part of the justification for issuing an interim final rule without providing for a publish-comment period first.

I suspect that the FAA has a severe compliance issue with this new registration requirement. Since they do not really have an enforcement force that is large enough to go out and look for unregistered drone operators (particularly in the model/hobbyist category), I do not see any real way that the agency can solve that without throwing a bunch of people in a federal penitentiary for failure to register their quadcopters. And I don’t see any Federal prosecutor taking such cases to court unless there is another underlying issue that would make a federal jail sentence reasonable to a jury.

I was taught early and frequently as a Non-Commissioned Officer in the US Army not to give an order that I knew would be disobeyed. It generally reduces respect for authority and specifically undercuts the authority of the person giving the essentially unenforceable order. It is too late for the FAA to learn that lesson now as they now have no reasonable method for removing an regulation that they justified as needing emergency approval. Perhaps Congress can come to their aid and legislatively demand that they revoke the registration order. Fortunately, a large number of the early registrants (myself included) have already had our registration fee refunded.

FRA Publishes Bakken Notification ICR Renewal 60-day Notice

The DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) published a 60-day information collection request renewal (ICR) notice in Monday’s Federal Register (80 FR 63272-63275, available on line Saturday) to extend the current ICR (2130-0604) that requires railroads to notify State Emergency Response Commissions (SERCs) about trains carrying 1 million gallons or more

of Bakken crude oil travel. The currently ICR was approved in July to continue through March 31^st, 2016.

The SERC ICR

According to the latest notice:

“FRA is now requesting to continue these information collection activities until the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) finalizes the Oil Spill Response Proposed Rule that it is currently working on and that will codify the requirements of the Secretary's Emergency Order.”

In the earlier ICR renewal FRA made a similar request for a three year extension of the emergency ICR that was approved to support the Department’s Emergency Order requiring the SERC notification. In approving the extension, the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) only approved it through March 31^st, 2016; noting that:

“Per the joint PHMSA-FRA HHFT final rule (RIN 2137-AE91), the information collection requirements in the May 7, 2014 emergency order remain in effect until March 31, 2016. OMB is therefore approving this collection until that date. FRA may submit a request to continue this collection after soliciting public comment per the PRA's requirements. PHMSA will address the information collection requirements in the HHFT final rule in a subsequent ICR(s).”

The reason that the public comments for the earlier ICR renewal did not count towards this requirement was that those public comments were requested well before the HHFT final rule was published and it was assumed that the HHFT would address the industry concerns about the information being reported to the SERCs.

Other ICRs

The Federal Register Notice also includes two other FRA ICR renewals. They are:

2130-0614 Ballast Defects and Conditions-Importance of Identification and Repair in Preventing Development of Unsafe Combinations of Track Conditions; and

2130-0529 Disqualification Proceedings

The first is a renewal request for an ICR that was approved last month as an emergency ICR supporting FRA Safety Advisory, 2015-04, Ballast Defects and Conditions. FRA is requesting a standard three year renewal of the ICR.

The second is a long standing (first approved in 1992) ICR supporting FRA actions to issue orders disqualifying railroad employees, including supervisors, managers, and other agents, from performing safety-sensitive service in the rail industry for violations of safety rules, regulations, standards, orders, or laws evidencing unfitness.

Public Comments

The FRA is soliciting public comments on these three ICR renewals. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # 2015-0007-N-26). Comments should be submitted by December 18^th, 2015.

Commentary

The abstract supporting the SERC notification ICR uses almost word for word the information provided in the request for the emergency ICR in May of 2014. It does not reflect any new information since that ICR was approved or since the ICR was renewed in July.

It does not take into account the emergency notification requirements set out in the PHMSA-FRA Highly Hazardous Flammable Train final rule that was published last spring. The preamble to that rule contains a lengthy discussion about the most appropriate way for railroads to notify local emergency response planners about the HHFT routes. The conclusion in that rule was that the existing requirement in 49 CFR 172.820(g) were the most appropriate way to proceed.

The other important consideration from the HHFT rule is the change in information protection status of much of the routing information. The addition of HHFT to the other highly hazardous chemicals requiring specific route selection criteria under §172.820(c). Including HHFT trains in route selection program requires that much of the information included in that route selection process {including the final route; §172.820(e)} must be treated as Sensitive Security Information (SSI; 49 CFR 1520).

Because of the conflicts between railroads, SERCs and much of the emergency response community about the distribution of information provided by the railroads to SERCs under the emergency order, the ICR notice should have provided some mention of the SSI status of the information to be provided to the SERCs and the effect that status would have on the redistribution of that information by the SERCs.

