Additional Details of CPSC Draft Strategic Plan for the Next Five Years

Comments are due August 9, 2010.

(See ITT’s Online Archives or 07/29/10 news, 10072918, for BP summary of CPSC announcing the draft Strategic Plan.)

Would Lay Foundation of CPSC Planning, Budgeting for Next Five Years

The draft Strategic Plan for 2011--2016 lays the foundation for CPSC’s planning, budgeting, and performance management for the next five years. By creating a long-term plan and aligning agency operations to support this plan, the CPSC states it will be better prepared to make important programmatic and administrative decisions.

CPSC adds that it is considering a revised operating structure over the next few months, but regardless of the outcome of those deliberations, the agency will engage in a series of action planning sessions and metric development processes to execute the Strategic Plan.

Draft Strategic Plan Lists Five Core Goals, Objectives for Each

Under the draft Strategic Plan, CPSC has set five core goals: Leadership in Safety, Rigorous Hazard Identification, Decisive Response, Commitment to Prevention, and Raising Awareness. CPSC has also listed objectives for each goal.

Highlights of the goals and objectives are as follows:

Rigorous Hazard Identification. CPSC plans to do the following to meet its goal of rigorous hazard identification:

• Expand import surveillance - expand import surveillance efforts to reduce entry of unsafe products at U.S. ports.
• Scan marketplace for hazards - scan the marketplace regularly to determine whether previously identified significant hazards exist in similar products.
• Create risk-based method to ID hazards - establish a transparent, risk-based methodology to consistently identify and prioritize hazards to be addressed.
• Reduce time to ID hazards -reduce the time it takes to identify hazard trends by improving the collection and assessment of hazard data.

Decisive Response. To meet its goal of “decisive response,” CPSC intends to do the following:

• Expand inspections - expand the CPSC’s ability to conduct a full range of inspections to monitor for noncompliant and defective products.
• Increase recall speed, effectiveness - increase the effectiveness and speed of stop sales and recalls of noncompliant and defective products.
• Enforce the rules - hold violators accountable for hazardous consumer products on the market by utilizing enforcement authorities.
• Prioritize CPSC response based on risk - use a risk-based methodology to prioritize the CPSC’s targeted response to addressable product hazards.
• Tell public faster - reduce the time it takes to inform consumers and other stakeholders of newly identified hazards and the appropriate actions to take.

Commitment to Prevention. CPSC intends to do the following as part of its commitment to prevention:

• Increase participation in voluntary standard activities - minimize hazardous defects early in the manufacturing process through increased participation in voluntary standards activities.
• Issue mandatory standards where necessary - improve the safety of consumer products by issuing mandatory standards, where necessary and consistent with statutory authority, in response to identified product hazards.
• Industry training - facilitate the development of safer products by training industry stakeholders on the CPSC regulatory requirements and hazard identification best practices.
• Industry incentives to encourage prevention - develop programs that provide incentives for manufacturers and importers to implement preventive actions that enable the safety of their products.
• Engage foreign manufacturers/regulators - engage foreign product safety regulators and foreign manufacturers to reduce the production of unsafe consumer products that may enter the U.S. market.

Leadership in Safety. The following are CPSC’s objectives for leadership in safety:

• Define annual priorities by greatest hazard/issues - determine the most critical consumer product hazards and issues to define CPSC’s annual priorities consistent with the agency’s regulatory requirements.
• Partnerships to improve supply chain safety - create and strengthen partnerships with domestic and international stakeholders aimed at improving product safety throughout the supply chain.
• Global harmonization - work towards harmonizing global consumer product standards or developing similar mechanisms to enhance product safety.

(See draft strategy for information on CPSC’s fifth goal, “Raising Awareness.”)

CPSC to Vote August 11 on Draft Strategic Plan

CPSC has posted a ballot vote sheet indicating that it will vote August 11, 2010 on the draft Strategic Plan.