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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

 CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

 + + + + + 

 NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL 

 SAFETY AND HEALTH 

 WORKER OUTREACH WORK GROUP 

 + + + + + 

 MONDAY, 

 JANUARY 12, 2009 

 + + + + + 

 HEBRON, KENTUCKY 

 + + + + + 

 The work group convened in the 

Zurich Board Room at the Cincinnati Airport 

Marriot, 2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, Kentucky 

at 9:30 a.m., Michael Gibson, Chair, 

presiding. 

BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: 

 MICHAEL GIBSON, Chair 

 WANDA MUNN 

 JOSIE BEACH 

 PHILLIP SCHOFIELD * 
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IDENTIFIED PARTICIPANTS PRESENT: 

 TED KATZ, Acting Designated 

 Federal Official 

 STU HINNEFELD, NIOSH 

 J. J. JOHNSON, NIOSH 

 LAURIE BREYER, NIOSH 

 LARRY ELLIOTT, NIOSH 

 DAVE SUNDIN, NIOSH * 

 ABE ZEITOUN, SC&A 

 KATHY ROBERTSON-DEMERS, SC&A 

 JOHN MAURO, SC&A * 

 STEVE OSTROW, SC&A * 

 VERN McDOUGALL, ATL 

 MARK LEWIS, ATL 

 MICHAEL RAFKY, OGC 

 EMILY HOWELL, HHS * 

 BONNIE KLEA, Advocate * 

 TERRIE BARRIE, Alliance of Nuclear 

 Worker Advocacy Groups 

 NANCY ADAMS, NIOSH Contractor * 

 DAN McKEEL, Advocate * 

* - Present via telephone 
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Description Page

Opening and Introductions 6 

NIOSH Overview of Worker Outreach 8 

 Program and Activities 

SCA Overview of Current Status of 64 

 Audit Activities Assigned to 

 Date 

Worker/Claimant/Advocate Comments 147 

 on Worker Outreach and Claimant 

 Interaction(s) with NIOSH 

Work Time to Develop Path Forward, 209 

 Action Items, Assign Tasks 

 and/or Recommendations 

Adjourn 240 
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 9:30 a.m. 

3 MR. KATZ: Let's get started now. 

4 It's right on time, 9:30, and I'm glad to 

5 hear, John, that you made it on, too. So 

6 let's just start roll call. Start with the 

7 board members with the Chair. 

8 CHAIR GIBSON: Mike Gibson, Advisory 

9 Board member and chair of the Worker Outreach 

10 Work Group. 

11 MEMBER MUNN: Wanda Munn, Advisory 

12 Board member. 

13 MEMBER BEACH: Josie Beach, Advisory 

14 Board member. 

15 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Phillip 

16 Schofield, Advisory Board member. 

17 MR. KATZ: Any other board members 

18 on the phone. Okay. Then the NIOSH ORAU 

19 team, starting in the room. 

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Stu Hinnefeld, and 

21 NIOSH OCAS technical program manager. 

22 MR. JOHNSON: J. J. Johnson, OCAS 
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1 HP. 

2 MS. BREYER: Laurie Breyer, OCAS. 

3 MR. KATZ: And SC&A in the room. 

4 MR. ZEITOUN: Abe Zeitoun. 

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Kathy 

6 Roberton-Demers. 

7 MR. McDOUGALL: Vern McDougall, ATL, 

8 outreach support contractor. 

9 MR. LEWIS: Mark Lewis, ATL, 

10 outreach support contractor. 

11 MR. KATZ: And then NIOSH, ORAU, or 

12 SC&A staff on the phone. 

13 MR. MAURO: John Maro, SC&A. 

14 MR. OSTROW: Steve Ostrow, SC&A. 

15 MR. KATZ: Okay, and then other 

16 federal officials in the room. 

17 MR. RAFKY: Michael Rafky, HHS. 

18 MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS. 

19 MR. KATZ: Okay, and then any 

20 members of the public or representatives of 

21 congressional offices on the telephone. 

22 MS. KLEA: Yes, Bonnie Klea, Santa 
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1 Susana, petition 93. 

2 MR. KATZ: Welcome Bonnie. 

3 MS. KLEA: Thank you. 

4 MS. BARRIE: Terrie Barrie. 

5 MR. KATZ: Welcome Terrie. Any 

6 others? Okay then. We have no conflict of 

7 interest needs to address, so -- 

8 MS. ADAMS: And Nancy Adams is here. 

9 MR. KATZ: Nancy, welcome. 

10 MS. ADAMS: Thanks. 

11 MR. KATZ: That would be Nancy 

12 Adams. She's a contractor. Mike? 

13 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay, well first off 

14 thanks for everything attending the meeting 

15 today, and for those of you on the phone. 

16 What we plan on covering today is we're not 

17 really far enough down the road to have a 

18 specific agenda, so we're just outlining some 

19 particular areas we want to cover. We want to 

20 give NIOSH a chance to give us a review of the 

21 program, where its been, where it seen, where 

22 they see it going basically. Things like 
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1 that. 

2 And then SC&A, the support 

3 contractor for the board, we are going to give 

4 them an opportunity to tell us what reviews 

5 and audits they've conducted to date 

6 concerning worker outreach, and any other 

7 comments or thoughts they would like to share 

8 with us. Then we are going to take some time 

9 to give the claimants and their advocates that 

10 may be on the phone a chance to tell us their 

11 experiences, pro or con, with the worker 

12 outreach or the interactions with OCAS. 

13 And then lastly, some time this 

14 afternoon before we adjourn, hopefully the 

15 work group can develop some more specific 

16 agenda items for a future meeting, and where 

17 we're going to go from here. 

18 So with that, I guess we'll turn it 

19 over to NIOSH, and let you just give us an 

20 overview of the program, and some of the -- 

21 maybe hit some of the bullets that are listed 

22 here on the agenda. 
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1 MR. KATZ: And as a matter of 

2 record, let me just note that Larry Elliot, 

3 who is head of the OCAS program, has just 

4 joined us, and I probably should stop and 

5 identify, too. This is Ted Katz, and I'm the 

6 acting DFO for the Advisory Board. 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: I apologize for my 

8 tardiness. It took a little longer than I had 

9 planned to navigate my way here this morning. 

10 So thanks, Michael. As we've said in the 

11 past, our outreach efforts are perhaps limited 

12 in some regards. The Department of Labor has 

13 the administrative lead on outreach for 

14 claims, and they do that in venues such as 

15 town hall meetings, and NIOSH has been 

16 included in many of those at the request of 

17 Department of Labor. 

18 That's where I would start with 

19 outreach, but I would depart from that and say 

20 that NIOSH has conducted outreach to workers 

21 and claimants with a specific purpose in mind 

22 each time we have done that. And we use a 
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1 variety of ways, based upon a given purpose, 

2 as to how we go about interacting with people 

3 of interest. So we have used small focus 

4 groups and interviews where we were building a 

5 site profile or a technical basis document 

6 approach. In that, we would identify workers 

7 from the era of interest, and either interview 

8 them individually and capture those interviews 

9 in our record system. And I believe each time 

10 we would offer the opportunity for the worker 

11 to -- we drew what was the summary notes of 

12 that information that was captured during the 

13 interview, not a verbatim transcript per se, 

14 or a set of minutes per se, but an 

15 understanding of what we captured as their 

16 answers to certain questions or certain issues 

17 that were raised that we thought were 

18 substantive and salient to the interest at 

19 hand. We have -- so they get that. They are 

20 able to comment on that. We make changes 

21 accordingly, and place those in our systems of 

22 records for use in site profile 
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1 development/technical basis document approach 

2 development. 

3 We have conducted worker meetings 

4 about a given topic, or situation, or 

5 circumstance at a site where we've invited 

6 workers together, and sometimes we've done 

7 this in conjunction with the Board's 

8 deliberation process, such as Blockson 

9 Chemical, and other times its been something 

10 we've convened on our own through our good 

11 works of either our contractor, ATL, and/or 

12 prior to that ATL teaming with ORAU, where we 

13 would convene a group of workers and talk 

14 about a situation or experience at a certain 

15 site, and we would document that by summary 

16 notes of the meeting. 

17 And we have also conducted 

18 workshops where we have invited in -- this 

19 year we are planning our fifth of these 

20 workshops, I believe, in March. But we've 

21 invited in at each of these workshops 

22 claimants who are interested in learning more 
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1 about dose reconstruction or the SEC process, 

2 petitioners, potential petitioners, 

3 petitioners who are active and have processed, 

4 or any process with a petition. We have 

5 invited advocates for groups of workers. We 

6 have of course invited and entertained a lot 

7 of interest from organized labor reps who 

8 attended these meetings. These meetings last 

9 usually a day, day and a half. And again, we 

10 are planning one for March, early March this 

11 year. 

12 With regards to our SEC counselor 

13 and ombudsman, we schedule meetings at their 

14 proposed proposals to educate potential 

15 petitioners, as well as claimants who are 

16 involved perhaps in a class situation. So 

17 those activities, SEC outreach type of 

18 activity to explain that rule and how we 

19 process petitions, and what it means to be in 

20 a class are handled in support of the SEC 

21 counselor and ombudsman, and ATL support 

22 staff, as well. 
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1 So that's kind of a general 

2 overview of what we see our outreach efforts 

3 being. They are purpose-driven. Depending 

4 upon the purpose, the audience is tailored. 

5 The interaction is perhaps as broad and 

6 expansive as a town home meeting, or it may be 

7 just individual one-on-one interviews. 

8 Of course we have our interaction 

9 with claimants in many ways through 

10 correspondence, through the website, through 

11 our interview process, before and after the 

12 dose reconstruction is done. And so we would 

13 point to that also as an opportunity to 

14 outreach, or educate, or explain support in 

15 the individual's set of interests. So we 

16 would point to that. 

17 Have I missed anything, Stu or 

18 Vern? 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, Vern may want 

20 to add in a little bit. I would say that the 

21 evolution that's occurred over the last few 

22 years is that the focus for outreach for a 
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1 while was on site profile efforts, and short 

2 of introducing the process, as well as then 

3 presenting site profiles, and this is what we 

4 have learned about this site where you worked, 

5 and for a couple of opportunities at those 

6 times. And its kind of evolved since then 

7 into mainly focused on SEC-type of activities. 

8 It seems like at least more of those now are 

9 where employees or groups of employees, or a 

10 union organization will be interested in maybe 

11 submitting an SEC petition for their site. 

12 And so it will go for that purpose, and have 

13 that kind of meeting for that purpose in 

14 addition to the workshops, the SEC workshops 

15 that we've conducted and are conducting. So 

16 there's been a little bit of a shift in focus 

17 as the site profile work has sort of ebbed. I 

18 mean, the original publication of site 

19 profiles is, to a large extent, has been done. 

20 Now certainly there's review and revision of 

21 those things that continues to go on, and so 

22 this fits. I mean, these kinds of things can 
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1 fit there, as well. But that's just the only 

2 thing I was going to comment. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: I think that's a good 

4 point to bring up. 

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, and the other 

6 thing is, as you said that, in almost every 

7 situation the things that you're interested or 

8 knowing are sort of uniquely designed for that 

9 situation depending upon what you've 

10 encountered so far because we don't 

11 necessarily start -- the first action we do 

12 isn't necessarily interviews. The first 

13 action that we normally do is document review 

14 to try to determine, what can we assemble, 

15 what knowledge can we assemble from the 

16 document that can inform us so we can even ask 

17 intelligent questions of people. So that 

18 information gathering process to start pretty 

19 much shapes where the process goes from there. 

20 So to an extent, each one is sort of custom21 made that way. So it's a little difficult to 

22 put a lot of detail about exactly what are you 
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1 going to ask in an outreach into a procedure, 

2 because its sort of custom-made each time. 

3 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: This is 

4 Kathy Demers. Can you tell which of the 

5 ORAU/ATL/NIOSH procedures cover all of these 

6 different elements? 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, as you 

8 mentioned in your comment on 097, that some of 

9 these are not proceduralized. For instance, 

10 we don't have a procedure for interviewing a 

11 person and documenting the interview. You 

12 know, that would be like -- I'm trying to 

13 envision the process there. I guess we could 

14 formalize the format of the write-up of the 

15 interview or something like that. But we 

16 don't have a procedure for that. We don't 

17 have different procedures for SEC outreach 

18 meeting versus any other outreach meeting. I 

19 think our procedure as it was, and I think 

20 probably as it's being revised to, although 

21 maybe I shouldn't speak about this, because 

22 I'm not familiar with what its being revised 
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1 to, because it is being revised. I don't 

2 think it specifies necessarily for SEC 

3 outreach meetings, do this, for site profile 

4 outreach meetings, do this, for these outreach 

5 meetings, do this. I don't think it's 

6 particularly specified. So as far as I know, 

7 we have the one that covers outreach, and 

8 that's 097. Or it was 097. I guess it's 

9 going to be numbered the same on revision. 

10 MR. JOHNSON: I think it's going to 

11 be 012. 

12 MR. HINNEFELD: It's going to be 

13 renumbered? Okay. 

14 MR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. 

15 Could I just interject something real quick? 

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Sure. 

17 MR. MAURO: I just wanted to sort 

18 of set prospective overview of what SC&A's 

19 role is, which is quite different of course 

20 than the activities that NIOSH performs. And 

21 I'll be brief. We basically do three 

22 different kinds of things. In support of the 
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1 Board, we are involved in outreach activities 

2 also, which of course Kathy is able to provide 

3 a lot more detail. But those outreach 

4 activities are more along the lines of 

5 acquiring information rather than providing 

6 information. And basically we have procedures 

7 for reviewing site profiles, and we have 

8 procedures for reviewing SEC petitions. 

9 Embedded in those procedures, we're required 

10 to reach out and acquire information from 

11 claimants, petitioners, and workers. So our 

12 role primarily is one of obtaining information 

13 from the interested parties. 

14 So the second thing -- so that's 

15 one category of activity that we do. 

