On Thursday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs (OIRA) reported
that it had approved the revised information collection request for the
Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) Transportation
of Hazardous Liquids by Pipeline: Record keeping and Accident Reporting
program. The revision was required because of some changes in the instructions on
the PHMSA
F 7000-1 [.PDF Download] Accident Report – Hazardous Liquid Pipeline
Systems form. There were no changes made to the burden estimates on the ICR.
This was the fifth
revision of this ICR in the last five years.
Modified Instructions
Changes were made to the instructions for the following
questions in Part A of the form:
• Question 9 - “volume of commodity
released unintentionally” clarification; and
• Question 11, “volume of commodity recovered”
clarification
A complete explanation for the clarifications involved can
be found in the Supporting
Statement [Word download] submitted to OIRA. The intent of the changes
appears to be to reduce the reporting of the amount of liquid that was not
actually involved in the pipeline accident.
Short Extension
PHMSA had requested a 36 month extension of the ICR date
along with reporting these changes; this is the typical length of an ICR
approval. OIRA, however, only approved a one-year extension. The reason for the
short extension is that OIRA directed DOT to look into combining this ICR with
the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) ICR for train accident reporting as
well as other PHMSA hazardous material accident reporting ICRs. The ‘Terms of
Clearance’ section of the ICR approval explains:
“DOT is asked to provide OMB by no
later than the date this approval expires one of the following: a joint
PHMSA-FRA plan, coordinated with OST, to create a single system for
electronically reporting accident information involving trains, pipelines, and
hazardous materials and eliminates duplicative reporting requirements and
redundant agency IT systems to the extent feasible OR a joint PHMSA-FRA report,
coordinated with OST, indicating the reasons why developing such a plan is neither
consistent with the PRA’s purposes nor otherwise in the public’s interest, the
process used to arrive at this conclusion, and the extent public stakeholders
were consulted. As part of the plan, PHMSA and FRA may explore whether
additional or modified information should be collected to improve execution of
agency missions and the utility of the information collected, consistent with
the PRA. OMB plans to add these terms of clearance to all relevant PHMSA and
FRA accident reporting collections, as appropriate.”
Commentary
The point of the whole ICR process is to reduce the burden
on the reporting public by ensuring that only the information necessary for the
legitimate needs of Federal Agencies is collected from the public and that it
is done in the least burdensome method possible. While there is a certain
amount of overlap between PHMSA and each of the modal agencies in DOT when it
comes to hazardous material shipments, it is not clear to me that there is much
overlap in the accident reporting requirements.
What this looks like to me is more of a government efficiency
move than a move to reduce redundant reporting requirements. Government
efficiency is always a good thing and OMB does have a mandate to oversee
improvements in that area. Unfortunately, it does not seem that it has much actual
power to force intradepartmental coordination. So it looks like OIRA is being
used as a new tool to make that work.
I suspect that DOT will make a pro forma attempt at
complying with the OIRA mandate, but will end up finding that the information
collected in these different hazardous material accident reports is so
different in scope and details that combining the reporting requirements would
be more of a burden on the public sector. If true, that would certainly be a
legitimate reason for not combining the collection efforts.
I believe, however, that with modern computer technology
(and all of these reports are now being submitted on-line) it would be a
relatively simple matter to make the reporting system show only the mode
specific questions to the reporting entity once the mode of transportation
involved in the accident is identified in a single initial check box type
arrangement. It would be as easy to ensure that the modal agencies could
abstract the information they need from the resulting accident reporting data
base.
The combined data base would also make it easier for the
Department to get a better look at the hazardous material shipping safety
profiles of companies across the modal spectrum. I don’t believe that the
Department now has the means to make a quick check to see how many hazardous material
shipping accidents a particular company has across the whole spectrum of
transportation modes.
There is, however, a significant downside to combining these
ICRs. Whenever a change is made in the reporting requirements or estimated burden
response for an ICR, a new ICR is required to go through the OIRA approval
process. With multiple offices in PHMSA and other modal agencies making
legitimate changes to their reporting process there is going to be an ICR
revision coordination problem. The only real solution to that problem would be
to add another team in the Office of the Secretary to handle the ICR paperwork
and coordination for this super-ICR. That additional layer of bureaucracy is
going to defeat the whole idea of increasing efficiency that is the real reason
for starting this combining of ICRs in the first place.
It will be interesting to see what DOT does with this new
requirement.
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