Yesterday I published a short notice about the 2nd revision to an information collection notice (ICR) for the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program. In addition to the change in the end of comment date that was presumably the reason for the 2nd revision, there was also a change in the language describing how to submit comments on the ICR. This online submission of comments on the 30-day ICR notices is a change from the old method of emailing the comments to the action officer at OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Comments for 60-day ICRs are still posted (except for TSA) to www.Regulations.gov.
Official Instructions
The instructions provided in the latest version of the ICR notice read:
“ADDRESSES: Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be sent within 30 days of publication of this notice to www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain. Find this particular information collection by first selecting the ``Information Collection Request'' tab and scrolling down to ``Information Collection Review.'' Then, select ``Currently under 30-day Review--Open for Public Comments'' or by using the search function.”
That sounds straight forward enough, but what actually has to happen is a tad bit more complicated. The picture below shows what you get when you click on the link provided in the instructions.
From this page click on the “Currently under Review - Open for Public Comments” link. This will take you to the list of all 30-day ICRs currently open for public comments (that can be a very lengthy list). The next picture shows what the top of that list looks like.
You scroll down the list until you find the ICR upon which you wish to comment (for this particular ICR notice on this particular day I found it about 2/5ths of the way down the page). The picture shows the details about this notice.
Once you click on the ‘Comment’ button, you get taken to the page where you actually submit the comments. As the picture below shows, it is fairly self-explanatory from here.
Oh, by the way, you cannot do any of this on the day the ICR notice is published in the Federal Register. It does not appear on the OIRA site until at least the next business day.
There Is an Easier Way
To be fair, this is kind of referred to in the instructions provided, but this is certainly quicker, avoiding all of the scrolling down…. Starting at the link provided in the instruction you ignore most of the page and just look at the header.
Type in the ICR number, in this case 1670-0014, in the search bar. That takes you to the list of all of the different versions of that ICR.
Now click on the Title of the ICR for the version that does not show a date in the “Concluded Date” column. That is the currently pending ICR for which you wish to comment.
Now just click on the comment box and you are where you need to go.
Of course, it was easier still when you just had to email the comments to the OIRA action officer for the ICR. I suspect, however, that this on-line process was initiated to weed out ‘letter writing’ campaigns that many activist organizations use to ‘influence’ the OIRA approval process. Those quotes are because those organizations know that OIRA (nor any other federal agency) is actually influenced by being inundated with multiple duplicate comments. No the organizations are usually using those campaigns for fund raising efforts.