It is true that such issues are not normally addressed in ICR notices. But it was clearly the intent of OIRA when they approved just the short extension of the ICR in July that they expected to see a full public discussion of the important issues that surround this ICR. The FRA did a disservice to the public and the regulated community when it chose to ignore these two important considerations in the preamble to the ICR.

The failure to set forth the FRA’s outlook on these two topics means that they have lost any control over that discussion. The inevitable plethora of responses will inevitably delay the preparation of the 30-day notice. The FRA responses to the comments in 30-day notice will ensure that there will be many comments made to OIRA by the industry and affected communities. Those comments will delay the OIRA consideration of the ICR renewal, probably beyond the publication of the new PHMSA emergency response rule that is supposed to ‘resolve’ the controversy around the route reporting requirements.

And that is the final problem with this ICR. The emergency response and reporting requirements are a function of hazardous material safety not railroad operation. PHMSA will be the agency that establishes the final rule for these requirements, not the FRA. That was the second point made by OIRA when they made their short approval of the ICR renewal. And FRA failed to make any arguments that countered that in this ICR notice. If FRA is working with PHMSA on this ICR then that should have been mentioned in the notice.

The FRA should withdraw this 60-day ICR notice and submit one that appropriately addresses all of the issues that affect approving the extension of this collection beyond March 31^st, 2016. Anything less makes a ludicrous joke of the ICR approval process.

NOTE: A copy of this blog post was submitted as a comment to the Docket on this ICR on 10-25-15 at 11:30 CDT.

OMB Approves Extension of Bakken Train Notification ICR

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had approved the extension of DOT’s information collection request supporting the Secretary’s May 7^th, 2014 Emergency Order concerning notification requirements for trains carrying one million gallons of Bakken crude oil. The Department had asked for a three year extension of the ICR, but OIRA only approved the extension until March 31, 2016.

The ICR extension made some minor changes to the expected annual burden estimates (increased the number of responses by 10 and decreased the hours burden by 5). The reasons for the changed estimate are explained in paragraph 15 of the supporting document [.DOC download] provided to OIRA.

EO and HHFT Reporting Requirements

The reporting requirements in the EO are substantially different than the notification requirements in the new HHFT final rule published earlier this year. The EO requires railroads to notify State Emergency Response Committees (SERCs) of routing information for any train carrying 1 million gallons of crude oil that originated in the Bakken basin.

The HHFT final rule superseded this requirement (as of April 1, 2016) by adding the any HHFT train to the list requiring the additional route planning requirements of 49 CFR 172.820. That regulation requires sort of a backdoor notification to affected Fusion Centers and local officials “who directly contact the railroad to discuss routing decisions” {§172.820(g)}. That reporting requirement is to simply provide a point of contact information for the railroads for HHFT routing information.

The detailed discussion in the HHFT final rule preamble makes it clear that one of the main reasons that DOT did not continue the requirement to report this data to the SERTs was their concern that some states had released the information under local open records requirements to anyone that requested the information. Using the notification process under §172.820 would restrict the release any routing information to persons with a need to know under the Sensitive Security Information provisions of 49 CFR 15 and 49 CFR 1520.

The DOT Secretary continued the current EO reporting requirements until March 31, 2016 because the full reporting requirements under the provisions of the HHFT rule do not start until April 1^st, 2016, after railroads have a chance to complete their initial route analysis for HHFT shipments.

Emergency Response Information

Neither of these documents really provides emergency response information to communities. The EO did require direct contact between the railroad hauling unit trains of Baaken crude oil, but there was little or no mention of actual emergency response information. This is addressed in the ICR submitted to OIRA. DOT reported that “PHMSA is now working on a new Oil Spill Response Proposed Rule that will codify the requirements of the Secretary's EO”.

PHMSA published the advance notice of proposed rulemaking for that rule last summer with no solid indication of when an NPRM will be published. There are two bills in the Senate (S 859 and S 1626) and possibly another (S 1732) that could have an impact on this rulemaking activity. In any case, it is clear that a new regulation will not be in place by the time that the current EO expires.

OMB Approves TSA EXIS ICR

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had approved the renewal an information collection request (ICR) from TSA for their Exercise Information System (EXIS) program. I briefly discussed the ICR last year and the EXIS program back in 2011. There is not much else publicly available on the system beyond its remarkably uninformative web site.

Earlier I commented about the change in the collection burden for this ICR renewal. I was correct that the large decrease in current responses is due to an overly energetic estimate of participants in the original ICR. As I noted earlier the current EXIS base of participants is 364 instead of the 10,000 originally estimated.

