TSA Publishes 60-Day ICR Renewal Notice

Yesterday the DHS Transportation Security Administration (TSA) published a 60-day information collection request (ICR) renewal notice in the Federal Register (80 FR 73126-73127) to support the TSA’s Transportation Worker’s Identification Credential (TWIC) application and security assessment program. The request includes changes in the burden estimate and description of the affected individuals covered by the ICR.

Burden Estimate

The notice provides the numbers that will be included in the renewal that will be submitted to the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) after the public notice process is complete. There is no comparison provided with the currently approved ICR. The table below provides that comparison.

	Current	Proposed
Burden Hours	824,877	736,670
Burden Cost	$118,700,668	$90,276,808

There is no specific explanation in the notice for the changes in the burden hours or burden cost. When no explanation (or even identification) of a change is made it is extremely difficult for the public to comment on the appropriateness (of either the magnitude or the necessity) of that change.

Other Changes

The notice changes the description of the information collection requirement. The new description now specifically mentions the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program:

“Also, individuals in the field of transportation who are required to undergo a security threat assessment in certain other programs, such as the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism (CFATS) program, may apply for a TWIC® and the associated security threat assessment to satisfy CFATS requirements.”

This addition reflects the recent notice the TSA’s description of the term ‘field of transportation’ that I have previously discussed. This had been alluded to in the justification memo that TSA submitted in supporting the currently approved ICR:

“There are also some worker populations in the non-maritime environment who may be authorized/required by TSA to obtain a TWIC given the nature of their work and required access to controlled areas/facilities.  These individuals would be required to complete the same enrollment process as the TWIC-maritime population.”

It will be interesting to see what estimates (if any) TSA provides for the number of CFATS related TWIC submissions. Again without TSA providing an explanation of how this change reflects the burden estimate, it is difficult to comment on this change in the burden.

The notice also briefly notes the following changes in the ICR:

• To expand enrollment options and the potential use of biographic and biometric (e.g., fingerprints, iris scans, and/or photo) information;

• To remove the requirement to collect information about the Extended Expiration Date (EED) TWIC; and

• To revise the fee collection for the TWIC® Program in light of changes to the fee the FBI charges for fingerprint processing (reduction of $2.75 per TWIC submission).

There is no explanation of how these changes will affect the burden estimates. TSA is not alone in their failure to provide detailed explanations for how changes in an ICR will affect the burden estimate; many (most) of the ICR notices that I review also do a poor job of explaining what they are doing. It makes providing effective comments on such notices very difficult. I do not really think that the agencies are trying to avoid having to respond to comments. It is just simpler to create short, boiler-plate ICR notices. And most of the public does not pay attention to ICR notices in any case.

Public Comments

The TSA is soliciting public comments on this ICR. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # TSA-2006-24191). I will be submitting a copy of this blog post as comment.

OMB Approves Revised TWIC ICR

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs announced that it had approved the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) request for an extension of the Transportation Workers Identification Credential (TWIC) information collection request (ICR) for a period of three years.

Data Issues

The whole ICR process is designed to ensure that the US Government is collecting information on individuals and organizations that it actually needs to fulfill its regulatory obligations and to minimize the burden on citizens and organizations providing the necessary data. While it may be argued that the original purpose has become somewhat quixotic in practice, it does provide for some sort of accounting for the data collection process.

In this case that data collection accounting purpose does not appear to be being properly fulfilled as there is a disconnect between the data provided by TSA and the data published by OIRA. The table below shows the annualized burden data submitted by TSA (Word® download link, pgs 16-17) and the data approved by OIRA.

	Responses	Burden Hours
TSA Submission	1,042,129	787,563
OIRA Approval	1,197,613	824,877

It may be that OIRA was relying on an earlier version of the data submission document in providing their approval numbers, but the TSA document available on the OIRA site for this ICR is certainly in conflict with the data OIRA approved.

CFATS Issues

I noted in an earlier blog post that there had been no comments submitted in response to the 60-day ICR notice. It turns out that there were three comments received on the subsequent 30-day ICR notice; one from the Institute of Makers of Explosives (IME), one from the Lake Carrier’s Association, and one from a private individual.

The comments from IME and the TSA response to that comment may have important implications for the ongoing debate about the use of the TWIC as part of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standard (CFATS) program implementation of a personnel surety program (PSP).

The IME has a long history of insisting that facilities covered under the CFATS program ought to be able to use the TWIC program as an integral part of the PSP. While transportation workers with TWICs are supported the proposed CFATS PSP (though certainly not to the extent requested by IME and other industry commentators), the use of TWICs by chemical employees that are not transportation workers does not appear to be authorized under the current TWIC program (see 49 CFR 1572.17(e)}.

