Privacy Act of 1974: Implementation of Exemptions

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY <CFR>10 CFR Part 1008</CFR> <DEPDOC>[DOE-HQ-2023-0058]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1903-AA16</RIN> <SUBJECT>Privacy Act of 1974: Implementation of Exemptions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> U.S. Department of Energy. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Energy (DOE, the Department) is proposing to revise its regulations to exempt certain records maintained under a newly established system of records—DOE-42 Nondiscrimination in Federally Assisted Programs Files—from the notification and access provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974. The Department proposes to exempt portions of this system of records from these subsections of the Privacy Act because of requirements related to investigatory material compiled for law enforcement purposes. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> To be assured of consideration, written comments on this proposed rulemaking must be received at one of the addresses listed in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section, on or before October 21, 2024. Comments received following the aforementioned date may be considered if it is practical to do so. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Please refer to section V (Public Participation—Submission of Comments) for additional information on the comment period. To comment on the System of Records Notice (SORN) associated with this proposed rulemaking, which is published elsewhere in this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , please refer to that SORN's own <E T="04">Federal Register</E> Notice, using docket number DOE-HQ-2023-0058. You may submit comments identified by docket number DOE-HQ-2023-0058, as follows: <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: www.regulations.gov.</E> Include the docket number DOE-HQ-2023-0058 in the “Enter Keyword or ID” field and click on “Search.” On the next web page, click on “Submit a Comment” action and follow the instructions in the portal. <E T="03">Mail/Hand Delivery/Courier [For paper, disk, or CD-ROM submissions] to:</E> Ken Hunt, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue SW, Office 8H-085, Washington, DC 20585. Comments received, including any personal information, will be posted without change to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> <E T="03">Docket:</E> The docket, which includes <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notices, comments, and other supporting documents/materials, is available for review at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> All documents in the docket are listed in the <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> index. However, some documents listed in the index, such as those containing information that is exempt from public disclosure, may not be publicly available. The <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> web page contains instructions on how to access all documents, including public comments, in the docket. See section V of this document for further information on how to submit comments through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kyle David, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue SW, Office 8H-085, Washington, DC 20585; facsimile: (202) 586-8151; email: <E T="03">kyle.david@hq.doe.gov;</E> telephone: (240) 686-9485. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Authority and Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Discussion</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Section 1008.12 Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Procedural Issues and Regulatory Review</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Review Under Executive Orders 12866, 13563, and 14094</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Review Under the Regulatory Flexibility Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Review Under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Review Under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Review Under Executive Order 12988</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Review Under Executive Order 13132</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Review Under Executive Order 13175</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Review Under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. Review Under Executive Order 12360</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">J. Review Under Executive Order 13211</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">K. Review Under the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act, 1999</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">L. Review Under the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act, 2001</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Public Participation—Submission of Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Approval by the Office of the Secretary of Energy</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Authority and Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Authority</HD> DOE has broad authority to manage the agency's collection, use, processing, maintenance, storage, and disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) pursuant to the following authorities: 42 United States Code (U.S.C.) 7101 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> 50 U.S.C. 2401 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> 5 U.S.C. 1104, 5 U.S.C. 552, 5 U.S.C. 552a, 42 U.S.C. 7254, 5 U.S.C. 301, and 42 U.S.C. 405 note. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Background</HD> The Privacy Act of 1974 (the Act) (5 U.S.C. 552a) embodies fair information practice principles in a statutory framework governing the means by which the U.S. Government collects, maintains, uses, and disseminates personally identifiable information. The Privacy Act applies to information that is maintained in a “system of records.” A “system of records” is a group of any records under the control of an agency from which information is retrieved by the name of the individual or by some identifying number, symbol, or other identifying particular assigned to the individual. In the Privacy Act, an individual is defined to encompass U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. The Privacy Act includes two sets of provisions that allow agencies to claim exemptions from certain requirements in the statute. These provisions allow agencies in certain circumstances to promulgate rules to exempt a system of records from certain provisions of the Privacy Act. For this system of records, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552a(k)(2), the Department exempts this system of records from subsections (c)(3); (d); and (e)(1) of the Privacy Act. This exemption is needed to protect from disclosure investigatory material compiled for law enforcement purposes. Pursuant to the Privacy Act and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-108, <E T="03">Federal Agency Responsibilities for Review, Reporting, and Publication under the Privacy Act,</E> DOE is issuing this notice of proposed rulemaking to make clear to the public the reasons why this particular exemption is being proposed and to seek public comment. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Discussion</HD> DOE is claiming exemptions from certain requirements of the Privacy Act for a new system of records: DOE-42 Nondiscrimination in Federally Assisted Programs Files. The Department is giving notice of its intention to exempt portions of a newly established system of records—DOE-42 Nondiscrimination in Federally Assisted Programs Files—from subsections (c)(3); (d); and (e)(1) of the Privacy Act of 1974. To claim this exemption, DOE is amending 10 CFR 1008.12 by adding a new paragraph, (b)(2)(ii)(R). The Department proposes to exempt portions of this system of records from these subsections of the Privacy Act because of requirements related to the compilation of investigatory material for law enforcement purposes. DOE-42 Nondiscrimination in Federally Assisted Programs Files will provide a central electronic repository to: (i) maintain all records used by OCR-EEO personnel in making Federal civil rights compliance determinations with accuracy, relevance, timeliness, and completeness to assure fairness to the individual(s) in the determination; (ii) create appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards that ensure the security and confidentiality of records and protect against any anticipated threats to their security or integrity and; (iii) create rules of conduct for authorized OCR-EEO personnel involved in the operation, maintenance, and routine uses for this system records. For this system of records, DOE claims exemptions to subsections (c)(3); (d); and (e)(1) of the Privacy Act. In addition, the system has been exempted from the Privacy Act, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552a(k)(2). These exemptions are needed to protect information relating to DOE activities from disclosure to subjects or others related to these activities. Specifically, the exemptions are required to preclude subjects of these activities from frustrating these processes; to avoid disclosure of activity techniques; to protect the identities and physical safety of confidential informants and law enforcement personnel; to ensure DOE's ability to obtain information from third parties and other sources; and to protect the privacy of third parties. Disclosure of information to the subject of the inquiry could also permit the subject to avoid detection or apprehension. The exemptions proposed here are standard law enforcement and national security exemptions exercised by many Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. In appropriate circumstances, where compliance would not appear to interfere with or adversely affect the law enforcement purposes of this system and overall law enforcement process, the applicable exemptions may be waived on a case-by-case basis. Exemptions for DOE-42 Nondiscrimination in Federally Assisted Programs Files from these particular subsections of the Act are justified, on a case-by-case basis to be determined at the time a request is made for the following reasons: From subse ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 35k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━