I questioned the planned increase in user numbers provided by TSA in the 60 day ICR notice since the increase was only vague explained. The OIRA web site provides a link to the supporting documentation provided by TSA which provides a fuller explanation. First TSA expects the previous year’s organic growth of 67% to continue on in future years; that’s probably not sustainable, but it is a legitimate basis for estimation.

There is also a little bit better explanation of the TSA outreach program that forms the basis for the bulk of the projected annual increase in EXIS users. It seems that TSA holds an ‘outreach event’ once every three years for each of the modes in the transportation security sector. TSA expects that 1% of the participants at each event will sign up for EXIS participation. That doesn’t seem unreasonable until you note that TSA figures assume that every transportation organization in the country will be represented in the appropriate outreach event. I really doubt that each of the 1,075,000 highway sector organizations will make it to any given event.

Oh well, I suppose it is better for TSA to over-estimate the burden associated with the ICR than to underestimate it. Unless, of course, TSA is using the numbers from this OMB approved ICR to justify funding requests. I’m not saying that that is happening, but it would certainly be a ‘good’ reason for being so generous with project growth estimates.

NOTE: If any reader has used EXIS to plan an exercise or participated in an EXIS planned exercise, I would certainly like to hear about the experience. This sounds like a useful program, but only if it actually delivers on the promises made.

OMB Approves CSAT ICR Renewal

On Friday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had approved the DHS information collection request (ICR) for the on-line Chemical Security Assessment Tool (CSAT) that is used to collect program information from facilities affected by the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism (CFATS) program. The 30-day ICR notice for this collection was published back in March, 2013.

This announcement provides links to the supporting documents for this ICR. It provides a link to the American Chemistry Council comment [.PDF download link] that was responsible for the changes to the method of calculating the burden estimate for the SSP Tool. While DHS did modify their burden estimate, it seems clear to me that there is still some level of disagreement about how they calculate the hours of support activity that goes into the SSP documentation. 

While this disagreement is not fully explained in the ICR documentation I suspect that it relates to how much of the time that the ACC is claiming for SSP burden is used for preparing the SSP data submission and how much is for the preparation of the SSP. It would be helpful if the folks at the DHS Infrastructure Security Compliance Division (ISCD) would explain this distinction.

NOTE: The other two CFATS ICR’s (CVI and CFATS) that were submitted at the same time as this were approved on September 30^th. I did not report them here as they were both submitted as renewals without revision. The length of time necessary for the approval of these ICR’s is almost certainly a measure of the political problems that the CFATS program has been facing in Congress. It is apparent that these have been approved now as a result of the apparent change in the support for HR 4007 in the Senate. We still have one CFATS ICR outstanding and that is the one for the CFATS Personnel Surety Program; due to congressional (read industry in this case) opposition to the way ISCD has structured that program the ICR will not be approved.

FRA Publishes Crude EO 30 Day ICR Notice

Today the DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) published a 30-day information collection request (ICR) notice in the Federal Register (79 FR 59891-59893) to extend the current emergency ICR that supports the crude oil train routing reporting requirements of the most recent FRA emergency order regarding crude oil trains.

The bulk of this notice is a response to the single public comment that was submitted directly to the FRA as a result of the 60-day notice on this ICR renewal. That comment was jointly submitted by the Association of American Railroads (AAR) and the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association (ASLRRA). The FRA is apparently going to ignore the three public comments submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal. Admittedly those comments are more about crude train hazards than about the actual ICR and thus probably don’t require specific comments.

The railroad comment reportedly objected to the SERC reporting requirements of the emergency order on three grounds:

• The routing information is sensitive information on a security basis and thus should be protected from subsequent disclosure;

• The routing information is sensitive information on a commercial competitive information basis and thus should be protected from subsequent disclosure; and

• The reporting requirement is duplicative of voluntary industry standard disclosure and thus un-necessary.

FRA dismisses the security sensitive claim by noting that the information does not fall under any of the fifteen enumerated categories of sensitive security information (SSI) set forth in 49 CFR §15.5 or §1520.5. It is interesting, going back and closely reading those categories of information that there is only one specific reference to rail transportation security and it would not appear to apply in this instance;

“(8) Security Measures. Specific details of aviation, maritime, or rail transportation security measures, both operational and technical, whether applied directly by the Federal government or another person”

There is another DOT regulation that makes railroad hazmat route information SSI. Section 172.820(i)(2) [.PDF Download] specifically applies SSI rules to such routing information for selected hazardous material shipments; toxic inhalation hazard railcars, for instance. Crude oil railcars are not currently included in this category. Interestingly the PHMSA High Hazard Flammable Trains NPMR would modify §172.802(a) to include trains carrying 20 car loads of flammable liquids. This would place the routes for crude oil trains of 100 cars clearly under the SSI requirements.

