develop guidance. the department will also review guidance on the website and to identify best practices to improve the online presentation and accessibility of guidance documents. the department is committed to ensuring guidance is used in a way that will best informed the public. we believe we have done a good job with the bulletin and/or committed to working towards the recommendations made by gao. chairman, ranking member, senators, for the opportunity to be here. i'm glad to answer any questions from the committee. >> thank you from the committee. withll go a rapid pace questions. i want to re-emphasize that a lot of issues we will talk about

today are about the process. just to set some of the sub, and we will come back for the second round and ask additional questions to build on it. i want to get your perspective on a couple specific guidance things that have come out that we can talk about more later as we go through the role-making process. youmaxwell, let me go to first. one of the worst acronyms and government, stands for recognizing generally accepted government engineering processes. are you familiar with this memorandum? that memo is an agency guidance? is it your perspective it is a guidance document? ok?

turn your microphone on. june 5, safety memorandum. appendix a chemicals. are you familiar with that? >> yes. >> ok. a memorandumissued about highly hazardous chemicals. are you familiar with that? same thing, do you think that is agency guidance? >> yes. october 25th, 2010, department of education for civil rights published a dear colleague letter on bullying. are you familiar with that letter? >> shazam. --do believe it is guidance -- yes.

8, civil rights division, dear colleague letter, administering school discipline. agency guidance? >> yes. you.ank >> miss maxwell, osha's guidance on recognizing generally good engineering processes, was that intended to be a performance -based standard with flexibility for regulated parties to choose among industries best practices that were most appropriate for their businesses when it was originally set out there? to giveerformance-based flexibility? if so, is that still continuing even under the guidance? thinkator lankford, i your question is beyond my expertise. designed to give guidance to the field on implementing the standards.

>> the concern i have is the guidance seems to remove flexibility that previously existed. when we try to look at what is guidance and what is regulation, it seems the regulation give flexibility to say you have this generally recognized engineering practice, go by those, or you can create your own process, you just have to show it is good process. this new guidance seems to "or" and everything else seems to go away. that seems to be one of those things that it would look like it would be a regulation that would need to go through a comment. if it is meant as a flexible enforcement standard, this june five seems to take it away. how is it determined this is going to be a guidance rather than a rule? so, to begin, we follow the

apa and the bulletin in providing recommendations. we are very committed to following the rules. if there is ever any question that is done in consultation with our solicitor. we are confident in this situation. responding to the terrible tragedy of an explosion that took lives and injured hundreds of people. we were responding to an executive order saying to close the gap. right? we have to close the gap and make sure it preventable explosion like this does not happen again. close those gaps. when our folks looked at those regulations, is there a need for new? it was very clear that guidance

.as needed to clarify if there are specific questions that you have about that memo, i want to be sure i give you an accurate answer. >> we will definitely pursue that. but there seems to be a change in the reg. i understand what happened in the explosion. was it the assumption of the agency the reason for the explosion was they were not following the procedures? thesedo not think any of memos presented any change in regulations. >> so they could be an enforcement. i guess that is the issue. secretary talked about binding, whether it is legally winding or not. if an entity created its own process, could there be a court challenge to them creating their own process? previously that was allowed.

would that still be allowed now, for them to create their own process? honest withg to be you, i feel like your question is getting out of the area. >> will talk about it more in the second round. previously, their word to standards. you could follow, or you could develop your own. after, is what they were doesn't provide the safety? now, developing your own process seems to gone away and you have to do it this way. we're trying to figure out, what just happened? if many companies had created their own process, there seems to be a legal shift. the daysollow up in ahead, none of the days ahead, but with letters. ranking member. thank you, mr. chairman. i know we get more in-depth on this. on this particular guidance, i think the disturbing piece of this for so many people is, we

thought we were in compliance. rule changed. now, we get a letter saying we are not in compliance. it seems like the rule changed. before,re in compliance doing what we were doing, then how could we surge of medically be out of compliance now? i think you can understand the confusion, because usually if that changes such a medically, and it changes how you implement atically, people could turn around and say that is something that should've been noticed or handled by congress. to simply unilaterally change the rules does not seem to be what a guidance should do. that brings us to this discussion. i want to back away from these regulations a little bit and talk about guidance.

sankar, obviously, you had a chance to look across agencies and had a chance to think about what these guidance documents are to be and what they ought not to be. growth, and i the think there is a chart there that shows you this informal process, where do you think we need to tweak or change the legislating look at in this area? what recommendations would you make? >> the answer to this is not a bright line. us with therovides kind of flexibility we just heard from all of the witnesses. in asfficulty comes

agencies are issuing guidelines -- terms of next steps, i think there are a number of available. we talked about was making sure agencies have management controls in place to be very clear about choices they are making and to his signing off on choices. additional oversight, and report looked at the agencies. -- anothero not option could be looking at the memo and codifying certain aspects. where -- that is is like when the supreme

court says i know of sanity when i see it. i cannot -- i cannot -- it makes it extraordinarily difficult. regulator, tax another benefit of a letter ruling in terms of creating certainty as the taxpayer moves forward. giving them the opportunity to rely on a letter ruling so they can make economic decisions for their business. to prohibitoo far guidance, or to too narrowly , -- i think one of the problems that i have had reading and thinking about this issue has been definitional.