16 The other category that we do 

17 that's related to outreach, but not directly, 

18 is we rename procedures that NIOSH and OCAS 

19 and ORAU prepare for related to outreach, such 

20 as close out surveys, CATI interviews. So we 

21 review them, and we provide our commentaries, 

22 and you folks are familiar with that. 
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1 And the third category of what you 

2 might call outreach is, from time to time, we 

3 are called upon by professional 

4 representatives to brief them regarding the 

5 status of activities on our investigations on 

6 a given site. In that regard, we do provide 

7 information. We're not soliciting, but we're 

8 providing information, and the nature of that 

9 information always is to sort of summarize in 

10 layman's terms what we have already discussed 

11 or are discussing with the Work Group or the 

12 Board. 

13 So I wanted to set the table so to 

14 speak of overview of SC&A's role in outreach. 

15 I believe that captures the major categories 

16 of activities that we perform. 

17 MEMBER MUNN: John, this is Wanda. 

18 Am I correct in understanding that all of 

19 SC&A's outreach activities are responsive, not 

20 proactive? 

21 MR. MAURO: Well, responsive in 

22 terms of -- 
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1 MEMBER MUNN: You're either 

2 responding to directions that have been given 

3 to you by the Board, or to requests from 

4 outside agencies or litigators. 

5 MR. MAURO: That's correct, yes. 

6 It is responsive. Responsive in that we are, 

7 it is proceduralized, so that once the Board 

8 authorizes SC&A to do a site profile review, 

9 or an SEC petition review, one of the things 

10 we do automatically as part of that process is 

11 meet with claimants, petitioners, and workers 

12 to acquire information. Of course, at a given 

13 Work Group meeting, once we move into the mode 

14 where we're actually trying to address issues 

15 that we've raised, we take directions from the 

16 Board. This is very much the case that 

17 occurred during the NTS work group meetings 

18 where we are directed by the Work Group, in 

19 this case, to reach out and acquire additional 

20 information. So yes, on several levels, 

21 mainly on the broadest base level, which would 

22 be just when we're triggered to go ahead and 
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1 do a site profile review, and then we actually 

2 get into what I would call the weeds, and 

3 really do the day-to-day work, working with 

4 working groups, from time to time the working 

5 group will direct us to go and talk to people. 

6 CHAIR GIBSON: Larry? 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I'm trying to 

8 get back on track here. I want you to 

9 understand that Stu's point is something to be 

10 considered here that what would be examined in 

11 the past is certainly different than what 

12 would be examined currently. I think you can 

13 look at the WISPER database itself and it is 

14 still available, yes. It has been transferred 

15 from ORAU to OCAS. We have it online in OCAS 

16 if we need it. I question its utility though, 

17 because it really wasn't developed with a 

18 driven purpose per se as much as we would like 

19 to see. But at any rate OCAS Procedure 012 is 

20 underway. The ORAU Procedure 097 is not 

21 viable at this time, I guess. I don't think 

22 its being used. We are not trying to live by 
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1 it, per se. But OCAS Procedure 012 is in the 

2 final review stages and once the final 

3 comments have been incorporated, I believe we 

4 will issue that. 

5 MEMBER BEACH: Larry, can you tell 

6 me -- this is Josie. What procedure 012 is 

7 and what is that going to consist of? 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: I will try to give 

9 you an answer to that. J.J. may help me out a 

10 little bit in detail here. Its to provide the 

11 process for the conduct and documentation of 

12 our outreach efforts. So it's a procedure 

13 that will describe that process, those various 

14 different types of interactions that I 

15 described earlier to be characterized and how 

16 they are done. 

17 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, so will you 

18 get rid of 097? Will 097 go away? 

19 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, 097 is going 

20 away. 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, because 097 is 

22 ORAU procedure. 
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1 MEMBER BEACH: Right. 

2 MR. HINNEFELD: And ORAU is not 

3 really the company that does it anymore. It's 

4 not ATL that does it. 

5 MEMBER BEACH: Right. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: There is a tracking 

7 system that has been developed, a new database 

8 that we've developed and its identified as our 

9 outreach tracking system. I believe its 

10 working now, JJ? 

11 MR. JOHNSON: Yes. 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: So it is functional 

13 now. J.J. can identify the URL location for 

14 you if you are interested he can provide that. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we may have 

16 to put that on O:, on our system. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, right now we 

18 caught up with not putting anything new onto 

19 the ORAU domain so you can access it because 

20 we are going to this new security process and 

21 so the tracking system and new database is up 

22 and running. It tracks information like 
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1 location, type of meeting, minutes or the 

2 summary notes of the meeting, our sign-in 

3 sheets, the informational handouts, 

4 correspondence about the meeting, points of 

5 contact. There is a calendar that is 

6 associated with this data that kind of 

7 identifies what meetings have been scheduled. 

8 And there is an issue-tracking component as 

9 well. 

10 MEMBER MUNN: That is on the O: 

11 drive now? 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't think its on 

13 the O: drive. 

14 MR. JOHNSON: No, it is in the OCAS 

15 tools. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: So that's on our 

17 side. 

18 MR. JOHNSON: It's on our side. 

19 MEMBER BEACH: So it's nothing we 

20 can access? 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: Not today. 

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Not today. We'll 
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1 have to chat. Larry and will have to chat 

2 with the security thing changing, its not 

3 clear to me what would be most timely. 

4 Whether we would even want to put anything on 

5 the O:. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: You can come into our 

7 offices and see if it or if you've got your 

8 own, a key fob. If you can access through 

9 CITCO you can see it. 

10 MR. HINNEFELD: And they are 

11 getting those right? 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: They are getting 

13 those but they don't have those. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: So once board 

15 members have key fob and come into our system 

16 through CITCO, it will be available through 

17 our system. 

18 MS. BREYER: Larry you mentioned 

19 WISPER. Is WISPER going away? I noticed that 

20 nothing's been really put into WISPER since 

21 06. 

22 MR. HINNEFELD: It is historical 
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1 now. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: It is historical. 

3 MEMBER BEACH: So anything new that 

4 let's say Savannah River site, May meeting, 

5 anything that I would like to see from that 

6 meeting, I'm going to have to wait until I get 

7 a key fob to go into the new database or is 

8 there an area that I can look for that 

9 information now? 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: We would have to 

11 provide you that information separate from the 

12 system at this point. We would have to burn 

13 it to a CD to give it to you. 

14 MR. ZEITOUN: So there will be no 

15 database available for anybody to track what's 

16 happening? 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: There is a database. 

18 It will be available to -- right now its only 

19 available within the NIOSH domain, within the 

20 firewall. Because of the transition in trying 

21 to become compliant with the IT security 

22 requirements, we can't put any new stuff out 
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1 on the O: drive on ORAU's site. We're trying 

2 to break away from that knowing full well that 

3 ORAU is working on implementing a plan that 

4 will achieve as much as they can on IT 

5 security by March 30 and we don't want to 

6 confuse and confound that implementation 

7 effort by adding new packages, new 

8 applications on the O: drive site. So, I'm 

9 sorry but this is the constraint we face. 

10 MEMBER BEACH: Early in your 

11 discussion you talked about systems of record 

12 and you talked about summary notes. Where are 

13 those accessible or are they? 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: They are not. 

15 MEMBER BEACH: They are not. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: Well historically the 

17 ones that may be on certain site research 

18 database holders, you might be still able to 

19 access through your traditional way. 

20 MEMBER BEACH: So this is going to 

21 stay available for historic. 

22 MR. ELLIOTT: This will stay 
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1 available for historic interest. 

2 MEMBER BEACH: But anything new -- 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: It is not being 

4 added. It is not be used. No this new 

5 application is what will be populated with the 

6 new information. 

7 MEMBER BEACH: So if I have a 

8 question on, I know [identifying information 

9 redacted] had sends in an awful lot of stuff. 

10 If I want to see your response to his 

11 inquiries, where would I find that 

12 information? 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay, that -- 

14 MEMBER BEACH: Is that -- 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: That's a whole 

16 separate matter. That's not considered an 

17 outreach. 

18 MEMBER BEACH: That is not 

19 considered an outreach? 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: No, that's not 

21 considered an outreach. That's [identifying 

22 information redacted] supplying information 
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1 with regard to the Nevada Test Site situation, 

2 either site profile and his concerns about 

3 that or SEC petitions that are underway. 

4 MEMBER BEACH: See I took that in 

5 context that it was interaction with claimants 

6 when you discussed that separate. 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay. System of 

8 records includes everything that NIOSH OCAS 

9 has that contains Privacy-Act related 

10 information as is accessible is keystroke 

11 available, okay. And so that means that if we 

12 have an application that drives this database 

13 for worker outreach, that's in the system of 

14 records. We have claims and claims are 

15 tracked in a separate database as you know, 

16 are not this system. So a claimant 

17 interaction is captured there either in a 

18 phone log or a correspondence file folder. Or 

19 in [identifying information redacted] case, if 

20 it is about his particular claim, I'm not 

21 sharing anything he hasn't already divulged to 

22 you, it would be captured there if it is 
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1 claimant related. However, [identifying 

2 information redacted] is also a petitioner, 

3 okay. And in that right, we go to the -- we 

4 have an application that follows the 

5 petitions, an SEC viewer, that you will be 

6 able to see and you could go to that and see 

7 the petitions that has processed and those 

8 things that he has contributed to that 

9 process. 

10 Also there is an opportunity for 

11 people to comment on site profiles, okay. So 

12 he sends information in or we get letters in 

13 about those. They go into a docket, if that's 

14 the way they are directed. And then we pull 

15 them out of the docket. [identifying 

16 information redacted] has not been directed to 

17 a docket. [identifying information redacted] 

18 been directed to me or to representatives on 

19 my staff about the site profile. So, we 

20 channel that information in to the site 

21 research database folder. We channel it to 

22 those folks that are working on that site 
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1 profile, working on the work group issues 

2 matrix that are dealing with that site 

3 profile. So you have to first know what you 

4 are asking for to determine where you want to 

5 go find it. You see? So this is all the 

6 system of records that we have but we have 

7 different database systems within that, that 

8 track different sets of information. And 

9 right now I think you can see from your side 

10 but I don't know that you've been able to see 

11 this SEC viewer and track petitioners which 

12 you will be able to in the future where you 

13 can see the consultation phase that goes on. 

14 You can monitor that. 

15 MEMBER MUNN: But that is more a 

16 matter of accessibility and responsiveness 

17 than it is outreach? 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, yes. 

19 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I still have the 

20 same question Larry. Under these comments 

21 that come in from either petitioners or 

22 claimants and stuff, there are more of a 
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1 global nature for a particular facility or 

2 site. Are those extracted and put into a 

3 database, separate database where they would 

4 be maybe in relation to the SEC or technical 

5 basis document? 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: Comments that come in 

7 about a site would be provided to the site 

8 profile team. If they come directly to me, I 

9 turn them over to the OCAS point of contact 

10 for that site profile or that site itself. 

11 They in turn and Stu, as well, would be copied 

12 on that. We would make sure that the ORAU 

13 team members are apprised. We would turn to 

14 Kate Kimpan and say we have these issues 

15 identified relative to Nevada test site. Make 

16 sure that your folks are addressing them. The 

17 point of contact for that site, Mark Rolfes, 

18 for example, would turn to his team members, 

19 individual teams members on ORAU and elsewhere 

20 and say these are the issues that have been 

21 raised. They are new or they are not new, how 

22 should we address the new ones? Does that 
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1 answer your question? 

2 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes it does, 

3 thank you. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: But that is not 

5 tracked. I don't believe we have an overall, 

6 general tracking system for issues that you 

7 could look at and go tease out site-specific 

8 or site-related issues. I don't think we have 

9 any animal of that sort. 

10 MEMBER BEACH: I have one more 

11 question. Are we working to 097 at this time 

12 until 012 is put in place? 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: No. 

14 MEMBER BEACH: Not at all. So 097 

15 -- 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: 097 is not a 

17 functional procedure as far as we are 

18 concerned. It's ORAU's procedure on outreach 

19 and ORAU is not performing outreach until ATL 

20 says we need one of your team members to go to 

21 this site with us. ORAU says to our site, our 

22 focus point of contact that we have an issue 
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1 we want to address. We think we can talk to a 

2 few workers and we can get it addressed. ATL 

3 is engaged and we go talk to them. 

4 MEMBER BEACH: I just wanted to 

5 make sure I understood that all the reading I 

6 did was for naught. 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: I'm sorry. 

8 MEMBER BEACH: 012, has anybody has 

9 SC&A seen 012? 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: No. 

11 MEMBER BEACH: How soon? 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: It is a pre13 decisional document until we say it is final 

14 and it is forthcoming. 

15 MEMBER BEACH: How soon? 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: I said it is in the 

17 final stages of review meaning we have some 

18 comments yet to address and incorporate. 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: I think we are 

20 determining accuracy of the resolution. So we 

21 commented. We now have the resolution of the 

22 comments and it is in our shop. It has just 
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1 gotten back to our shop to determine the 

2 adequacy of resolution. That's where it is. 

3 So if the resolutions are adequate, it will be 

4 short, a shorter time. If not then it will be 

5 another cycle to the contractor. 

6 MS. BREYER: Will this work group 

7 get that or will it go to procedures, that's 

8 my next question. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: We'll let the board 

10 know that it has been issued and implemented. 

11 At the same time a lot of this is common 

12 sense and we've been trying to do the common 

13 sense approach here with these outreach 

14 efforts. So our description of what we're 

15 doing shouldn't be much different than what 

16 you read in this document. But yes, we'll 

17 notify the board and the board will then make 

18 a decision on which work group it goes 

19 through. 

20 MEMBER BEACH: Larry, part of it is 

21 common sense but the other part is giving 

22 access to the comments that are raised and 
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1 what's happening to those comments. WISPER, 

2 we could go online up until 2006 and see 

3 NIOSH's comments to the claimant. That is 

4 missing now, in a lot of cases. 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't think WISPER 

6 would show what our comments to claimants 

7 were. 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: We had some 

9 responses. 

10 MEMBER BEACH: Some responses. But 

11 I'm saying that's all we had. Now I wouldn't 

12 know where to go look for some of that stuff. 

13 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: You will be able to 

15 see what we are doing in this new database. 

16 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

17 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: This is 

18 Kathy Demers. You said that part of your 

19 outreach was more individual or small focus 

20 groups discussions. Now is that going to be 

21 included in the OCAS 012 procedure or is that 

22 going to be included elsewhere? 
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1 MR. JOHNSON: Yes, it is in the 

2 procedure. 