The sixteenth category (Secretarial discretion for either DOT or DHS) in both of the SSI rules is dealt with by noting that “DOT finds no basis to conclude that the public disclosure of the information is detrimental to transportation safety”. Given the fact that DOT has a rulemaking in progress that that specifies that these train routes require SSI protection, the decision by the Secretary not to designate this material as SSI requires some serious reconsideration either in this ICR or in the proposed changes in the NPMR.

The FRA response on the business confidentiality issue is also interesting. Their claim is that since the disclosures are made to State agencies not the Federal government, then State disclosure laws apply and it is out of the hands of DOT. This is the reason that most rules requiring sensitive information disclosure to State and local government agencies specifically spell out that the disclosures are exempt from State and local government disclosure laws.

Finally, the FRA notes that voluntary disclosures are all well and good, but they are voluntary and may fall short of the requirements of the emergency order without penalty. Placing the requirements in the emergency order provides DOT with a way to enforce the requirement.

FRA is soliciting public comments on this 30-day ICR notice. Comments should be sent directly to the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. They may be sent by email (oira_submissions@omb.eop.gov). Comments should arrive by November 3^rd, 2014.

CG Publishes Hazmat Permit 60-day ICR Notice

The Coast Guard published a 60-day information collection request (ICR) notice in today’s Federal Register (79 FR 33572-33573) for their “Application and Permit to Handle Hazardous Materials” under 33 CFR 126.17 (facilities) and 49 CFR 176.415 (vessels).

The notice provides little information on proposed changes in the ICR beyond noting that the burden estimate is being reduced “from 205 hours to 182 hours a year due to a decrease in the estimated number of responses”. Based upon the detailed explanation [Word® Download Link] provided in the last submission of this ICR; I would assume that this means that only 58 entities were expected to file an average of 2.5 permit requests each year.

Public comment on this ICR is being solicited by the Coast Guard. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # USCG-2014-0154). Such comments should be submitted by August 11^th, 2014.

TSA Publishes Pipeline Security 60-Day ICR Notice

Today the DHS Transportation Security Administration (TSA) published a 60-day information collection request (ICR) renewal notice in the Federal Register (79 FR 27631-27632) for their Critical Facility Information of the Top 100 Most Critical Pipelines program. This ICR (1652-0050) was last renewed in February 2012 and expires February 2015.

TSA is making a revision to the number of expected responses from industry covered by this ICR and reduces the estimate time burden associated with collection of information. A summary of that change is provided in the Table below.

	Current	Proposed
Responses	359	180
Time Burden (hours)	1633	810
Cost Burden ($)	0	0

Table: Change in Burden Estimate

Part of the change in burden estimate is apparently driven by the fact that TSA is no longer collecting information used to establish the Pipeline System Critical Facility List. There is no indication in the ICR as to why TSA believes that this information will not require some sort of periodic updating to reflect changes in the pipeline infrastructure in this country.

Another change is that TSA is reducing the number of Critical Facility Security Reviews conducted each year from 120 to 90. These CFSRs are conducted via on-site visits and use a check list; the Pipeline Security Critical Facility Review (WORD® Download) form. According to the supporting document (WORD® Download) submitted with the last ICR renewal only 24 of the 120 visits would be conducted by TSA personnel (Q-14, pg 5) with the remainder being conducted by contractors. There was no explanation given in the earlier ICR documents why there were 120 annual visits to the ‘Top 100 100 Most Critical Pipelines’ nor is there an explanation in this ICR renewal notice as to why this is being reduced to 90.

The final change is that TSA is reducing the number of expected follow-up email questionnaires to check up on the implementation of recommended practices. The earlier ICR documentation indicates 197 annual follow up emails (for 120 visits) while this notice indicates that only 90 such email follow-ups will be conducted going forward. This may reflect TSA experience that only one follow-up is necessary as this follow-up procedure was just established as part of the last revision of this ICR.

NOTE: TSA reports that they do not estimate a cost to industry beyond their hour burden estimate. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon.

OMB Approves ICR Renewal for FRA EO 28

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs announced that it had approved the regular renewal of the information collection request (ICR) supporting the FRA’s Emergency Order # 28 (EO 28), the safety rules the FRA put into place after the crude oil train derailment, fire and explosions in Canada last summer.