In their ICR comment IME noted that:

“Additional categories of individuals would have to be “authorized by TSA.” We have asked TSA to establish and publish the process by which categories of individuals could petition TSA to be authorized to apply for TWICs. We are anxious to put in place a process to request TSA authorization so that we can petition the agency to allow those required to obtain a threat assessment under the new vetting programs of ISCD an alternative means of compliance.”

The TSA response to the IME comments concluded by saying:

“TSA is sympathetic to IME’s view, but it is constrained by law from authorizing non-transportation workers to pay a fee for the TWIC security threat assessment and credential.”

And since TSA is required to collect a fee from applicants for TWICs that covers the cost of the threat assessment and issuance of the credential, TSA will not be issuing TWIC to non-transportation chemical facility employees.

The House could have corrected this conflict when they approved HR 4007 since that bill clearly deals with the issue of the CFATS PSP, but it failed to address the issue. The Senate still has a chance to address this conflict when they consider HR 4007. The cleanest way to accomplish this would be to amend 46 USC 70105(2) to add:

“(H) an individual allowed unescorted access to a secure area designated in a chemical facility site security plan approved under 6 USC 2101.”

I doubt however that this will be addressed in the Senate. The surest way to stop HR 4007 from passing in this session of the Congress is to open the bill to the amendment process in the Senate. Unless the amendment process was tightly controlled (most appropriately by limiting amendments to within the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing process) there would be a high likelihood that IST provisions or civil suit enforcement provisions would be added to the bill. It is clear that any such additions would ensure that the bill would not be re-approved in the House.

OMB Approves TWIC ICR Extension

On Thursday the Office of Management and Budget approved the TSA’s request for a renewal of the information collection request that supports the Transportation Worker’s Identification Credential (TWIC) application process. OMB approved the ICR, but only until October 31^st of this year.

This renewal was requested last summer and would normally have resulted in a three year approval of the ICR. Because of the recently announced change in the TWIC renewal requirements OMB provided only a temporary extension of the ICR noting that:

“TSA should submit an Emergency Information Collection Request, to reflect changes to the program and burden hours that will result from the Exemption Notice published in the Federal Register on June 19, 2012 (49 CFR Part 1572 [Docket No. TSA–2006–24191]).”

The long time period between the submission of this ICR and its limited approval indicates that the OMB has long been aware of the DHS intention to provide some sort of relief on the TWIC renewal process pending the eventual approval of a TWIC Reader rule.

OMB Receives TSA TWIC ICR Renewal Request

On Friday the Office of Management and Budget announced on its website that it had received the renewal paperwork for TSA’s Transportation Workers Identification Credential (TWIC) information collection request (ICR). Readers will recall that TSA published their Federal Register notice that this was being sent to OMB over two weeks ago.

Current Approval Expired

Interestingly, the current OMB authorization expires today. As explained in the Federal Register Notice in “accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), an agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a valid OMB control number”. Technically that would mean that TSA cannot require TWIC applicants to complete the necessary paperwork for that application. In the short run I expect that this will have no practical effect on the program.

Personally, I would prefer to see OMB enforce this law and notify TSA that it could not process TWIC applications until the ICR was approved in normal course at OMB. It does not seem to me that it should be that difficult for a Federal Agency to process the appropriate paperwork for this ICR renewal process in time enough to get the process completed before the current approval expires. After all, the deadline is known three years in advance.

TSA Explanation

One part of the Federal Register notice that I didn’t report on earlier was the comment that: “TSA will directly respond to the individual submitting this feedback.” (76 FR 41510) Since I was the individual submitting the referenced feedback, I can report that TSA has, as of yet, failed to make that response. I’m looking to see their explanation for the changes in processing times and costs.

TSA TWIC ICR Renewal – 30-day Notice

Today the Transportation Security Administration published in the Federal Register (76 FR 41510) a 30-day information collection request (ICR) for the renewal of the ICR for the Transportation Workers Identification Credential Program. The ICR covers both the information collected to process the background checks necessary for issuing the TWIC and the information collected in optional customer satisfaction surveys used to ensure that the program is working in an effective manner.

This notice explains that a commentor on the 60-day ICR notice for this program (76 FR 23326-23327) reported errors in the length of the collection process and the subsequent results for the calculation of the total collection burden and costs. That report of the error originated in my blog posting of March 26th that was subsequently submitted to TSA. The following revised data was provided in this ICR::

• Annualized number of respondents – 401,330
• Estimated burden hours -919,110
• Annualized cost burden - $53,866,023

Public comments on this ICR are solicited and should be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) by August 15th, 2011. Comments can be emailed to oira_submission@omb.eop.gov and must be addressed to Desk Officer, Department of Homeland Security/TSA.