3 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Okay. 

4 MR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. I 

5 have a brief follow-up question that relates 

6 to the matter that you just mentioned that 

7 Phil raised. I noticed that very often an 

8 interested party, I won't name any names I 

9 guess with the Privacy Act issue, but a matter 

10 would come in with a whole series of concerns, 

11 questions, new information, commentaries and 

12 very often I would be copied on it or it would 

13 be provided to me. I know eventually Larry, a 

14 lot of this material if not all of this 

15 material reaches your desk. And I have seen 

16 on many occasions where you have prepared on 

17 several sites, including Bethlehem Steel and 

18 some interested parties, Divide Pesticide 

19 comes to mind, perhaps Blocksman. I'm not 

20 sure -- GSI. You would prepare a written 

21 response to those letters and I appreciate you 

22 do copy me on those responses and I noticed 
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1 also many board members. So I do notice that 

2 this living interaction that goes on related 

3 to certain matters for the different sites. 

4 There is paperwork, electronically anyway, 

5 that I observe and I think some board members 

6 observed but the totality of that material 

7 though that is not right now maintained in a 

8 place, a dedicated site where all of this type 

9 of interaction can be recovered so to speak. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: It's maintained in 

11 our controlled correspondence system, another 

12 application system, tracking system, where a 

13 correspondence comes in and it is given a 

14 control number and we provide a suspense date 

15 for a reply to be prepared and a reply is 

16 issued. Generally the people who are engaged 

17 at the site on a specific issue are charged 

18 with developing the response in that control 

19 reply and so they would be blind-copied and 

20 those blind copies of the response and the 

21 original set of, the incoming questions or 

22 issues would also be housed in the files of 
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1 that particular team member. They should be 

2 shared in the site research database folder if 

3 appropriate. So if you go to like Bethlehem 

4 Steel, you would see and you talk with our 

5 controlled correspondence folks, they would be 

6 able to show you the Bethlehem Steel responses 

7 to Mr. Walker. 

8 MR. MAURO: Okay. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: And if you then talk 

10 to, go to our Bethlehem Steel site research 

11 database folder and talk to Mr. Glover, Mr. 

12 Glover could probably point out the same 

13 correspondence. 

14 MR. ZEITOUN: So, with the control 

15 system includes the incoming questions plus 

16 your responses. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. That's good. 

18 MR. MAURO: I have another 

19 question. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: That's only if 

21 somebody writes me. 

22 MR. ZEITOUN: Yes. 
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1 MR. ELLIOTT: And says you've not 

2 answered these questions or these are the 

3 concerns I have. And that doesn't include e4 mail. That's formal -- 

5 MR. ZEITOUN: Correspondence. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: That's formal 

7 correspondence. 

8 MR. ZEITOUN: Back and forth. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: Control system, yes. 

10 MR. MAURO: Okay. 

11 MR. ELLIOTT: E-mail inquiries that 

12 come in to us are forwarded to the appropriate 

13 technical staff for response and so there's an 

14 e-mail interaction that happens at that level. 

15 MR. ZEITOUN: Yes. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: And they would have 

17 to keep those. If it is regarding a petition, 

18 a site class, they would go into, it would be 

19 logged, copies of those e-mails would be 

20 logged into that site profile or that SEC 

21 petition. 

22 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Can I give 
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1 you an example and maybe you can tell me if it 

2 is going to fit into the procedure? Out at 

3 Hanford ORAU and NIOSH have been doing a lot 

4 of one-on-one interviews related to the PFP 

5 facility with, you know, either -- well one6 on-one or with two or three people. Now is 

7 that considered outreach? 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't know that 

9 we would call that outreach in the sense that 

10 we typically define it and write procedures 

11 for it. We almost always interview people 

12 when we're writing a site profile or revising 

13 or determining whether a site profile is 

14 appropriate which is what we are doing at 

15 Hanford. And in that instance we would 

16 document the interviews in the way we normally 

17 document interviews and then go in the SRDB 

18 and be part of the evidence. The reason we 

19 have the interview and you document it is 

20 because it is going to tell you something you 

21 want to use so you document it and put it in 

22 just as you do with your interviews. You 
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1 document the interviews and then put them in 

2 the same system of record. That I don't think 

3 would -- we don't normally think of that or 

4 have not historically thought of that as 

5 outreach and therefore covered under the 

6 outreach procedure. 

7 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Okay. 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: I might just say 

9 one other thing about communications from 

10 claimant. It might be worth remembering and 

11 maybe not, maybe I should keep my mouth shut. 

12 Not every communication from a claimant 

13 warrants further investigation. There are a 

14 lot of communications from claimants with 

15 questions that can be answered with the 

16 investigation that has been to date. And so 

17 not every communication from a claimant 

18 requires, raises issues that are not suitably 

19 addressed. The key element is are we suitably 

20 capturing those and making sure the report or 

21 the work that's going on about that site is 

22 addressing the issue. And one other thing to 
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1 recall, most of the communication, 

2 particularly the technical communication about 

3 SEC classes or site profiles, most of the non4 claim specific communication occurs when the 

5 debate is ongoing. In other words we have 

6 written a product and typically it has a SC&A 

7 review and the board is considering it which 

8 can be as we all know a fairly extensive 

9 period of time when the debate is open. And 

10 during that time all this information can be 

11 readily assimilated into the debate and 

12 weighed against the issues that are already on 

13 the table and it could be supportive of 

14 existing issues or it could be new. So, you 

15 know a lot of this occurs in sort of an open 

16 debate kind of issue and a lot of the 

17 communication we receive about sites occurs 

18 during that time period. 

19 MR. ELLIOTT: A very important 

20 point that he makes to you that for example, 

21 since [identifying information redacted] name 

22 has been raised, a lot of what [identifying 
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1 information redacted] has provided of late, 

2 you won't find any specific responses from us 

3 to it. However, in certain situations that 

4 [identifying information redacted] has raised 

5 an issue or concern you'll find a specific 

6 response. So, we have taken some discretion 

7 as to when and where we engage during the 

8 debate period. 

9 MR. ZEITOUN: But you close the 

10 loop -- I'm using the same [identifying 

11 information redacted] now. You close the loop 

12 of [identifying information redacted] saying I 

13 am not going to address this or this issue has 

14 been addressed before. 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

16 MR. ZEITOUN: That's excellent. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: We have tried, yes. 

18 MR. ZEITOUN: I'm just using this 

19 because sometimes you know the question 

20 doesn't get the responses and the person 

21 outside doesn't know what you are doing about 

22 that. And he is waiting for it. But if you 
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1 close the loop that's a good approach. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: You know, in those 

3 kinds of situations we take deliberate steps 

4 to try to focus what the issue or issues are. 

5 Narrow as best we can with that person what 

6 is trying to be raised and how we can best 

7 answer it. 

8 MR. ZEITOUN: Yes. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: To their 

10 satisfaction. You are always successful. 

11 MR. ZEITOUN: But at least you are 

12 closing the loop 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: We are not leaving 

14 him high hanging there. 

15 MR. ZEITOUN: I have another 

16 question on the procedure 012. Is that going 

17 to take into consideration some of the 

18 comments that SC&A and the board has made on 

19 097? 

20 MR. HINNEFELD: That was -- yes. 

21 MR. ZEITOUN: Because some of the 

22 issues were raised, okay. 
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1 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't think it was 

2 wasted time. 

3 MR. ZEITOUN: No, no. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: It was a starting 

5 point because of the touchstone of what at 

6 that point in was thought to be necessary to 

7 conduct this kind of work. 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: And if I am not 

9 mistaken the findings from 097 are captured in 

10 the procedures tracking database. Do you 

11 remember for sure Wanda? 

12 MEMBER MUNN: The findings are in 

13 fact captured and as a matter of fact this 

14 conversation is of great interest to me 

15 because this procedure was scheduled in my 

16 mind to be on our meeting schedule later this 

17 month. 

18 MR. HINNEFELD: The end of the 

19 month. 

20 MEMBER MUNN: The questions that it 

21 was going to be proposed by me was are there 

22 going to be any responses to any of the 
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1 outstanding -- all of the outstanding open 

2 issues because we had that. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: We hope this will be 

4 responsive to some. 

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, what we will 

6 do is procedure 012 should be responsive, 

7 should be directly responsive to the comments. 

8 MEMBER MUNN: And if it is -- 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: I suspect it will 

10 not be responsive to all of them. 

11 MEMBER MUNN: Well we can -- 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: I'll say, some we 

13 didn't accept, you know. That's our 

14 prerogative and we should explain why we found 

15 them not to be suitable. 

16 MEMBER BEACH: Can you enlighten 

17 us? 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: It's not ready for my 

19 signature and so I'm not in the process yet. 

20 When I see it, if I'm unhappy with it - I 

21 won't sign it. 

22 MR. HINNEFELD: One of them comes 
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1 directly to mind. 

2 MEMBER MUNN: And we will 

3 anticipate that many of the responses to PROC4 097 items, this will be addressed and the 012, 

5 yes. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, conversations 

7 yet to come. 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: One item comes to 

9 mind. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: Go ahead. Go ahead. 

11 You know more about it than I do. 

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Barely. One of the 

13 findings on PROC-097 is that the audio 

14 recordings of the meetings should be retained 

15 and we won't be doing it. Not going to 

16 happen. There is no, see there is no 

17 transcript of that if you keep it. There is 

18 no transcript of that and it very likely 

19 includes privacy act information. 

20 MEMBER MUNN: So. 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: So it were to, if 

22 it were in order to be really available and 
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1 treated the way our records are treated, which 

2 means they are available for people to look at 

3 if they ask for them, we would then need to 

4 transcribe all of those meetings. And then 

5 have a privacy act review of the transcript 

6 and review the transcripts. So for that 

7 reason it has been decided they won't be 

8 retained. They will be retained long enough 

9 to prepare the minutes. They are contract. 

10 The contractor uses them as a tool to prepare 

11 the minutes, just like if I were at the 

12 meeting and I were preparing the minutes, I 

13 would not make a recording. I would write my 

14 notes and I would prepare the minutes from my 

15 notes. The minutes then are available. The 

16 notes in my notebook are not. And so that's 

17 what it would be is the audio recording, the 

18 notes that the contractor will use to prepare 

19 the minutes. That's one finding I know that 

20 will not be addressed. 

21 MR. ZEITOUN: I will make one 

22 comment on that. Would you allow the 
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1 commentors that you took the minutes from to 

2 read for accuracy? 

3 MR. HINNEFELD: I think, I might 

4 need to discuss that with some other folks in 

5 the room. 

6 MR. ZEITOUN: Because, you know, to 

7 read his summary notes -- 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Summary notes to be 

9 sure that -- 

10 MR. ZEITOUN: To reflect summary 

11 minutes that you accurately reflect in his -- 

12 MR. HINNEFELD: We routinely 

13 provide, we routinely provide the summary 

14 minutes to participants. Not necessarily 

15 every participant. 

16 MR. ZEITOUN: Right, I understand. 

17 MR. HINNEFELD: But we do routinely 

18 provide the summary minutes to participants, 

19 yes. Yes, we do that. 

20 MR. ZEITOUN: All right. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: There is another 

22 reason why. The recordings are used as a 
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1 tool. They are not a deliverable under the 

2 contract and we don't want them as a 

3 deliverable because if they are in our system 

4 of records it creates a problem that Stu 

5 outlined for you. But there is another 

6 problem, another obstacle toward capturing 

7 recording and that is a legal one. And it's a 

8 patchwork quilt of states' laws and 

9 regulations on using recording devices. And 

10 we couldn't go into each and every state and 

11 examine the law and make sure we are abiding 

12 by it in each and every case. It just doesn't 

13 make sense and then what happens if the person 

14 says no. You know there is all these legal 

15 problems. 

16 MR. RAFKY: Yes, in some states 

17 they have the permission of the person on the 

18 other end of the phone or meeting both parties 

19 and so yes. 

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: This is 

21 Kathy Demers. Are you going to address 

22 conducting -- how should I say this -- 
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1 sensitive outreach meetings? 

2 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't know if it 

3 says that or not. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: Well I don't know 

5 that, well I haven't read it but a secure 

6 meeting is handled under our security plan. 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: And in reality, I 

8 think we might run afoul of the rules if we 

9 said we are going to have the classified 

10 outreach meeting in classified space and 

11 invite a number of people because the people 

12 in that room while they may be entitled to 

13 hear or see classified information. They may 

14 be in the vicinity of it, that doesn't mean 

15 they are entitled to hear any classified 

16 information. And if they are there to provide 

17 information. They are not learn about the 

18 project. They are there to provide 

19 information, they have no need to know 

20 anything classified that anyone else in the 

21 room says. And so I think we would run afoul 

22 of the rules if we try to have an outreach 
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1 meeting for the purposes of discussing 

2 classified information. I think we could, we 

3 can certainly, if someone says I can't talk 

4 about something and there is something I would 

5 like to talk about, we routinely have 

6 classified interviews. Not routinely, we have 

7 always had the capability to conduct 

8 classified interviews and we have conducted 

9 classified interviews. We do not, we don't do 

10 them routinely. It hasn't happened that much. 

11 But we do that. And so we can have 

12 classified interviews but we would not be 

13 doing any classified outreach meetings as we 

14 call them, which is a group of people. 

15 MR. MAURO: This is John. I think 

16 that is an interesting perspective that just 

17 hit me as you know. Can you folks hear me 

18 okay? The reason I sort of jumped in is I 

19 think the definition of outreach might be a 

20 little ambiguous the way we are using it. It 

21 could be used in a broader sense where you 

22 sort of communicate what anyone outside the 
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1 circle. The circle being NIOSH and its 

2 contractors, the board and its contractors. 

3 And as soon as you reach out and talk to 

4 someone else maybe at DOE for whatever reason, 

5 whether you are giving information or 

6 receiving information, whether its classified 

7 or unclassified, whether you are meeting with 

8 a community, a group. It seems to me that 

9 when they say retrieving or capturing 

10 information, let's say within the classified 

11 setting from individuals at a site, my 

12 understanding is you would not consider that 

13 to be an outreach activity. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: If we are trying to 

15 obtain classified information, we would not 

16 call that outreach, no. 