The original ICR for EO 28 was a six-month emergency ICR granted by OIRA shortly after EO 28 was published. The table below shows the change in the burden estimates for the renewed ICR.

	Original ICR	Renewed ICR
Burden Responses	23,511,355	23,480,082
Burden Hours	1,981,133	205,404
Burden Cost	$ 0	$ 0

Part of the reduction in the burden estimate is due to the one time requirements in the EO that have already been taken care of. For example the EO requires railroads to establish a plan that identifies specific locations and circumstances when covered trains or vehicles may be left unattended; it is expected that railroads will have already established such plans so only a limited number of periodic revisions will be required.

The largest single reduction in the burden estimate comes from a change in the estimated time required to conduct train securement job briefings. The original ICR estimated that it would take 5-minutes for each briefing and the new estimate changes that to 30-seconds. The ICR supporting document (download link) does not explain the change in time, but I suspect that it is due to the fact that these briefings have been conducted numerous times with each employee so they are now recaps instead of full briefings. This specific change reduces the time burden from 1,950,000 hours to 195,000 hours.

As is typical for DOT agencies, there are not cost estimates included in the ICR or its justification.

EPA Publishes TRI 60-day ICR Notice

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is publishing a 60-day information collection request (ICR) renewal notice in Monday’s Federal Register (79 FR 11783-11787; available on line today) for their Toxic Release Inventory program. The ICR covers the forms that covered facilities are required to use to report information under 42 USC 11023 and 42 USC 13106.

ICR Data

The ICR covers the use of 2 forms; TRI Form R with Schedule 1 and Form A 5-5-2011. The currently approved burden estimate and the new burden being submitted in this ICR are shown in the table below. This ICR notice shows a slight increase in the burden imposed by this collection.

OMB Control No: 2025-0009	Current ICR	Proposed ICR
Responses	73,727	74,869
Time Burden	3,522,736	3,555,998
Cost Burden	$0	$183,418,377

The cost burden is obviously not increasing from $0 to $183 Million. The OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is apparently on-again off-again about how it reports ICR cost burdens. The OIRA web page for the current ICR shows no cost burden, a blatant misrepresentation of facts.

Burden Change

The ICR notes that there are a number of factors that go into their increase in estimated burden associated with this ICR. Those include:

• Change in reporting requirements for hydrogen sulfide;

• Addition of o-nitrotoluene reporting requirements; and

• A slight increase in the number of reporting facilities.

Form Changes

The notice also reports that the EPA is making some changes to the reporting forms, but does not expect that these changes will materially change the time burden in completing the submissions. Those changes include:

• Add an optional extension to all phone numbers;

• Add an optional field to allow facilities to indicate the section of a water body that received the surface water discharge; and

• EPA proposes rewording the heading titles for 5.4.1 and 5.4.2.

Public Input

As required by 44 USC 3506(c)(2) the EPA is soliciting public comments on this ICR renewal. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket #EPA-HQ-OEI-2013-0803). Comments should be submitted by May 2^nd, 2014.

Commentary

I must say that this is the most complete and informative ICR (other than the PSP ICR for CFATS which is in an entirely different category) notice that I have seen. In my opinion this is the type of information that should be included in an ICR notice every time that there is any change in the underlying collection. The EPA is to be commended for their exemplary efforts in preparing this document.

DHS Publishes CyberFETCH 30-day ICR Notice

Today the DHS S&T Directorate published another sloppy information collection request (ICR) notice in the Federal Register (78 FR 66949). This ICR renewal supports the relatively new (2011) CyberFETCH Program. CyberFETCH is a collaborative environment for cyber-forensics practitioners from law enforcement, private sector and academia.

Editorial Errors

Once again the S&T notice includes a wrong Docket #. The Docket # provided (DHS-2013-0021) is for a Customs and Border Patrol program (019 Air and Marine Operations Surveillance System (AMOSS) System of Records). The correct Docket # is DHS–2013–0047. The notice does not include the OMB Control # for the currently approved ICR (1640-0017), nor does it include a reference to the Federal Register page number for the 60-day ICR notice.

Oh, and this ICR renewal was already sent to OMB on September 30^th. That submission says that the 30-day notice was published in the Federal Register on the same day as the 60-day notice.

Now none of these errors go to the substance of the ICR or the CyberFETCH program, but they do indicate a high degree of bureaucratic ineptitude. Some will argue that that is not necessarily a bad thing in a technology organization, but it certainly reflects poorly on the management skills in the Directorate.

