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PHMSA’s Voluntary Information Sharing System Work Group Holds Final Meeting

By Erin Kurilla posted 12-20-2018 10:06 AM

  
The Voluntary Information Sharing-System (VIS) Working Group was established by Congress through a mandate in the 2016 SAFE PIPES Act. The mandate asked the Secretary of Transportation to consider the development of a voluntary information sharing system to encourage the collaborative efforts to improve inspection information feedback and information sharing with the purpose of improving gas transmission and hazardous liquid pipeline facility integrity risk analysis. The scope of the VIS expanded quickly to include distribution pipelines and information from incident lessons learned, near-misses, and DIMP risk analyses.

On December 18 and 19, the VIS Work Group held their final meeting. The report developed by the group is expected to be distributed to the Secretary of Transportation on January 31, 2019. APGA and other stakeholders have been involved throughout the entire two-year process and will have a final opportunity to provide comments after the last draft is distributed for review in early January 2019. This draft will be shared with the APGA Operations and Safety Committee once available.

The report recommends the development of VIS to “advance pipeline safety and identifies ways to develop a system that encourages full engagement, participation, and collaboration from pipeline operators, industry stakeholders, and third-party management data management systems.” Additionally, “one of the founding principles critical to the concept of a VIS is the need for a safe and non-punitive environment which will foster industry engagement, transparency, honesty, and collaboration.”

For more information, please visit https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/standards-rulemaking/pipeline/voluntary-information-sharing-system-working-group

For questions on this article, please contact Erin Kurilla of APGA staff by phone at 202-464-2742 or by email at ekurilla@apga.org.

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