17 MR. MAURO: Okay. I think it is 

18 important that we make that distinction 

19 because I wasn't quite sure where we were 

20 drawing the boundary by way of definitions. 

21 CHAIR GIBSON: This is Mike. I 

22 think that's one thing that maybe we need to 
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1 spend a little time on is just exactly the 

2 scope of this group. I don't have the 

3 transcripts of the meeting when this motion 

4 was passed for this work group but at least 

5 its allowed us to get it out here and just get 

6 some comments. Its my belief that this work 

7 group is responsible for not just work group 

8 outreach meetings but any concerns that 

9 claimants or advocates may have with their 

10 interactions with the government agency or 

11 this specific government agency, not DOL and 

12 DOE and to hear their concerns and to see if 

13 there is anything that we can do to fix a 

14 perceived problem or actual problem. 

15 MR. ZEITOUN: So what you are 

16 saying that you are dealing with the 

17 communication aspects between the outside and 

18 the NIOSH and this program in general. So 

19 this could go beyond outreach. 

20 CHAIR GIBSON: That's my belief. 

21 MR. ZEITOUN: Based on the 

22 definition I heard from Larry, there is lines 
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1 in between and that's why the Procedure 012 by 

2 definition is going to deal only with one 

3 aspect. The major program of communication is 

4 not in that procedure. There's other things 

5 going on in different areas depends on what 

6 elements and categories they are receiving. 

7 CHAIR GIBSON: I believe there are 

8 other communications with workers and 

9 advocates was part of the purpose of this work 

10 group. Larry or Stu if you guys want to -- 

11 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, the charge to 

12 the work group is on the website and I believe 

13 Ms. Munn is trying to find it here. 

14 MEMBER MUNN: I will in this 

15 miasma. 

16 MR. RAFKY: I have it. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't maybe if you 

18 want to read it. That was the charge you all 

19 put on the website. I don't pretend to know. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't know if this 

21 all came -- I mean I know Paul sent out this 

22 in draft form to us to comment on. But the 
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1 work group will monitor the NIOSH worker 

2 outreach program and evaluate its 

3 effectiveness. To do work group members will 

4 attend outreach meetings as appropriate, 

5 review minutes and related documents that are 

6 generated at such meetings and talk to workers 

7 or other participants when necessary. The 

8 work group should consider developing a formal 

9 assessment instrument such as a follow-up 

10 questionnaire. The work group should report 

11 its findings to the board from time to time 

12 and make recommendations to the board as it 

13 deems appropriate. 

14 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, in our name is 

15 worker outreach, specifically. It appears 

16 that interactions with other agencies would 

17 not fall under that purview. 

18 CHAIR GIBSON: I agree with that. 

19 I was saying other worker claimant or advocate 

20 involvement with NIOSH, if they think, for 

21 example, the information they provide is not 

22 being followed through with appropriately or 
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1 if they think that the program is not working 

2 that there should be some communication where 

3 we could see, you know, is there an outreach 

4 problem and try to find a solution to it or 

5 recommendation for a solution to it to NIOSH. 

6 Is that in the bounds of this work group or 

7 am I, maybe we should go back to the board and 

8 discuss it with them? 

9 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: This is 

10 Kathy Demers. Can you solicit some input from 

11 the workers themselves? 

12 CHAIR GIBSON: We want to hear the 

13 workers' input today but as far as the scope 

14 of this work group, I think that's ultimately 

15 what the board recommended or charged us with 

16 but I just want to make sure that the NIOSH in 

17 particular and our contractors are on the same 

18 page as me or they think I'm off base. 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Well I think 

20 probably at the time of the charter there may 

21 not have been a universal definition of the 

22 worker outreach program. So it was written a 
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1 worker outreach program and that's the way 

2 they chartered it. I don't know that 

3 everybody had the same definition at the time, 

4 certainly not me. We didn't sit down and this 

5 is what it means. I don't remember any 

6 discussion along those lines. So I suspect, 

7 you know, that, well first of all I don't 

8 think we at NIOSH are going to take any 

9 position at all on what the work group looks 

10 at. We will be supportive of the work groups 

11 out there. If the board member or the work 

12 group members would feel like they would like 

13 to clarify this with the whole board and just 

14 tell the whole board, hey this charter reads 

15 this way but there are other avenues besides 

16 what's technically called the worker outreach 

17 program and could we and we just want to make 

18 sure its clear, maybe modify the charter to 

19 say that all those communication avenues are 

20 included or something like that. I mean that 

21 might be something the work group might want 

22 to do. I think from NIOSH's standpoint 
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1 though, we'll support whatever the -- respond 

2 to whatever work group. 

3 MR. ZEITOUN: For example, in the 

4 NEPA world, where I come from when they talk 

5 outreach, its by definition encompass all 

6 communication except the policy. 

7 MS. HOWELL: This is Emily Howell. 

8 I just want to interject here. I think the 

9 work group that's having questions about what 

10 exactly is the realm of their charter and 

11 these are questions that need to be going back 

12 to the full board for a discussion. I don't 

13 think that -- I think there are questions that 

14 the full board needs to be involved in that 

15 discussion and its not something where the 

16 working group can kind of define for itself 

17 what its going to look at. 

18 MEMBER MUNN: I certainly agree to 

19 a large extent with what Emily had to say. I 

20 was very pleased to see the word goal involved 

21 in our agenda today because I was hoping the 

22 discussion around this table would include a 
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1 definition of what the goal of this particular 

2 work group is. Because if the goal of this 

3 work group is to make sure that as much 

4 information about this program and its 

5 availability to potential claimants is 

6 available. If that's the goal, then that's 

7 one thing. If the goal is to encourage as 

8 many filings as possible, that's another goal 

9 entirely. And if it as stated in our current 

10 charter, work group members will attend 

11 outreach meetings as appropriate, review 

12 minutes and related documents that are 

13 generated and talk to workers and other 

14 participants when necessary. If that's our 

15 goal then we are talking about three entirely 

16 different actions here, and Emily is, I think, 

17 accurate when she indicates that if this, 

18 certainly if this group does not understand 

19 clearly what its charter is, then it needs to 

20 go back to the board for a little polishing 

21 before we can go to much further I would 

22 think. 
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1 MR. KATZ: Let me inject. And I 

2 agree that Emily, with your point that the 

3 work group need s to go back to the board for 

4 clarification but I do think it is useful to 

5 have this conversation and whatever Abe has to 

6 contribute now and others but to flesh out 

7 what the scope of possibilities are so that 

8 when Mike goes back and the work group goes 

9 back to the board they can sort of paint the 

10 whole picture and then get clear direction. 

11 So I think it is helpful. 

12 MS. HOWELL: I completely agree 

13 with you Ted. I think it is perfectly 

14 appropriate for the group to be kind of 

15 thinking about the different ways they could 

16 go. Just before any additional action is 

17 taken on moving in that direction, you need to 

18 go to the board and discuss with them if you 

19 deem that it is necessary to broaden your 

20 charter then that generally something that the 

21 full board can do. But it's a good idea to be 

22 discussing that now in the smaller group 
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1 context and then you know, hopefully everybody 

2 will know what they think about that by the 

3 time you take it to the full board. Luckily 

4 there is meeting there soon. 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: This is Larry 

6 Elliott. I think I agree with where Abe is 

7 coming from when we talk about outreach. What 

8 I think of is our communications. 

9 MR. ZEITOUN: Right. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: How do we 

11 communicate. 

12 MR. ZEITOUN: It depends on how we 

13 define it. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: Right. And if we say 

15 and we've been using worker outreach to 

16 specify what I introduced to you earlier. 

17 Those that are SEC-related or site-profile18 related or you know, small focus groups that 

19 tackle a technical issue that we've got. 

20 Outreach in its whole complexity though deals 

21 with all of our communications. Laurie is 

22 developing, you know, in the future you are 
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1 going to see hopefully a chat online, live 

2 chat session with our SEC counselor, where she 

3 can answer questions and interact with 

4 petition -- potential petitioners. Laurie is 

5 also developing some simple brochures that 

6 would hopefully better explain 83.14/83.13. 

7 We've already got brochures. Another outreach 

8 that I didn't talk about that we would say is 

9 worker outreach, as claimant outreach, is 

10 having our public health advisors attend the 

11 advisory board meetings and set up interviews 

12 with claimants. That's another component of 

13 communications but it is certainly outreach as 

14 we would like to. 

15 MR. ZEITOUN: Right, it's a 

16 component of outreach. You are correct. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: So I apologize if my 

18 earlier remarks or comments kind of presented 

19 confusion about what your mission is and Stu's 

20 right. We're not going to offer any thoughts 

21 or comments about that other than to support 

22 you as best we can. 
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1 CHAIR GIBSON: They didn't confuse 

2 the issue at all. I just, I thought this was 

3 just a good thought to make sure we in the 

4 room believe our bounds. I wasn't trying to 

5 change any bounds. If we head down a path and 

6 then so and so says that's not in the path and 

7 we disagree in this room. Kind of get the 

8 ground rules and then go back to the board and 

9 get a clear definition at the next meeting. 

10 Okay, Larry, NIOSH, do you guys 

11 have anything else just on the general 

12 overview? 

13 Are we ready to move on to SC&A and 

14 talk about what's went on to date and just 

15 their opinion of where they see things and 

16 offer ideas, suggestions for us all to 

17 consider here? 

18 MR. ZEITOUN: Actually I could 

19 start with that by saying that we already 

20 covered this issue already by saying that we 

21 gave comments and it is reflected in the 

22 summary of findings on November 27. There 
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1 were five plus we have two observations, 

2 summary of the observations. And also we have 

3 like eight suggestions given that document and 

4 I presume now that this issue is moot because 

5 it is going to be incorporated into or 

6 addressed in the new Procedure 012, so at 

7 least you know and this comment actually were 

8 on a partial document because the WISPER issue 

9 was not being addressed and this is also 

10 moving aside. So the whole thing is -- 

11 CHAIR GIBSON: There's an 

12 accessibility problem. 

13 MR. ZEITOUN: Yes, exactly. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, the problem 

15 with WISPER is it was created in a platform, a 

16 software platform that wasn't adaptable to the 

17 government system. So a conversion had to 

18 occur which took some time. 

19 MR. ZEITOUN: The way is to say 

20 that we wait for the Procedure 012 and 

21 redefining the definition of outreach and go 

22 from there. 
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1 MR. ELLIOTT: Would it pay 

2 dividends to do that? 

3 MR. HINNEFELD: I was just looking 

4 through the findings and like you said there 

5 are five. 

6 MR. ZEITOUN: Yes, five findings 

7 and then after that there are two summaries. 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. 

9 MR. ZEITOUN: Summary of 

10 observation, the conflict of interest issue. 

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: This is the first 

13 opportunity SC&A has had to -- 

14 MR. ZEITOUN: Correct. 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: On the record 

16 express. 

17 MR. ZEITOUN: Correct. 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: Their findings, so -- 

19 MR. ZEITOUN: That's correct. 

20 MEMBER MUNN: Are we talking 097? 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: A couple, I mean 

22 the first finding which is about the audio 
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1 recording. 

2 MR. ZEITOUN: Right, you already 

3 addressed that. 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: The second 

5 recommendation which is the classified 

6 outreach. 

7 MR. ZEITOUN: Right. 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: We've kind of 

9 talked about that. Okay, just in case not 

10 everybody has this, the second finding is the 

11 procedure is not addressed, follow-up 

12 discussions with particular workers on how 

13 these are documented. I don't know if the 

14 procedural -- I want to make sure I understand 

15 all of these. 

16 MEMBER BEACH: Is it appropriate to 

17 have SC&A go ahead and give their report on 

18 this 097 since you've said they haven't had 

19 that opportunity to do so. Just go through 

20 the findings or at least the ones we haven't 

21 covered already. 

22 MR. ELLIOTT: Would they do it in 
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1 procedures? 

2 MEMBER MUNN: We show nine findings 

3 and procedures. 

4 MEMBER BEACH: Right, and that's 

5 the -- 

6 MR. ZEITOUN: That is in our 

7 database yes. 

8 MEMBER BEACH: Right, yes. 

9 MR. ZEITOUN: Yes. The nine, some 

10 of them are overlapping. 

11 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

12 MR. ZEITOUN: So actually what's in 

13 the report are more accurate than what's in 

14 the database. The database is overlapping. 

15 MEMBER BEACH: Correct. 

16 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Would you 

17 like me to clarify? 

18 CHAIR GIBSON: Sure, go ahead. 

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Okay, as far 

20 as follow-up discussions, when you are in a 

21 worker outreach community you are going to 

22 find somebody that's really knowledgeable on 
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1 topics. And you may choose to follow-up with 

2 them. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

4 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: And this is 

5 kind of getting at the process of how you do 

6 that. 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: So in other words 

8 in the procedure on outreach we would want to 

9 refer to something that was sort of described 

10 in the interview process which is really what 

11 you are talking about. You follow-up and you 

12 interview these specific individuals who 

13 really seem to -- I'm thinking about GSI. 

14 There were guys at GSI who knew so much about 

15 that betatron and how betatron worked. That 

16 we did in fact follow-up with an interview. 

17 So those interviews I'm sure are documented 

18 the way they normally are. So that's what your 

19 comment is. Is should the procedure say that 

20 be alert for people who can provide 

21 particular, you know, information about the 

22 problem or some of the problems and issues or 
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1 potential issues at the site and make sure 

2 that the appropriate people get to the 

3 interview stage. Is that the kind of comment 

4 -- 

5 MR. ZEITOUN: Even on the technical 

6 aspects. When I do some interviews when I 

7 follow up later there are certain topics that 

8 come up in the interview that are beyond my 

9 expertise. 

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. 

11 MR. ZEITOUN: Although we are 

12 health physicists and environmental and we 

13 know operation. We know, but certain areas 

14 goes beyond our expertise and when we go for 

15 evaluating that issue, you have to go to the 

16 expert. And the expert said I really don't 

17 understand what he meant by that. Let me talk 

18 to him and follow-up with him and try to make 

19 it happen. So this is the follow-up on things 

20 to be sure that you are fine-tuning the 

21 finding because sometimes if you are not 

22 experts in the area, you may make wrong 
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1 conclusions. So that's the type of the 

2 follow-up to be sure that the topic from the 

3 issue when it comes up is well understood 

4 because this is an important aspect. 