The Collection Burden

This notice and the earlier 60-day notice report no changes in the burden estimates for the program. This seems a little bit odd since the currently approved ICR was prepared before the site was established and was a reasonable attempt to estimate the level of participation. Additionally, since this ICR is for the Registration Form, I would think that the rate of new registrations would start to fall off unless there was a new push to get people to participate.

In any case S&T estimates that there will be 1000 new registrants to the program every year for the next three years. It will take 15 minutes to fill out the registration form (it isn’t that complicated) for an estimated annual burden of 250 hours. This is certainly not an unreasonable burden for the potential information sharing and expansion that this program may engender.

The CyberFETCH Potential

I generally think that having a semi-secure environment were cybersecurity professionals can share information on cyber-forensics is certainly a good idea. Since the CyberFETCH activities go on behind semi-closed doors and I am not a member (since I am certainly not a cyber forensics practitioner) I am not able to report on how well this site is serving its intended purpose. I do hope that it includes some active discussions and information sharing on control system forensics as this is an area that needs whatever help it can get.

Problems with DHS S&T ICR Publication

The DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) published a 30-day information collection request (ICR) notice in Monday’s Federal Register (78 FR 66036; available on-line today) for a renewal of the authority to collect registration information for its First Responders Community of Practice Program (FRCoP) web site. This notice will almost certainly have to be re-done due to a number of inaccuracies included in the information.

Previous Problems

DHS S&T has a history of problems with this ICR (1640-0016). A renewal submission for the program had to be withdrawn for undisclosed reasons last year. A subsequent renewal submission was approved for only 9 months with the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs noting:

“If DHS submits a renewal of this collection, it should include a report with the following information: • How the First Responders Community of Practice is being used. Has the intended audience been reached? • An analysis by DHS of the practical utility of the collection. • An analysis by DHS of other similar platforms currently in use by first responders.”

Current Submission Problems

There are a number of problems with the current submission:

• Incorrect docket number;

• No reference to the 60-day Notice;

• Incorrect date of expiration of current ICR; and

• Does not include the information required by OIRA in previous approval

The middle two problems are technical issues that could probably be overlooked by OMB in the approval process. Since very few people actually read these ICR notices (and almost certainly none of the members of the FRCoP) there is no practical reason that OMB should reject this ICR based solely on those two deficiencies.

The first problem is a tad bit more problematic. The published docket number (DHS-2013-0028)

is for the renewal of the charter for the Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee. Any comments on this ICR posted to that docket would never be seen by OIRA in their consideration of this ICR renewal. That probably would not be a practical problem since there will likely be no comments posted on this ICR (other than a copy of this blog and I will post it to the correct docket, DHS-2012-0013).

The final problem listed is the most serious deficiency. Without this information OIRA would most probably fail to renew this ICR. I suspect that S&T intended to supply this information to OIRA in the documents that are actually submitted (including a copy of the registration form) that are normally not shown to the public. I think, however, that this information should be included in this public announcement for the renewal of this ICR so that there would be an opportunity for the affected community to weigh in on the utility and efficacy of this community of practice.

The FRCoP

What is missing from this discussion is the benefit of the this program. DHS S&T notes that this congressionally mandated program {Section 313 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (PL 107-296); 6 USC 193}. That is a tad bit of an exaggeration since that section does not specifically mention anything about a ‘Community of Practice’. It is just a general section dealing with the S&T provision of a technology information clearing house.

Having said that it appears that the FRCoP is a beneficial program. If it is signing up 2,000 new folks per year (according to the ICR notice), it would seem to be filling some sort of need in the emergency response community. Since I am not a member I cannot make a judgement on the level of communication and information sharing within the site, but that is the sort of information that OIRA was requesting from S&T.

It would be very worthwhile if members of the FRCoP were to weigh in on this discussion, either here or in comments to OIRA on this ICR.

Public Comments

S&T is soliciting public comments on this ICR. Comments may be submitted through the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # DHS-2012-0013) or via email to DHS S&T (Kathy.Higgins@hq.dhs.gov). Comments need to be submitted by December 4^th, 2013.

I am submitting a copy of this blog post.

Coast Guard Publishes Two ICR Notices

Today the Coast Guard published two information collection request (ICR) notices in the Federal Register. The first (78 FR 65351-65352) was a 60-day ICR notice and the second (78 FR 65349-65351) was a 30-day ICR Notice. The notices covered the following ICRs (the first one is the 60-day ICR notice):

• 1625-0025: Carriage of Bulk Solids Requiring Special Handling

• 1625-0074, Direct User Fees for Inspection or Examination of U.S. and Foreign Commercial Vessels; 

• 1625-0084, Audit Reports under the International Safety Management Code and 

• 1625-0093, Facilities Transferring Oil or Hazardous Materials in Bulk

All of these ICRs are renewals. Only the first and last notices may be of specific interest to readers of this blog.

