Department of Defense October 19, 2005 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Department of the Army is publishing a revision to our rule concerning obtaining information from financial institutions. The regulation prescribes policies for the Department of the Army to obtain information on a customer's financial records from financial institutions.

In accordance with the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Baltimore District has prepared a Final General Reevaluation Report (GRR) and Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the Poplar Island Environmental Restoration Project (PIERP). The GRR/ SEIS evaluated the vertical and/or lateral expansion of the PIERP, design modifications to the existing project, the addition of recreational/educational opportunities to the existing project, and the potential to accept dredged material from additional channels not specified in the 1996 EIS for the existing project. A Notice of Availability (NOA) for the Draft GRR/SEIS was published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the Federal Register on June 22, 2005 (70 FR 36129). The preferred alternative includes a northern lateral expansion consisting of approximately 575 acres, which would include wetland and upland habitat, and a protected open water embayment; construction of a 5-ft vertical raising of the existing upland Cells 2 and 6 at the PIERP; amending the existing project authorization and Project Cooperation Agreement to include the placement of dredged material from the southern approach channels to the Chesapeake and Delaware (C&D) Canal; incorporation of design modifications required for the completion of the existing project, and development of recreational and educational enhancement for the PIERP.

The Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC), as the Department of Defense (DoD) Traffic Manager for the Personal Property Program published the Defense Personal Property System (DPS) Phase II Business Rules for Industry comment. These rules were posted to the Families First Web Site located at https:// www.sddc.army.mil under Families First. This announcement is being made to provide an overview of the comments received by SDDC from the Federal Register notice published on April 26, 2005 (70 FR 21401). All stakeholders were given 30 days to review these draft business rules and provide SDDC their comments. Responses were returned in several ways, including letters, spreadsheets and the Frequently Asked Question process. SDDC received approximately 1300 comments from the industry. Some of the comments were unique, but there were many duplicates. After the initial review of the comments and identification of duplicates, the comments were assigned to SDDC Subject Matter Experts (SME) in each of the associated Functional Areas related to the development of DPS. These SME's performed a detailed review of these comments to determine if revision to the business rules were appropriate. Our review indicated that there were approximately 800 duplicates and 500 unique comments. Some of industries major concerns were: the new best value traffic distribution methodology, establishment of minimum performance score, claims metrics, issues with CWA/invoicing, prompt payment, hard copy documentation, low response customer survey response rate, lack of statistically valid number of Transportation Service Providers (TSPs), non-availability of interface with TSP systems, 13% cost growth limitation on the new program, access to rate filing instructions, tools required to perform rate filing, inadequate time to test the new system, shipment management, TSP/agent relationship and access to multiple SCACs. Our review indicated that all the comments required clarification to the business rules. SDDC is currently in the process of providing these clarifications in the business rules and will publish the Final Business Rule when incorporation of these changes is completed. In the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section, SDDC has identified Industry's major concerns.

The Civilian Agency Acquisition Council and the Defense Acquisition Regulations Council (Councils) are proposing to amend the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to include the process of validating a Central Contractor Registration (CCR) registrant's taxpayer identification number (TIN) with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to improve data accuracy in the Federal procurement system. Additionally, the proposed amendment removes outdated language requiring modifications of contracts prior to December 31, 2003, regarding CCR.