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: And then, we 

6 have finding in here. Many of these workers 

7 are very old, some of which can't make it to 

8 worker outreach meetings. And one of our 

9 concerns was that they didn't have the 

10 opportunity to provide their input or get the 

11 same information that the individuals 

12 attending the worker outreach meeting would 

13 get. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: I understand. I 

15 understand and the reason and the basis for 

16 the finding. I'm struggling a little bit with 

17 how to do that. I mean, if they can't make it 

18 to the outreach meeting, there has to be some 

19 mechanism for us to (a) know about them. We 

20 won't necessarily know about them. If we find 

21 out, you know -- if they find out about the 

22 outreach meeting and they contact us. I'm not 
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1 promising anything. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: What is the purpose 

3 of the outreach meeting? 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, they would 

5 have something to do with it to. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: I mean if the 

7 outreach meeting is site-profile or SEC 

8 evaluation driven, looking at specific 

9 questions and trying to find the answers to 

10 it, then I would think if we identified that 

11 individual, they self-identified as somebody 

12 that knew about that, we would go seek them 

13 out. We would go to their home. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: We do that. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: We've done that. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: I mean, we have 

17 sought out people. 

18 MR. HINNEFELD: If the purpose is 

19 we're having a town hall meeting to explain 

20 what we do or an SEC counselor meeting or an 

21 ombudsman to tell what happens with an SEC 

22 petition and a person can't get there, if they 
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1 make it known to us, the counselor or 

2 ombudsman would contact them. 

3 MS. BREYER: This is Laurie. I 

4 don't know think that it is uncommon that 

5 people have called me. When we send out 

6 letters to people, because that's typically 

7 one of our ways of doing outreach and 

8 procedures is that we are doing either a town 

9 hall meeting or an SEC outreach meeting or 

10 even an SEC worker outreach meeting in support 

11 of an evaluation report, we'll send letters to 

12 groups of people and then at the bottom of the 

13 letter it will say, please contact with any 

14 information or questions. I've had people 

15 call me and say, I can't attend the meeting. 

16 Is there something I can speak to and we'll 

17 get them in touch with the health physicist or 

18 contact point for who is going to be out at 

19 the meeting to see what kind of questions that 

20 they are going to be asking at that time. So 

21 I've had that happen plenty of times where 

22 people get the letter and it has the contact 
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1 information on who to contact. You know, if 

2 you have any questions or need information, 

3 please contact so and so. They will call and 

4 say I can't attend the meeting and I have 

5 information I want to provide and I can't 

6 attend the meeting can you tell me what you 

7 are going to be discussing. I've sent 

8 PowerPoints to people. So it's not uncommon 

9 for them to contact us based on the letters 

10 they receive. 

11 I would say it might be a little 

12 different with some of the more focused worker 

13 outreach meetings where it may be getting in 

14 touch with the union as opposed to maybe 

15 having a letter of mass mailing that we send 

16 out. I think we always in our communication 

17 try to provide contact information so if 

18 somebody does have a question or want to 

19 provide information. 

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: So it would 

21 be deferred to the interview process? 

22 MS. BREYER: We brought the 
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1 contact, point of contact is what I usually 

2 do. I don't know how the HP would handle it 

3 at that point. But we'll listen to any 

4 information that they have to provide or also 

5 if they have something in writing. They go 

6 through the process Larry described a minute 

7 ago, who will submit comments in writing. 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. 

9 MR. ZEITOUN: That goes back to the 

10 same issue you know, the purpose of the 

11 meeting and the outreach. That's why 097 or 

12 012, when it comes out has a very good 

13 definition of your objectives reiterating what 

14 John Mauro was saying. The procedures is 

15 based on your objective and definition 

16 insight. Then after that we can go beyond 

17 that regarding the communications in general. 

18 But at least for that procedure, the 

19 definition has to be clear as boundaries. 

20 CHAIR GIBSON: I think that, Wanda 

21 you've made some e-mail comments for some 

22 items to discuss. That kind of fits into what 
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1 you were touching on. 

2 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

3 CHAIR GIBSON: You discussed the 

4 goals a little bit on how to measure them and 

5 stuff. 

6 MEMBER MUNN: Exactly. 

7 CHAIR GIBSON: Do you want to 

8 comment on that a little further? 

9 MEMBER MUNN: I don't think there 

10 is much more to say other than what I've 

11 already said. I see personally outreach as 

12 being an attempt to make sure that everyone 

13 who wants the information about the program 

14 has all the information about the program that 

15 we can give them. I don't see outreach as an 

16 appropriate way to generate claims or to 

17 necessarily attempt to identify additional, 

18 anything other than additional venues for 

19 information that we have not. That to me is a 

20 major outreach activity. Trying to make sure 

21 the people that we do reach have an 

22 opportunity to feed back to us other groups or 
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1 entities and individuals that we have not 

2 reached. But outside of that, the definition 

3 of outreach if it is going to encompass all 

4 communications is exceeding broad and I'm not 

5 at all sure how any group, even the board 

6 itself, much less a small work group, can 

7 encompass all communications being outreached. 

8 MR. ZEITOUN: You see, I will give 

9 you another example which goes back to 

10 emphasis that. When we started on the NEPA 

11 issues a long time ago, it started with 

12 something called public participation. 

13 MEMBER MUNN: Oh yes. 

14 MR. ZEITOUN: Getting the public to 

15 participate and talk about the issues. They 

16 tried and it became bigger. It became 

17 outreach. Now its bigger than that. They 

18 call it comment response. All the comments 

19 goes in and you respond to it in the document. 

20 So its more the communication. That's what 

21 we are saying communication aspects. What's 

22 going back and forth, except for the policy. 
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1 We put the policy of the agency on the side. 

2 We deal with everything coming in or out 

3 regardless if its coming from federal, state 

4 or people. And here you have to define, also, 

5 claimants, you know. So it's a bigger problem 

6 than just, it depends on what the definition 

7 that you are going to put on outreach. Here, 

8 the way I see it, the outreach was defined 

9 narrowly. 

10 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

11 MR. ZEITOUN: Just for one issue, 

12 one communication. 

13 MEMBER MUNN: The workers. 

14 MR. ZEITOUN: Yes and defined by 

15 workers. 

16 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, because that was 

17 interpreted I believe at the time to be the 

18 concern of the board. To be assured that all 

19 workers were in fact notified of the program 

20 and of how it operated. 

21 CHAIR GIBSON: I don't specifically 

22 want to go back into the scope of it, but you 
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1 also had some concerns about whatever our 

2 mission is, how do we review the objections 

3 and kind of track, you know, not necessarily 

4 track them in a matrix but grade them on how 

5 well they are being achieved. Did I misread 

6 that or do you want to elaborate on that? 

7 MEMBER MUNN: No, I don't think you 

8 misread it. It's just that I've slept several 

9 times since I wrote that and I need to go back 

10 to my own e-mail to see what I was thinking at 

11 the time I did it. 

12 CHAIR GIBSON: If we want to, why 

13 don't we take about a ten minute break and 

14 Wanda can look up her comments. After the 

15 break we'll come back and hopefully shortly 

16 after the break maybe we can get some comments 

17 from the workers and advocates that's on the 

18 line. 

19 MR. KATZ: Okay, so we'll be coming 

20 up again about five to 11:00. I'm just going 

21 to put the line on mute, everyone on the 

22 phone. Thanks. 
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1 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

2 went off the record at 10:44 a.m. and resumed 

3 at 10:58 a.m.) 

4 MR. KATZ: Okay, for folks on the 

5 phone will someone let us know that you are 

6 still there. 

7 MR. MAURO: John Mauro still here. 

8 MR. KATZ: Great. Phil are you 

9 still with us? 

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay, I am here 

11 Ted. 

12 MR. KATZ: Great, okay. So we're 

13 ready to start back up right? 

14 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay, when we left I 

15 think Wanda was going to have some -- 

16 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, I think the 

17 simplest and most direct thing to do would be 

18 for me to read the e-mail that I sent to you 

19 and the other board members on this particular 

20 work group. In other aspects of the board's 

21 work there is great emphasis on the quality, 

22 accuracy and completeness of information used. 
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1 Some discussion on that same level of need 

2 and outreach interactions is probably in 

3 order. It would be informative to review the 

4 stated goals of worker outreach programs and 

5 address whether there is any quantitative way 

6 to measure the degree to which the various 

7 efforts, past and present are achieving those 

8 goals. To the best of my knowledge I've only 

9 heard outreach expectations articulated in a 

10 general way. The formal expression of the 

11 established philosophy needs to be at hand for 

12 review. This would clearly involve 

13 participation of representatives and other 

14 agencies as well as NIOSH. We should 

15 determine who that should be and try to assure 

16 that they can attend at least some portion of 

17 the meetings. That I think is the thrust of 

18 my real question about and we've already 

19 addressed to some degree my concerns, 

20 personally about what our goals are and how we 

21 go about establishing those. I don't think 

22 we've resolved that quite yet. But there's 
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1 also the issue of what's the point in doing 

2 this unless we are achieving whatever that 

3 goal is. We need to establish our goal and 

4 once we've established our goal, how are we 

5 going to determine that we are anywhere near 

6 achieving it. We haven't, to the best of my 

7 knowledge we haven't discussed the possibility 

8 of how we evaluate what's been done and how to 

9 change that if we want to do something else. 

10 CHAIR GIBSON: And so, I guess I'll 

11 just throw this out. Would that be a process 

12 this work group solely would try to track or 

13 is that, is there something that NIOSH does 

14 in-house to track your, what you believe is 

15 your own effectiveness in the worker outreach, 

16 worker communication areas or I'm just 

17 throwing that general question out for 

18 discussion? 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, nothing comes 

20 to mind that strikes me as a way to measure 

21 the effectiveness of our communication 

22 program. 
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1 MEMBER MUNN: Can we -- 

2 MR. HINNEFELD: I guess measuring 

3 effectiveness of communication probably 

4 wouldn't even be in my bailiwick or maybe 

5 others who would be involved in it. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: We have had research 

7 projects proposed on evaluating our 

8 communication effectiveness but they were not 

9 funded. 

10 MEMBER MUNN: I guess one of the 

11 questions would be do we even have accessible 

12 records that would give us a better feel for 

13 how many individuals, how many groups, how 

14 many different types of organizations we have 

15 been successful in knowing that we are 

16 interfacing with? How many newspaper ads? Do 

17 we even have those numbers available? 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, maybe J.J. or 

19 Vern can fill in behind me here or Stu. If 

20 you ask us how many newspaper, press 

21 announcements, is that one of your examples? 

22 MEMBER MUNN: Press announcements 
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1 and ads? 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: Press announcements 

3 of a opportunity to interact with NIOSH have 

4 been issued. We could produce that. We can 

5 go and identify how many of those have been 

6 prepared. The communications team can 

7 generate that up. Can they do a report 

8 immediately? No. It would take a little bit 

9 of pulling together and assembling the 

10 information. You know we have multiple 

11 reports from ATL and this is where Vern and 

12 J.J. may want to speak up, that summarize the 

13 activities for that past month. Those would 

14 certainly stand as I think there are some 

15 business-sensitive information there that 

16 would have to be redacted but they do provide 

17 a summary of effort during that. 

18 MR. McDOUGALL: If you want to look 

19 at the scope and number of organizations and 

20 people that have been reached. The minutes of 

21 all the meetings are of course on the website 

22 and from that it's relatively easy to compile 
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1 a universe of the organizations. The number 

2 of people is of course available from the 

3 sign-in sheets which are not on the websites 

4 but they certainly can be easily -- it can be 

5 easily compiled. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: If you want to know 

7 how many folks have attended one of our 

8 workshops, we can tell you that numbers as 

9 well. So it depends upon what you are asking, 

10 you know, what you are evaluating. It depends 

11 on how you frame your evaluation. 

12 MEMBER MUNN: The goal, and it also 

13 depends on what's the goal. We can't make any 

14 -- I don't think any group can make an 

15 evaluation about how well you are doing if you 

16 don't have a clear definition of what your 

17 goal is and then some, at least rough estimate 

18 of how far your goals, are you achieving that 

19 goal. And to the best of my knowledge, 

20 certainly I add a warning before we even 

21 pursue this very much. We don't want to 

22 complicate this situation to the point where 
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1 we are not doing what we want to do. We are 

2 trying to look at what we ought to be doing 

3 instead. We can complicate ourselves right 

4 out of effectiveness in communication and one 

5 doesn't want to do that. But in the absence 

6 of clearly defined goal and some rough first 

7 estimate of how effective those efforts have 

8 been in achieving those goals, it's hard to 

9 see how to proceed in an effective manner. 

10 MR. ZEITOUN: The communication is 

11 existing, you know. Just listening to Larry 

12 and everybody around here, the communication 

13 is existing. The information are available. 

14 What is missing is the link of this 

15 information to you. You want to know what's 

16 happening to confirm that you are proceeding 

17 based on the charter we have. That's the 

18 whole thing. How are we going to work on 

19 getting this link to you and to whoever wants 

20 the information. 

21 MEMBER MUNN: Because the question 

22 really boils down to is worker outreach doing 
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1 any good in regard to whatever our goal turns 

2 out to be? 

3 MR. ZEITOUN: Right, right. 

4 MEMBER MUNN: And if it needs to be 

5 adjusted, how, where and why? 

6 MR. ZEITOUN: That's the link, yes. 

7 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: This is 

8 Kathy Demers. Just so I could get ready for 

9 this meeting, I put together just some general 

10 information on the number of claims that NIOSH 

11 has. Whether there was a worker outreach 

12 meeting. Where there is a TBD and where there 

13 is an SEC that existed. And I could pass it 

14 around. 

15 CHAIR GIBSON: Sure. 

16 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: But I really 

17 want NIOSH and ATL to comment on that before I 

18 made it official. 

19 CHAIR GIBSON: We'll give them an 

20 opportunity to comment and then pass it out at 

21 some point in the future if you want. While 

22 we are talking about this if there any worker 
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1 advocates or claimants on the phone that have 

2 any comments about worker outreach, worker 

3 communications concerning the OCAS-end the 

4 program, if you want to identify yourself and 

5 make your comments at this point. We could go 

6 ahead and hear from you. 