Bulk Solids ICR

This ICR covers the submission of special permits for the safe carriage for unlisted materials. The only change noted in this ICR request is that the “estimated burden has increased from 745 hours to 955 hours a year due to an increase in the estimated annual number of responses for Special Permits”.

The previous ICR approval shows that the number of responses and the number of hours for the burden are the same. This indicates that the Coast Guard estimates that the average time to complete special permit request is one hour.

Bulk Transfer ICR

This ICR covers the filing of a letter of intent to operate a facility that will transfer bulk oil or hazardous materials to or from vessels and the maintenance of an Operators Manual for such a facility. The Coast Guard notes that the “estimated burden has decreased from 84,247 hours to 45,748 hours a year due to a reduction in the estimated annual number of respondents”.

The previous ICR approval shows 2,667 annual responses for an average burden per response of about 31.6 hours, presumably most of this is for the production and maintenance of Operators Manuals not writing letters of intent. Keeping the same ratio of manuals to letters we can assume that the Coast Guard is only expecting about 1448 responses per year.

Public Response

The Coast Guard is soliciting public responses on the accuracy of its assumptions and the need for these ICRS. The responses to the 60-day notice may be filed via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # USCG-2013-0861) and must be submitted by December 30^th, 2013. The responses to the 30-day notice need to be sent directly to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and may be sent by email (OIRA-submission@omb.eop.gov) by December 2^nd, 2013.

First Responders Community of Practice ICR Renewal – 60-day Notice

Today the DHS Science and Technology Directorate published a 60-day information collection request (ICR) notice in the Federal Register (78 FR 53464) for the renewal of their ICR (1640-0016) supporting their First Responders Community of Practice web site. This limited access web site allows for the exchange of information between registered members of the first responder community.

The previous renewal of this ICR only provided a one-year extension of the ICR. In the previous approval OMB noted that DHS should provide the following information in the next submission to justify the continued collection of the required information:

• How the First Responders Community of Practice is being used.

• Has the intended audience been reached?

• An analysis by DHS of the practical utility of the collection.

• An analysis by DHS of other similar platforms currently in use by first responders.

The requested information has not been provided in this ICR submission. I suspect that, unless the requested information is added to the 30-day submission notice that this ICR will be rejected by OMB. It would have been nice to have that information available for the 60-day public comment period.

NOTE: This submission continues the current practice of not including a cost burden estimate. The previously approved ICR showed an estimated annual cost burden of $50,000 for 2,000 (registration) responses at a half-hour each. This comes out to $50/hour for the value of a first responder’s time. I know that they wish they got paid that much.

NPPD Publishes Three CFATS 30-day ICR Notices

The National Protection and Programs Directorate of DHS is publishing three 30-day information collection request (ICR) renewal notices in Monday’s Federal Register (78 FR 16692-16694, 78 FR 16694-16698, and 78 FR 16698-16699). These are all renewals of existing approved ICRs so it does not include the CFATS Personnel Surety Program ICR that Under Secretary Beers said would be published this coming week.

The ICRs

Most agencies feel free to include separate ICRs for a single program into a single notice, but NPPD separated them into three notices even though most of the administrative verbiage is the same. The three ICRs (with annual number of expected responses, total annual time and cost burden) are:

Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS), OMB Number - 1670-0014 (60-day ICR notice - 77 FR 74677):

• Request for Redetermination – 625 responses, 156.25 hours, $13,437;

• Request for an Extension – 185 responses, 46.25 hours, $3,977;

• Notification of a New Top Screen – 1250 responses, 468.75 hours, $40,312; and

• Request for a Technical Consultation – 185 responses, 69.37 hours, $5,966.

Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) Chemicalterrorism Vulnerability Information (CVI), OMB Number - 1670-0015 (60-day ICR notice - 77 FR 74685):

• Chemical-terrorism Vulnerability Information Authorization – 30,000 respondents, 30,000 hours, $2,580,000;

• Determination of Chemical-terrorism Vulnerability Information (CVI) – 300 respondents, 75 hours, $6,450;

• Determination of a ‘Need to Know’ by a Public Official – 14,200 respondents, 3,550 hours, $305,500;

• Disclosure of Chemical-terrorism Vulnerability Information (CVI) Information – 300 respondents, 75 hours, $6,450;

• Notification of Emergency or Exigent Circumstance – 300 respondents, 75 hours, $6450; and

