May 22, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

Under the authority of the Budget and Accounting Procedures Act of 1950 (31 U.S.C. 1104(d)) and the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3504(e)), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is seeking public comment on the Standard Occupational Classification Policy Committee's (SOCPC) recommendations presented in this notice for revising the 2000 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) for 2010. The SOC is designed to reflect the current occupational structure of the United States; it classifies all occupations in which work is performed for pay or profit. The SOC covers all jobs in the national economy, including occupations in the public, private, and military sectors. All Federal agencies that publish occupational data are required to use the SOC; State and local government agencies are strongly encouraged to use this national system to promote a common language for categorizing and analyzing occupations. In a prior Federal Register notice (71 FR 28536, May 16, 2006), OMB and the SOCPC requested comments on: (1) The Standard Occupational Classification principles, (2) corrections to the 2000 SOC Manual, (3) the intention to retain the current SOC Major Group structure, (4) changes to the existing detailed occupations, and (5) new detailed occupations to be added to the revised 2010 SOC. The classification principles, coding guidelines, and occupations recommended in this notice reflect the comments received in response to the May 16, 2006, notice and represent the SOCPC's final recommendations to OMB. OMB, in consultation with the SOCPC, will consider comments in response to this notice in making its final decisions for the 2010 SOC revision and will publish its decisions in the Federal Register. The SOCPC will then finish preparing the 2010 Standard Occupational Classification Manual for publication, including finalizing occupational definitions, assigning associated job titles, and developing a crosswalk to the 2000 SOC. Appendices: This notice includes three appendices in the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section below. Appendix A presents the SOCPC's recommended SOC Classification Principles and SOC Coding Guidelines. Appendix B provides a crosswalk between the occupation codes in the 2000 SOC and the recommended revised codes for the 2010 SOC. Appendix C provides a crosswalk between the recommended revised codes for the 2010 SOC and the 2000 SOC. Request for Comments: In addition to general comments on the SOCPC's recommendations, OMB welcomes comments specifically addressing: (1) The SOC Classification Principles and SOC Coding Guidelines recommended by the SOCPC (Appendix A); (2) their recommended changes to titles and codes of occupations from the 2000 SOC (Appendix B); (3) the SOCPC's recommended changes to the hierarchical structure of the SOC, including changes to major, minor, broad, and detailed occupation groups (Appendix C); and (4) the titles, placement, and codes of new occupations that the SOCPC is recommending be added in the revised 2010 SOC (Appendix C). All comments submitted in response to this notice may be made available to the public, including by posting them on OMB's Web site. For this reason, please do not include in your comments information of a confidential nature, such as sensitive personal information or proprietary information. Electronic Availability: This document is available on the Internet from the Bureau of Labor Statistics at https://www.bls.gov/soc/home.htm. This Web page contains links to previous SOC Federal Register notices, and related documents, as well as the full SOCPC recommended 2010 SOC structure. To obtain this notice via e-mail, please send a message requesting the SOCPC recommendations Federal Register notice to soc@bls.gov.

Notice is hereby given that the Office of Resettlement, Division of Community Resettlement, will award supplemental funds without competition to nine agencies: Church World Service, Ethiopian Community Development Council, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, International Rescue Committee, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and World Relief Corporation. The cost for these supplemental awards is $2.17 million. The Voluntary Agency Matching Grant program was created by Congress in 1979. Matching Grant services enable the Voluntary Agencies' resettlement agencies to work with recently arrived refugees and other eligible clients. The goal of the program is to assist refugees become economically self-sufficient without accessing public assistance within 120-180 days. Last year, 81% of clients entering the program were economically self-sufficient within 180 days. Since the Presidential Determination was signed in October 2007, the ceiling for refugees was raised from 70,000 to 80,000 to accommodate 10,000 additional Iraqi refugees. In addition, legislation passed in December 2007 and January 2008 created a new class of individuals eligible for the refugee services. Thousands of Afghani and Iraqi interpreters who served the U.S. military have been provided ``Special Immigrant Visas'' (SIV) and are now eligible for six or eight months of refugee services. The Matching Grant program is often the program of choice for these special populations as it is geared for readily employable cases and for SIV cases, conforms to the legislative time limits.

The OST invites public comments about our intention to request the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) approval for renewal of a previously approved information collection that is summarized below under SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION. We are required to publish this notice in the Federal Register by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995.

The Coast Guard is withdrawing its notice of proposed rulemaking concerning the proposed change to the regulations that govern the operation of the Centerville Turnpike (SR 170) Bridge, at AIWW mile 15.2, across the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal in Chesapeake, Virginia. The requested change would have allowed the bridge to open on signal every hour on the half hour from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., year round. The withdrawal is based on further investigation indicating that this change would not improve the schedule for both roadway and waterway users.

EPA is taking final action to correct errors in a final rule published May 15, 2006, that updated five continuous instrumental test methods. As published, the rule contained inadvertent errors and provisions that needed to be clarified. We published a direct final rule with a parallel proposed rule on September 7, 2007 to correct the errors and to add clarifying language. However, we received an adverse comment on the direct final rule, and it was subsequently withdrawn on November 5, 2007. This action finalizes the parallel proposal. In this final rule, EPA corrects errors, clarifies certain provisions, and responds to the adverse comment received on the direct final rule published on September 7, 2007.

The Department of Defense (DoD) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) are issuing proposed regulations revising the National Security Personnel System (NSPS), a human resources management system for DoD, as originally authorized by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 and amended by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. The proposed regulation governs compensation, classification and performance management under NSPS. NSPS aligns DoD's human resources management system with the Department's critical mission requirements and protects the civil service rights of its employees.