7 MS. KLEA: This is Bonnie Klea, 

8 Santa Susana in California. I think the 

9 worker outreach was done very well with Laurie 

10 Breyer's help in sending out the letters and I 

11 met people that I wouldn't have met trying to 

12 find them on my own. And basically who has 

13 names of the workers is the corporation or the 

14 union. And I had no record at all trying to 

15 work with the union. They've gone absolutely 

16 silent in working with me. So that would be a 

17 very good resource, I think. 

18 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay, thanks Bonnie. 

19 Anyone else? Ms. Barrie are you still on the 

20 line? 

21 MS. BARRIE: Yes. I do have a 

22 couple of comments. One of the things that 
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1 you've been discussing as to notify the 

2 claimant. I understand that Ms. Breyer has a 

3 letter to send out. But as you know, NIOSH 

4 hosts public meetings with the advisory board, 

5 the working group, and DOL advertises on their 

6 website, town hall meetings. I think it would 

7 be fairly simple for NIOSH to do the same 

8 thing on their website for outreach. 

9 The other thing I would like to 

10 address is I think that Mr. Elliott said that 

11 they do use, they do tape the outreach meeting 

12 but it is only used as a tool and that is 

13 because it would be difficult to check out 

14 each individual state's laws concerning taping 

15 meetings. But, the advisory board meetings 

16 are recorded and transcribed so I don't 

17 understand why the worker outreach meeting 

18 couldn't be. 

19 And my last comment and this might 

20 pertain to the Rocky Flats outreach meeting, I 

21 think the best bet is to have a general 

22 advertised town hall type meeting or the NIOSH 
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1 work outreach meeting, I'm sorry, and then 

2 identify the individual too that would be to 

3 interview one on one. That way you can get a 

4 lot of information from a lot of different 

5 people and then just to see what they really 

6 need to, the people that they really need to 

7 get to and provide an opportunity to allow us 

8 to make comments during those meetings. 

9 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay, thank you. 

10 MR. McKEEL: Mike, this is Dan 

11 McKeel. 

12 CHAIR GIBSON: Yes Dan, go ahead. 

13 MR. McKEEL: Can you hear me all 

14 right. 

15 CHAIR GIBSON: Yes. 

16 MR. McKEEL: I had a couple of 

17 comments to make. The first one is of two 

18 interviews that I gave. One to SC&A and one 

19 to NIOSH. The interview to SC&A was the 

20 Weldon Spring site profile revision and that 

21 was on September 8. At the end of that I was 

22 promised that I would get a copy of the 
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1 transcript of what I said to go over and make 

2 sure that it was transcribed correctly. And I 

3 just wanted to mention that its been three 

4 months and I haven't gotten that transcript 

5 yet. 

6 The other transcript was a worker 

7 who asked me to join in for an exit interview 

8 and that there would be a transcript of that 

9 meeting, and I have not gotten a copy of that 

10 either. That is one comment. 

11 The second comment is before the 

12 break I believe there was a suggestion that 

13 SC&A be allowed to discuss its findings and 

14 there seemed to be some discussion of whether 

15 there were five findings or nine findings and 

16 I tried to write down that discussion. As far 

17 as I can see those points weren't really gone 

18 through very systematically. So it seems to 

19 me that that's something that the work group 

20 needs to do and really needs to do today if 

21 possible. Particularly since it was commented 

22 that those findings have not been discussed 
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1 yet in the work group. 

2 The second thing is -- the third 

3 thing is I think when Emily Howell commented 

4 about and Larry Elliott and the discussion of 

5 the tapes and why the audio tapes couldn't be 

6 retained that there were so many conflicting 

7 state laws. Well, my take on that is some of 

8 the state laws actually require for public 

9 meetings there to be verbatim minutes and also 

10 some of them require audio recordings to be 

11 made and retained. So, you know it's a 

12 double-edged sword. You may use those 

13 conflicting laws as a reason not to retain the 

14 audio tapes. But I think there are some that 

15 explicitly say you should do that. So it 

16 seems to me there should be an expanded 

17 treatment of that from Emily and her group and 

18 the legal group on just exactly why those 

19 tapes should not be kept. 

20 I think there's much to be said for 

21 retaining that information as a record of the 

22 raw input that was made to whoever takes the 
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1 notes. In my opinion those summaries, some of 

2 the summaries in particular, are very short 

3 and truncated and don't have an accurate 

4 rendition of what was actually said at the 

5 outreach meeting. 

6 Another point is for the group to 

7 consider, is I think it would be very useful 

8 for everybody if NIOSH could give some 

9 specific examples of information that they 

10 have gleaned at outreach meetings and then 

11 have actually been incorporated into site 

12 profiles or technical documents which are 

13 always billed as living documents, but it is 

14 very hard for many of the advocates to see 

15 that their comments are actually incorporated 

16 into those technical documents. So, at some 

17 point that would be very useful for NIOSH to 

18 let us know how those things are used. 

19 I just have a couple more comments. 

20 It is clear to many of the advocates or at 

21 least the advocates and the claimants, many of 

22 us feel that worker input is given far less 
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1 weight than are documents. And I just wanted 

2 to comment that you know there is a reason 

3 from court proceedings that that is really a 

4 flawed idea that documents have more weight 

5 than worker input should and that is in 

6 criminal cases where eyewitness accounts are 

7 given far more weight than any other kind of 

8 hearsay evidence or written documents or 

9 anything. The key evidence there is what 

10 people see. And I keep on coming back to the 

11 Dow workers, many of whom attest to thorium, 

12 magnesium alloy shipments to Rocky Flats, and 

13 by now we have on the record from DOE that the 

14 specific kind of alloys that they said were 

15 sent to Rocky Flats were actually used in 

16 nuclear weapons production by the AEC from 

17 1956 to 1969. So, we feel that that weighting 

18 is really quite flawed. 

19 The final point I would like to 

20 make is that this idea of redacting names from 

21 some of the outreach meeting summaries, not 

22 all but some, is really being applied very 
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1 inconsistently, and I really wish it could be 

2 revisited because by eliminating names and in 

3 some cases job descriptions and even 

4 employment dates, it really destroys the value 

5 of those transcripts. Now I understand that 

6 the board and SC&A and NIOSH may have the 

7 unredacted transcripts, but just as a way of 

8 being transparent that's very detrimental I 

9 think. So, I wish you would consider that. 

10 The other comment I've got to make 

11 is to Ms. Munn talking about the goal of this 

12 work group. I mean I find it incredible. 

13 This work group has been chartered now for 

14 more than a year, and it seems to me that 

15 figuring out the goal and what the work group 

16 is all about should have been done at the 

17 outset. So that's just a comment, and I 

18 appreciate the opportunity to make some 

19 comments. Thank you, Mike. 

20 CHAIR GIBSON: Thank you, Dan. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: Mike, can I go back? 

22 CHAIR GIBSON: Yes. 
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1 MR. ELLIOTT: Dan, I want to go 

2 back to the start of your comments where you 

3 were mentioning that you felt you were owed 

4 transcripts. Who owes you what on 

5 transcripts? 

6 MR. McKEEL: Well, SC&A owes me a 

7 transcript of my interview on Weldon Springs. 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: Oh, okay. So that's 

9 not OCAS. And then there was another one I 

10 thought you mentioned. 

11 CHAIR GIBSON: Exit interview. 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: And that's a close 

13 out interview with a claimant. 

14 MR. McKEEL: Yes, and I thought at 

15 that interview that we were going to get a 

16 copy of the transcript. Maybe I misunderstood 

17 that. 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: I think you perhaps 

19 misunderstood because we typically don't make 

20 transcripts of close out interviews or the 

21 opening interviews. 

22 MR. McKEEL: Okay. 
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1 MR. ELLIOTT: The opening 

2 interviews are conducted with a questionnaire, 

3 and the questionnaire is filled out on a 

4 computer. As you know those are given back to 

5 the claimant to edit, comment on. But the 

6 closeout interview, unless there are specific 

7 questions and issues that are raised in that, 

8 that the claimant or the authorized 

9 representative corresponds to us on, we 

10 wouldn't normally capture minutes or notes or 

11 even a transcript of those sessions. 

12 MR. McKEEL: Okay, well maybe I got 

13 your procedures confused with the Department 

14 of Labor's then because I know on exit 

15 interviews, the final ones, where they do a 

16 final adjudication, then those interviews 

17 there is a transcript made of those. Okay, 

18 well that -- 

19 MR. ELLIOTT: Certainly if you have 

20 something that you want to raise out of that 

21 closeout interview with us, we'd ask you to do 

22 so in writing so that we can start our 
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1 document. 

2 MR. McKEEL: I think that's a good 

3 idea. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you. Thank you 

5 for the clarification. 

6 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay and I think 

7 SC&A has got a comment for you also Dan. 

8 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Hey Dan, the 

9 Weldon Springs interviews are done, and they 

10 are being submitted to DOE for review before I 

11 can give them to the interviewees. 

12 MR. McKEEL: I understand that, but 

13 you know, that's another issue that is not 

14 really directly relevant for this work group, 

15 but it certainly is a comment for the entire 

16 program. I understand what you are saying but 

17 it is taking way too long. That's the point. 

18 Just way, way, way, way too long. And if 

19 it's the Privacy Act group that's holding it 

20 up because they are taking too long or the 

21 Department of Energy has to review it, they 

22 are taking too long. The whole process takes 
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1 too long. Those interviews and those 

2 transcripts should be gotten back within a 

3 matter of a couple of weeks. That's really my 

4 comment on it. It goes for the entire 

5 program. That whole thing just needs to be 

6 speeded up dramatically. So I understand 

7 where the delays are, but that doesn't mean 

8 that the delays are in any way acceptable. 

9 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: I just 

10 wanted to let you know where they were. 

11 MR. McKEEL: I know where they are. 

12 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Mike, this is 

13 Phil. I'd like to go back to one of Terrie 

14 Barrie's comments there -- 

15 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay, go ahead. 

16 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: -- as far site 

17 experts. I think we need to have it available 

18 so that a person who has -- is not necessarily 

19 classified as site expert but they may be 

20 aware of a process or a situation that existed 

21 in a facility that sometimes site experts 

22 don't know that they can have this information 
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1 put into the same database with the site 

2 expert's comments. 

3 MR. HINNEFELD: I think, by and 

4 large that should happen. I think SC&A and 

5 ourselves as a matter of convention, consider 

6 a site expert someone who worked at the site. 

7 It doesn't mean the person was a health 

8 physicist or it doesn't mean they were a 

9 technical expert. It means they worked there 

10 and they have expert knowledge compared to us 

11 of what happened. 

12 And so I think the term expert or 

13 site expert is by convention used for anyone 

14 with knowledge of the site, regardless of who 

15 that particular person is. I think what you 

16 are asking for is being done. I think the 

17 interviews for both the management people and 

18 the worker people are documented in the same 

19 fashion, and we make them available on the 

20 same data system. Whether we collect them or 

21 SC&A collects them, they go on the same data 

22 system. So I think that's being done. 
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1 MR. ELLIOTT: I agree. I think 

2 it's being done, and one level we view any 

3 worker having experienced work at a given site 

4 to be a site expert, any worker, because they 

5 have acquired that base knowledge that those 

6 of us sitting around the table may not have. 

7 On another level though we use the 

8 term subject expert if you look in our 

9 conflict or bias policy, we talk about subject 

10 experts. And these may be workers who have 

11 knowledge about a particular technical aspect 

12 of the work or a situation that happened at 

13 work or they may be program managers who have 

14 all of the knowledge about how a particular 

15 program was developed and run at a site. So I 

16 just want to offer that. On different levels 

17 we see a site expert as being anybody who 

18 worked at a site down to perhaps a specialized 

19 knowledge-based individual. 

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I think that 

21 needs to be clarified for claimants and 

22 claimant representatives because a number of 
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1 claimants have made the comment that a lot of 

2 our site experts quite often are people who 

3 are head of like health physics or a certain 

4 department at a facility, and a lot of them 

5 don't feel that from feedback that I've gotten 

6 that they are being addressed as site experts 

7 when in many times they actually knew what 

8 went on in the floor, what went on in the lab. 

9 This needs to be clarified so that they can 

10 make comments as a "site expert". I think 

11 this clarification just needs to be spelled 

12 out for their sake. 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay, I appreciate 

14 your thoughts there, Phil. 

15 MEMBER MUNN: It is often a 

16 misperception, I think. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

18 MEMBER MUNN: In terminology. 

19 People often have a tendency to think that an 

20 expert is somebody other than themselves when 

21 other people are viewing them as expert, 

22 whether the individual recognizes that or not. 
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1 CHAIR GIBSON: But Phil does bring 

2 up a good point that when specifically program 

3 managers of health physics or biassay labs or 

4 something like that is used, their input is 

5 used as weighing evidence in a NIOSH document, 

6 that's perceived as at least biased toward the 

7 program. You know, this person was paid to do 

8 this job and run this program for x amount of 

9 years and you know it is hard for claimants to 

10 imagine that someone is going to incriminate 

11 themselves when they know that their program 

12 might not have been up to snuff over the 

13 years. So I've heard the same comments, and I 

14 can certainly understand from my own 

15 experience at Mound how any weight given to 

16 certain person's comments in your documents 

17 makes the whole program look biased. 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: I understand that as 

19 well, and I understand the perception that is 

20 there, and it is a challenge for us in our 

21 communications to try to be as clear and 

22 explicit as we possibly can, recognizing that 
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1 no matter what we say and how we say it, we'll 

2 perhaps in some instances not diminish that 

3 perceived bias. 

4 CHAIR GIBSON: We talked about at 

5 least perceived. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. But you know 

7 hopefully our conflict or bias policy and the 

8 steps that we have taken to make sure that we 

9 want to hear all perspectives. Yes we do seek 

10 out those who are integrally involved in the 

11 development of a program or monitoring 

12 practices or what have you at a site. But at 

13 the same time we point to the fact that you 

14 know, we interview every claimant, and 

15 particularly are interested in every Energy 

16 employee's comments about their work. We 

17 value that, so I understand. I understand and 

18 recognize it a challenge for us. 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: I think along the 

20 lines, the review of 097, Procedure 097, I 

21 think you had commented in some fashion to 

22 that. The people we talk to, they talk about 
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1 this two-track system of talking to the site 

2 like managers and stuff versus talking to 

3 other people. I think today there is far more 

4 commonality in how an interview is conducted. 