• Tracking Log for Chemical-terrorism Vulnerability Information (CVI) Received – 30,000 respondents, 30,000 hours, $2,580,000

Chemical Security Assessment Tool (CSAT), OMB Number - 1670-0007 (60-day ICR notice - 77 FR 74678):

• CSAT Top-Screen – 2,500 respondents, 42,500 hours, $3,655,000, revised up;

• Security Vulnerability Assessment – 740 respondents, 65 hours, $6,212,900, revised up;

• Site Security Plan – 486 respondents, 164,100 hours, $15,302,800, revised up;

• CFATS Helpdesk – 15,000 respondents, 2,250 hours, $219,300

• CSAT User Registration – 625 respondents, 1,250 hours, $107,500

• Request for Information to Improve Program – 329 respondents, 122 hours, $10,500

The revision of the three CSAT tools was brought about by a comment on the 60-day notice filed last December. The unnamed commenter took objection to the use of 2 hours of off-line work for every two-hours spent inputting information into the tool, suggesting that it should be more like 25-hours. NPPD conducted further investigations and determined that a more appropriate number would be 4 hours for every hour on-line. The numbers of respondents and hours needed for data input were not changed.

I am very pleased that NPPD continues to include an estimated facility cost for these data collections. I have no way of knowing how accurate the estimates are, but they do give us an idea of how expensive the CFATS program is from an administrative point of view. The total estimated annual cost for all three ICRs is $31,056,542. And remember, these are just the administrative costs, costs that do not produce one iota of security.

Submission to OMB

These three ICR renewal requests will be submitted to OMB in about 30-days. Comments on the renewal requests should be sent to OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs ( oira_submission@omb.eop.gov).

TSA Publishes 30-day ICR Renewal Notice for HME-STA

Today the TSA published a 30-day information collection request (ICR) renewal notice in the Federal Register (78 FR 13367-13368) to support the collection of information from personnel applying for a Hazardous Materials Endorsement to their State Commercial Driver’s License. The TSA uses the collected information to conduct a Security Threat Assessment (STA) required under 49 USC 5103a.

As I noted in my blog post concerning the 60-day notice for this ICR renewal, TSA is forecasting a continuing decline in the number of applications for new and renewed HME. Other than the change in burden hours and cost associated with this declining enrollment, there are no changes being made from the currently approved ICR.

Public comments on this ICR renewal may be submitted to OMB via email (oira_submission@omb.eop.gov). Such comments should be received by March 29^th, 2013.

TSA Publishes 60-day ICR Renewal Notice for Pipeline CSR

Yesterday the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) published a 60-day information collection request (ICR) renewal notice in the Federal Register (78 FR 13075-13076). This ICR supports the TSA Pipeline Corporate Security Review Program.

Pipeline CSR Program

According to yesterday’s notice the Pipeline Corporate Security Review Program is designed to allow the TSA to:

• Develop first-hand knowledge of a pipeline operator's corporate security policies and procedures;

• Establish and maintain working relationships with key pipeline security personnel; and

• Identify and share smart security practices observed at individual facilities to help enhance and improve the security of the pipeline industry.

The TSA inspector conducting the review uses a Pipeline Corporate Security Review form (TSA Form 1604) to both serve as a guide to the discussion about the pipeline security program at that facility/organization and to document the results of the review.

The Original ICR

The original ICR for this program was approved in 2010. It noted that the CSR would involve 12 reviews per year and that each review would take about 8 hours to complete. The ICR reported an expected annual burden cost of $11,076 (@ about $115/hour).

The original 60-day ICR notice noted that there was a potential universe of 2200 organizations at which a CSR could take place. That notice also noted that there would be a follow-up visit at one or two of an organization’s field locations to assess how well the organization was actually implementing their corporate pipeline security plan. That comment was not present in the subsequent 30-day ICR notice nor was there any indication of follow-up visits in the approved ICR.

The current ICR expires on May 31^st, 2013.

Information provided to the TSA in these reviews will be protected under the Sensitive Security

Information (SSI) program in accordance with procedures meeting the transmission, handling, and storage requirements of SSI set forth in 49 CFR parts 15 and 1520.

Updated ICR

The only substantive change in this ICR notice is that TSA is now expecting to conduct 15 CSR’s per year instead of 12. This would increase the burden time to 120 hours per year. The notice does claim that there will be no cost burden to respondents.

Public Comments

TSA is soliciting public comments on this ICR renewal. Comments may be submitted by email (TSAPRA@dhs.gov). Comments must be submitted by April 29^th, 2013.