Emergency Justification Memo

U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20528

ACTION MEMORANDUM
MEMORANDUM FOR:

The Honorable Paul Ray
Administrator
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
Office of Management and Budget

THROUGH:

signed by
ELIZABETH Digitally
ELIZABETH A CAPPELLO
Elizabeth A. Cappello
Date: 2020.04.24
Chief Information Officer A CAPPELLO 17:00:58 -04'00'
Department of Homeland Security

FROM:

DAVID H
David Wilkinson
Deputy Associate Director for Operations WILKINSON
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

Digitally signed by
DAVID H WILKINSON
Date: 2020.04.23
12:56:56 -04'00'

SUBJECT:

Emergency Information Collection Request (ICR): An Evaluation
of Denied Movement for Critical Infrastructure Owners
______________________________________________________________________________
Purpose: The memorandum seeks the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approval of
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) request for an emergency review under the
Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) to complete OMB Control Number 1670-NEW “The CISA
Incident Reporting System, Critical Infrastructure Denied Movement Reporting Form” provides
a secure web-enabled means of reporting Critical Infrastructure Workers Denied Movement
situations to CISA. This system assists analysts in providing timely handling of these reports as
well as the ability to conduct improved analysis and advocate for change”. For the purpose of
this system, a Critical Infrastructure Workers Denied Movement situation occurs anytime an
individual or entity believes they are considered an essential worker under local definitions and
was denied the ability to move around to conduct activities the local authorities have determined
are authorized.
Background: As part of the National Pandemic Action Plan for responding to the COVID-19
threat, social distancing and local “Stay at Home” or similar orders have become the normal
across the county. The President has left the establishment of these orders to the State, Local,
Territorial, and Tribal (SLTT) governments. This had the potential to create a patchwork of
exceptions to who was exempted based on the essentiality of their work. To help provide order to
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this issue, CISA worked with the Sector Specific Agencies described in PPD 41, the White
House, the Department, and the SLTT governments to provide guidance on what is considered
Essential Critical Infrastructure Workers. Many SLTT governments have adopted our guidance
in full and other have adopted it in part. All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and all
Territories and Tribal lands have limited movement of non-essential workers to some extent,
making this issue truly national.
Discussion: As part of CISA’s routine monitoring or our programs, we have heard anecdotal
evidence that even though our non-mandatory guidance has been broadly adopted, local Law
Enforcement are not fully following this guidance and have restricted entities that are excepted
by local rules. CISA has a duty to evaluate the risk of this behavior but must first better
understand the environment. This emergency approval will allow CISA service agents to collect
information about these incidents in a manner that permits further analysis. Failure to collect this
information will prevent CISA from determining if changes to our Essential Critical
Infrastructure Workers guidance is warranted. Any required changes are extremely time
sensitive. Delaying any necessary updates to this guidance could conceivably harm the
governments effort to stop the spread of COVID-19 by allowing too many workers to move
freely, or harm the recover of the national economy by allowing too few essential workers to
move freely. Voluntary collection of this information is key to ensuring our guidance is
effective.
Conclusion: Approval of this request will ensure CISA is able to collect voluntary information
from citizens who believe they have been improperly denied movement as an Essential Critical
Worker, while minimizing the burden on respondents. We recommend approval.

Approve/date__________________________ Disapprove/date___________________
Modify/date ___________________________ Needs discussion/date______________
Attachment (s):
1. 1670-NEW_Critical Infrastructure Workers Denied Movement Reporting Form_SS-A_v2
2. 1670-NEW_Critical Infrastructure Workers Denied Movement Reporting_Form_v1
3. PTA, CISA - Critical Infrastructure Workers Denied Movement Report, 20200406, PRIV
Final

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