5 And I think probably with some justification, 

6 SC&A saw the preponderance of interviews at 

7 the time they did the PROC-097 interviews. 

8 Preponderance of interviews that NIOSH 

9 conducted on its own were with the managers to 

10 the site. And I think they are probably 

11 correct. I think that's probably what was 

12 going on. It may still be going on, but I 

13 think it is much less slanted one way than the 

14 other, and I think we do now take efforts to 

15 try to make sure we are not just talking to 

16 managers of sites anymore. Bear in mind that 

17 most of the active debate involves probably 

18 SEC discussion, and we always try to do a 

19 worker outreach effort when SEC gets going on 

20 these sites to make sure that we are not just 

21 talking to managers. We've done a number of 

22 SEC outreach effort to make sure we are 
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1 getting broader comment and opinion now at our 

2 stage. You know, because at the time if we 

3 would only talk to management and then SC&A 

4 would talk to the workers, then the workers' 

5 comments all of sudden comes in. So we are 

6 trying to get it at our stage of the activity 

7 now. So I think its something of a learning 

8 process, I guess, that we've gone through in 

9 terms of how to approach this and how to try 

10 to weigh all of the evidence you are going to 

11 get. Mike, you are certainly right about a 

12 bias or perceived bias, and I would tell you 

13 that if you want to know how the radiation 

14 protection program ran at Fernald, I was the 

15 radiation safety manager, you should not talk 

16 to me. You should talk to at least, maybe the 

17 rad. tech., who actually watched what happened 

18 on the site as well as the workers. So I know 

19 how I think it went, but those guys actually 

20 saw how it went. So, I think you are right, 

21 and I think we are getting better than what we 

22 were at PROC-097. I guess I am not willing to 
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1 say here, say it right now and say boy we 

2 really are even-minded, and we do it all 

3 equally now. I'm not so sure I would say that 

4 yet, though I do believe we are getting 

5 better. 

6 MR. ZEITOUN: Even you can see a 

7 difference between an incumbent manager and a 

8 retired manager in the interview. 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Is that right. 

10 MR. ZEITOUN: The different senses. 

11 He is out, now he can talk. You can see that 

12 even in the interview process, you know. You 

13 can sense it. And Mike is correct in that. 

14 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay, before we went 

15 on break, you know, I think Dan was correct, 

16 you know, I was going to let SC&A make some 

17 comments on their findings that NIOSH had had 

18 the chance to look them over. We weren't 

19 skipping over that, but I just wanted to give 

20 the claimants and advocates on the line a 

21 chance to comment, and we'll probably come 

22 back to you again this afternoon to see if 
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1 there is any additional folks on the line 

2 while we try to set forth our path forward and 

3 what questions we need to take to the full 

4 board. So, SC&A, do you guys want to -- 

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Okay, the 

6 last finding that we brought up was those 

7 individuals that couldn't physically attend 

8 the meeting. 

9 The next two comments, Finding 4 

10 and Finding 5 are similar. Finding 4 is the 

11 procedure seems to focus outreach meetings 

12 with labor organizations through the purpose, 

13 though the purpose of the meeting is to obtain 

14 worker input and inform all workers. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Go ahead. Did you 

16 want to say more about it? I was just 

17 suggesting Vern talk. 

18 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well if you 

19 want to respond. 

20 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't have 

21 anything. 

22 MR. McDOUGALL: Well at this point 
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1 we deal with organizations and we deal with 

2 organizations, pretty much the organizations 

3 that I think we can find, and I will give you 

4 an example, a recent example from Brookhaven. 

5 We identified basically three organizations 

6 that we thought had an interest or might have 

7 an interest. 

8 One was the IBW Local, which has -- 

9 actually four because of the guards, too. One 

10 was the IBW Local, and we had a couple of 

11 meetings over the years with them, and we did 

12 arrange a worker outreach meeting with the IBW 

13 local there. That's the local that has pretty 

14 much the hourly, blue-collar people wall-to15 wall. One was the Building Trades Council on 

16 Long Island, and we reached out to the 

17 Building Trades Council, and they chose not to 

18 have a regular, a full-blown meeting, but they 

19 did send a representative to the town hall 

20 meetings. And the police union there really 

21 basic frankly just did not want to hear from 

22 us at all. 
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1 And we also reached out, there is a 

2 retirees organization there that is primarily, 

3 my understanding is it is primarily 

4 professional and engineering type retirees at 

5 the site. They took the information at their 

6 regular, at their next regular meeting, they 

7 actually invited Brookhaven to come, 

8 Brookhaven management to come in and talk to 

9 them about it. Brookhaven sent an HR person 

10 and an attorney to talk with them about it. 

11 The president of the retiree organization told 

12 me they had a fairly lively discussion. But 

13 the outcome was that they didn't see a need 

14 to, they didn't see a need to engage us 

15 further. 

16 So we dealt with the organizations 

17 as we, basically as we found them. And we 

18 have done that at a number of sites. At most 

19 sites the organizations we can identify are 

20 unions. We have dealt with, in other cases 

21 such as Pinellas, which I spoke about last 

22 year. We started out dealing with a retirees 
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1 organization. That was a non-union plant. 

2 And we dealt with a retirees organization that 

3 we were able to find there, and we had a 

4 couple of pretty successful meetings I think, 

5 and if you look at the Pinellas site profile 

6 I'll think you will see clear references to 

7 where input from those meetings was in fact 

8 incorporated into the revised site profile. 

9 And in fact one of the leaders of that retiree 

10 group is now among the leadership of the new 

11 organization down there. I can't think of the 

12 name of the new advocacy -- 

13 MS. BREYER: Nuclear Workers of 

14 Florida. 

15 MR. McDOUGALL: Right. I think 

16 those are a couple of examples. You kind of 

17 take, have to take people as you find them. 

18 Blockson, there hadn't really, we couldn't 

19 find a union that had been there for many 

20 decades anyway. The plant had long since been 

21 closed, but Mark did find a retiree 

22 organization. It is a fairly informal retiree 
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1 organization, but the leadership of that 

2 organization did participate at least in the 

3 town hall meetings. 

4 MEMBER MUNN: And they got very 

5 good turnout at the worker meetings. Mark did 

6 a good job tracking them down. Many of the 

7 larger sites, not so much the smaller sites, 

8 have extensive numbers of professional 

9 organizations which are related to the work 

10 that went there. Has any effort at all been 

11 made to work through the professional 

12 organizations, the Health Physics Society, the 

13 American Nuclear Society, the IEEE, you know, 

14 there's a list of, for example, the site I'm 

15 most familiar with, has 17 different 

16 professional organizations, and the 

17 professional organizations have a very loose18 knit, interactive group of their own that they 

19 cross-communicate? 

20 MR. McDOUGALL: I confess that we 

21 haven't really thought about the Health 

22 Physics Society and ANS kind of groups, and I 
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1 guess maybe this is part of our perception 

2 that we don't really see them as uniquely 

3 associated with a site, I guess, but maybe 

4 that's a problem with our perception. 

5 MEMBER MUNN: Well certainly the 

6 sections are uniquely associated with the 

7 site, and perhaps I'm overly sensitive to that 

8 since I've been accused many times as not 

9 being a worker simply because I don't carry a 

10 union card, and that I think is incorporated 

11 in several of the comments that were made in 

12 the PROC-097 review from SC&A. It is one of 

13 the two major oversights that appeared to 

14 recur again and again. The assumption that 

15 all workers are union workers but the retirees 

16 organizations often are more productive in the 

17 long run because you have people who are 

18 already, who continue to be involved in 

19 interactions with other people from the site. 

20 

21 MR. McDOUGALL: And ANS and the 

22 Health Physics Society might be exceptions to 
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1 that, but a lot of the retiree organizations -

2 - the thing about the unions is that they are 

3 really thinking about, frequently on an 

4 ongoing basis, they are really thinking about 

5 the working conditions on the site. And some 

6 of these other, some of the other more 

7 generalized retiree organizations really are 

8 not focused -- their focus is much more 

9 social. Their focus isn't as much on the 

10 things that we are trying to get to talk to 

11 them about. But you make a good point; we 

12 should probably do a better job on that. 

13 MEMBER MUNN: They are people who 

14 work in these facilities, whether they are 

15 focused on daily conditions is a secondary 

16 question because they work in those 

17 facilities, and the individuals are certainly 

18 focused on safety conditions. It is a major 

19 aspect of all the work that those individuals 

20 do. 

21 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: This is 

22 Kathy Demers. When we go out and we do our 
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1 interviews we get a broad cross-section of 

2 people from the unions, from the radcon 

3 organizations, from medical, from 

4 environmental monitoring. Depending upon the 

5 site we may pull in reactor operators or 

6 accelerator operators, and the reason we do 

7 that is because everybody has a slightly 

8 different perspective. A lot of the workers 

9 when I ask them what did you work with as far 

10 as radioisotopes, will tell me I don't know. 

11 If I asked the same question to a manager he 

12 is likely to know and so I get that important 

13 information. 

14 MEMBER MUNN: And if you ask the 

15 same thing of an ANS or HPS member, I 

16 guarantee you they will know. 

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Did you identify 

18 them through the sites, site rosters, or how 

19 do you find these various populations? 

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Do you want 

21 me to go through our process? 

22 CHAIR GIBSON: Sure. 
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1 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Okay, I'll 

2 just walk you through the process. When we, 

3 let's take a site profile. When we get 

4 assigned a site profile, the first thing I'll 

5 do is to of course read the site profile and 

6 in the process develop questions for 

7 interviewees that I might have. One of my 

8 primary sources is, who is NIOSH referencing 

9 and are they still alive? 

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, so in other 

11 words interviews we've had? 

12 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well not 

13 only interviews -- 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Or documents. 

15 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: 

16 Documentation. 

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. 

18 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: And then I 

19 may go broader and look on the O drive to see 

20 if there is recurrent names in other documents 

21 that might not be referenced. With current 

22 radcon personnel, for example, I will go to 
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1 the radcon manager of the site, and the first 

2 question I ask him is, I'm interested in 

3 dosimetry, internal and external, bioassay, 

4 etc., who do you have and who were their 

5 predecessors? And I get a lot of contacts 

6 that way. 

7 I do contact the unions and that's 

8 how I reach out to a lot of the hourly 

9 workers. One of the most important ways of 

10 getting specific people identified is through 

11 the interviewees themselves. I do reach out 

12 to retiree organizations. I do attend retiree 

13 breakfasts, if I can catch them. There is a 

14 multitude of ways and I will come up with a 

15 list. Another way that is sometimes helpful 

16 is when I go out onto Amazon and retrieve all 

17 the historical documents on a site and read 

18 through those, you will get an idea of who the 

19 key personnel were at the site. 

20 MR. ZEITOUN: There are a lot of 

21 books published and the names are there. 

22 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: So we form 
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1 our list. We develop questions as a team. We 

2 work with the interviewees that we've selected 

3 and set up meetings. This is usually done in 

4 conjunction with the data capture at the site. 

5 When we go to the site, obviously our best 

6 source of current workers is the EEOICPA 

7 contact at the site and the radcon 

8 organizations. And they help us define who we 

9 might want to talk to and we give them some 

10 conditions. You know we found that if a 

11 person hasn't been there for ten years or 

12 more, he may not be able to answer a lot of 

13 our questions. So we kind of put a time limit 

14 on with a couple of exceptions in there. When 

15 we go to the site we usually have questions 

16 prepared. And if they are prepared in advance 

17 the interviewees get them in advance. Another 

18 thing we have started doing is to provide them 

19 with the link to the document we are reviewing 

20 to see if they might have any comments. And 

21 we do our interviews in groups of six or below 

22 with usually two of us present. And it is 
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1 kind of a we introduce ourselves, we ask the 

2 questions and they do all the talking from 

3 there. And this gets documented in raw notes 

4 and then an individual interview summary is 

5 put together. And this is provided to the 

6 interviewee for review. After it had gone DOE 

7 classification review, and incidentally our 

8 raw notes also go through the DOE 

9 classification. So there are several reviews 

10 in the interview process. They are provided 

11 to the individual at the interview and if they 

12 provide comments back to us we integrate them. 

13 We also put together a master interview 

14 summary which takes out all the names of the 

15 individuals and gets rid of some of the 

16 duplication in different interviews, 

17 consolidates it. And that's what usually ends 

18 up in our report. That too has to go through 

19 a classification interview. Lately what we've 

20 been doing is providing the working group with 

21 the individual interviews that have the 

22 Privacy Act information all that we can 
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1 release to the public and what's made 

2 available to the public is the master 

3 interview summary. 

4 MEMBER MUNN: Now when you say you 

5 make that available to the worker group, what 

6 group do you mean? 

7 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well, for 

8 example, if we are doing Nevada Test Site 

9 interviews, the purpose of a Special Exposure 

10 Cohort, we will provide the individual 

11 interviews to the Nevada Test Site working 

12 group. 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: Or the board? 

14 MEMBER MUNN: The Board, that's 

15 just what I wanted to clarify. 

16 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: And with SEC 

17 petitions, it tends to be an iterative 

18 process. 

19 MEMBER MUNN: Personal observation 

20 from having been involved in some of the 

21 interviews that Kathy performed, her comment 

22 about asking the right questions and then just 
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1 letting the workers talk seems to work very 

2 well, certainly in the interviews which I was 

3 privy to. 

4 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: And just so 

5 you know we've done about 850 individual 

6 interviews. 

7 MR. ZEITOUN: For the first five 

8 years? 

9 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: For the 

10 first five years. 

11 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you. 

12 MR. MAURO: This is John. Kathy, 

13 I'd like to just carry this one step further. 

14 I think the Nevada Test Site particular, I 

15 guess the genesis of that work is extremely 

16 relevant and is very timely as a good example 

17 where, in addition to what I would call the 

18 typical array of interviews as Kathy described 

19 for whether it is site profiles or SEC, we 

20 went through -- one of the big issues that 

21 came up had to do with badges left behind. 

22 And I know a lot of you folks are very 
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1 familiar with the subject at a test site. And 

2 that triggered a round of interviews and the 

3 product which went to the work group after the 

4 DOE clearance was two documents and the work 

5 group has it, both of which have been DOE6 cleared but not PA-cleared. Why is the summary 

7 level interview notes and the other is the 

8 actual person to person that I call the 

9 interview notes which people are named. Both 

10 of those documents are in the hands of the 

11 work group as DOE-cleared but not PA-cleared. 

12 It is important to keep in mind the day may 

13 come when we will have a work group meeting 

14 where the chairman of the work group, Robert 

15 Presley, may say listen there's a lot of folks 

16 in the public who are going to want to look at 

17 this material. And at that point in time we 

18 have an interesting situation that we probably 

19 should all be aware of with outreach. And 

20 that is in theory we could try to PA-clear 

21 both documents. That's going to be -- and 

22 especially the detailed ones, that is going to 
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1 be especially difficult because there is so 

2 much PA material that would actually destroy 

3 the integrity of a document. But then there's 

4 another twist. Once we go through that PA 

5 clearance process, that's the liability and 

6 General Counsel says, yes, these documents are 

7 clean. I suspect and I think and 

8 unfortunately Joe Fitzgerald is not on the 

9 line but I suspect that that document before 

10 it can released to the public as part of a 

11 work group meeting would have to go back to 

12 DOE one more time. I believe this PA13 clearance and DOE-clearance process does 

14 affect our ability to be responsive to the 

15 general public who are very interested in a 

16 lot of these work products. And I think we 

17 should all be sensitive to that. 

18 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Can I add 

19 one thing for the workers? One of the things 

20 I do because our interviews have to go through 

21 so many review processes is when I get back 

22 from an interview session I will get our team, 
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1 our review team on the phone and I will tell 

2 them, I'll give them an overview of some of 

3 the key issues that they need to be 

4 considering as they prepare their review. And 

5 that's very important because then they can go 

6 back and look for relevant documentation and 

7 so on and so forth. 

8 CHAIR GIBSON: So, is this process 

9 that you guys scripted, that's part of your 

10 procedure? 

11 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Yes. 

12 MR. MAURO: Can I add a comment to 

13 that regarding our procedure? Our procedure 

14 is going to be a subset of NIOSH procedures. 

15 So in other words, right now and Larry if he 

16 is there, I'm not sure if he is still there, 

17 could correct me, but there are two documents 

18 that are in preparation that are documents 

19 prepared by NIOSH dealing with both classified 

20 and unclassified data capture including 

21 interviews. What we do, we don't actually 

22 have a formal procedure. We have sort of an 
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1 interim procedure, the one that Kathy just 

2 described but we eventually will prepare a 

3 more formal procedure where it actually will 

4 plug in as a subset to the overarching NIOSH 

5 procedures. So we are in that stage where, 

6 you know, we assume we should have one as soon 

7 as NIOSH's procedure and I think the NIOSH's 

8 protocols in regarding points of contact and 

9 how we make request and when I saw we, I mean 

10 the board's contractor, make requests for 

11 either interviews or for data capture is all a 

12 process by which we will follow and then 

13 document the material. All of that, that 

14 we've been talking about will be, I guess, 

15 formalized eventually but I think we are 

16 holding off until the board has a chance to 

17 review this overarching procedures and Larry 

18 could probably help out a bit here on when 

19 that might occur. It is still very much a 

20 work in progress but when they are ready to go 

21 and they may be at this time the board may 

22 want to weigh in because it does affect, the 
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1 umbrella procedure does affect what SC&A's 

2 procedure will be because it will have to be 

3 compatible, consistent and actually 

4 subservient to it, which will affect how we 

5 will go about doing our business. So I wanted 

6 to make sure everybody understood that too. 

7 So, no we have not written those procedures 

8 down in any formal way, not yet. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: John is speaking 

10 about the security plan and there is a 

11 security plan that DOE will have that will be 

12 speaking to the DOE site contacts and 

13 affiliates and there is a NIOSH security plan 

14 which the audience would be, our staff, 

15 contractor staff, board operations under that. 

16 We also have two procedures that will be 

17 companion documents to our security plan. But 

18 the security plans just go to the access, 

19 coordination of access to information at DOE 

20 facilities and how to, there's a section in 

21 there on how to conduct interviews in a secure 

22 setting and then document-generation. What 
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1 steps are we to take and what procedure are we 

2 to follow when we generate a document, either 

3 a site profile, a SEC petition evaluation 

4 review report, a SC&A review document, a 

5 matrix of issues that comes out of the board 

6 process. So these plans speak to that. They 

7 don't necessarily speak to outreach in a 

8 general broad sense. They don't speak to how 

9 to conduct these kind of meetings. And 

10 whether or not they speak to interviews of 

11 individuals in a non-cleared status, a non12 secured setting, I'm not sure it will go 

13 there, these will go there. That would be 

14 attended to in other policy or process 

15 documents. 

16 MEMBER BEACH: So, Larry, can you 

17 tell me what those procedure numbers are and 

18 how soon they will be available for us to 

19 review? 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: Well these -- 

21 MEMBER BEACH: Those are -- 

22 MR. ELLIOTT: These are the -- I'm 
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1 sorry, go ahead. 

2 MEMBER BEACH: Those are very 

3 important access data. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: Absolutely. Well 

5 these are the documents that we have talking 

6 about to the full board for the past two board 

7 meetings. 

8 MEMBER BEACH: Right. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: And I do not have the 

10 procedure numbers at this point for you. I 

11 don't know what our companion procedure 

12 numbers are. They are also in final stages of 

13 review. 

14 MR. MAURO: Larry, I can help out a 

15 bit because we have had a chance as NIOSH has 

16 requested SC&A to provide feedback on them. I 

17 have two and there may be others. One is 

18 called OCAS PR-011. That deals with 

19 classification review of documents. And the 

20 other is OCAS policy PLCY-0001. And that 

21 deals with handling control unclassified 

22 information. Larry I know there may be, you 
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1 had mentioned there might be some others but 

2 those are the two I am aware of. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, those are the 

4 two companion documents to the security plan 

5 that we are trying to put in place. I don't 

6 mean to evasive or cryptic about where we are 

7 at with these things but I have to tell you 

8 that these are very difficult documents to 

9 negotiate to finality because we shared them 

10 with SC&A as well as our contractors because 

11 we want them to be able to understand what is 

12 coming at them. What this means for them. 

13 Can they operate within the construct and 

14 confines that these documents present? And 

15 until we have, at that level, their 

16 understanding and buying in, these are pre17 decisional documents. 

18 MEMBER BEACH: I guess, Larry, you 

19 are asking for SC&A if they can work within 

20 those confines. Is there an opportunity to 

21 expand those confines or is what you are 

22 giving SC&A, bottom line this is it? I guess 
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1 that's my curiosity. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: There is negotiation 

3 between the two departments on what it is 

4 going to take to be able to stand up and say 

5 we are practicing our work in an environment 

6 that maintains the national security interest 

7 to the best of our ability. That's the 

8 overarching goal that we have for these two 

9 documents. That's what these departments are 

10 trying to work together. We have to recognize 

11 that the Department of Energy has the primary 

12 authority to protect certain types of 

13 information. Department of Health and Human 

14 Services, it has to be recognized that we do 

15 not maintain or protect national security 

16 level information. We don't have the 

17 wherewithal, the safeguards, the procedures, 

18 the physical structures required to do that. 

19 Yet we operate in an environment, here in HHS, 

20 in this program where we are delving into 

21 another department's authorized responsibility 

22 area. And so while I may to say SC&A or to 
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1 ORAU or to ATL, this is where NIOSH wants to 

2 be on this. This is how we think we can all 

3 work best together to get our jobs done. I go 

4 back to DOE and I may hear from them, that's 

5 okay, but it doesn't meet the acid test that 

6 it has to meet. And so you have to do this. 

7 And so until those interactions are concluded, 

8 I can't bring anything to the advisory board. 

9 There is also this, the advisory is an 

10 advisory body that advises the Secretary of 

11 HHS. You are not involved in -- you don't 

12 have management of prerogative or management 

13 discretion here on how things get put into 

14 play. That's our job. 

15 MEMBER BEACH: We can comment on 

16 how it affects our jobs. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: You sure can comment 

18 and I am hoping you are going to comment as 

19 well as you can because it will affect you. 

20 It is affecting you, as John's pointed out, as 

21 Dan McKeel pointed out it is going to affect 

22 everybody because yes you are right, John. 
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1 Once you have had a document cleared all the 

2 way up and it is ready to be and it gets a 

3 privacy act reviewed, yes it is going to have 

4 to go back to DOE for another look before we 

5 can release it, just to make sure. Yes we are 

6 talking to DOE about pulling back on that over 

7 time as they gain more experience with us and 

8 the various kinds of documents that are put 

9 out into the public. What does it really take 

10 for them to say, they are comfortable at that 

11 document, that type of document? Does it need 

12 to have four or five reviews for sensitive 

13 information? Where can they draw the line? 

14 Is it after the first development of a draft 

15 that gets put into play for technical 

16 evaluation by a group of authors? I doubt it, 

17 but it may be at a point where the document 

18 has come to a state of finality that's all it 

19 needs is a Privacy Act review and all they are 

20 going to do is take out Privacy Act related 

21 information. That to me doesn't sound like 

22 DOE needs to see it again and that's the 
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1 argument I'm making. But right now I haven't 

2 won that. So there's a lot of this going on. 

3 The board will have its opportunity. 

4 MR. MAURO: Larry, I would like to 

5 add one thing. In fact, and also ask a 

6 question. My understanding is the procedures 

7 are primarily there for sensitive information 

8 and control but they also have an aspect to it 

9 for efficiency. I noticed as part of our 

10 review, working through the NIOSH point of 

11 contact for arranging for data capture and 

12 boxes being pulled and arranging for onsite 

13 interviews etc., under the new guidelines, 

14 these draft guidelines we will be working 

15 through a NIOSH point of contact. My 

16 understanding that was more toward a 

17 streamlining and efficiency approach that was 

18 towards national security, but maybe it is 

19 both. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I think you are 

21 right John. We had proposed to be and worked 

22 together to be more coordinated on the impact 
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1 that we make on a DOE facility. And in that 

2 as you know DOE has said to us we want one 

3 person, a NIOSH person, to talk to us about 

4 what your information needs are for a 

5 facility. So that means that a NIOSH point of 

6 contact needs to know what SC&A's needs are 

7 because that point of contact for NIOSH is 

8 responsible for turning around SC&A and saying 

9 well look, we've got all of this information 

10 already assembled in this folder on our data 

11 research base. No we don't have those kinds 

12 of documents. We'll assist you and facilitate 

13 your access to get those documents retrieved 

14 from the site. So that's the efficiency 

15 process we are trying to tend to in this 

16 coordination effort. I don't believe -- 

17 MR. MAURO: Larry, you've got 

18 everybody here. One part of the interactions 

19 we've been having and one of the concerns that 

20 I had now I'm not sure it has been answered. 

21 One of the things Kathy Demers has described 

22 is her reaching out for interviews. I 
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1 believe, offsite interviews. Right now we 

2 have been doing that on our own keeping of 

3 course NIOSH apprised we are doing it as 

4 opposed to this offsite now. As opposed to 

5 working through the point of contact. I 

6 understand that when it comes to onsite 

7 interviews where we will be burdening DOE, 

8 working to the point of contact is our, you 

9 know, are the ground rules, but for offsite 

10 interviews SC&A has independently pursued 

11 those keeping NIOSH apprised of course and of 

12 course all of those notes. And the notes go 

13 through the same clearance process through 

14 DOE. Is that, I don't think that particular 

15 matter was ever really explicitly discussed 

16 before. Do you see that as an appropriate 

17 interpretation of where things are going? 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: I do. I don't see 

19 that the NIOSH point of contact has any need 

20 or you have any need of the NIOSH point of 

21 contact to conduct those kind of offsite 

22 interviews. That's certainly something that 
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1 you all are capable of without our assistance. 

2 And you know, all we are asking in that 

3 particular example is to get a copy of 

4 whatever final summary minutes or notes come 

5 out of that process so that we are all working 

6 with the same set of information in the end. 

7 MR. MAURO: There's one more -- I 

8 appreciate that because I wasn't clear whether 

9 we are all in agreement on that. Now there's 

10 one more dimension to this, that is 

11 interesting and I think important. When we 

12 conduct these offsite interviews, and this has 

13 to do with the document after it has gone 

14 through DOE clearance and after it has been 

15 reviewed by the interviewee to make sure that 

16 we've captured the information provided 

17 faithfully. Now we have these notes, material 

18 and one of the things that we discussed before 

19 Larry, which is important, I always view that 

20 work product as the equivalent of a data 

21 capture and felt that at that point in the 

22 process it was reasonable to provide NIOSH 
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1 with that information just as if we had just 

2 finished capturing a record of some sort, so 

3 that we all have the same complete set of 

4 records. However, in speaking to some of our 

5 folks including Joe Fitzgerald and Kathy, one 

6 of the things I learned and this maybe 

7 important to everyone concerned is that some 

8 folks in the interview would prefer that 

9 material not be distributed except to be kept 

10 and not be distributed to NIOSH early in the 

11 process. Of course eventually everyone will 

12 see it when it gets cleared and put into our 

13 site profile review as an appendix, summary 

14 level information. But some of the 

15 interviewees felt more comfortable if the 

16 material was going to be held confidential so 

17 to speak. Kathy, could you -- I mean I don't 

18 know if I'm overstating this case, but did I 

19 communicate that correctly some of the 

20 concerns that of the interviewees might have 

21 regarding our releasing that material to NIOSH 

22 and what the implications are? 
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1 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well, one of 

2 the questions we ask the interviewees right up 

3 front is do you want to remain anonymous or 

4 not but the content of that interview they 

5 typically don't object to providing to the 

6 working group and to NIOSH. And a part of why 

7 we originally did master interview summaries 

8 was a lot of people fell into this category 

9 where they wanted to remain anonymous and they 

10 didn't want anyone to know they were talking 

11 to us. 

12 MR. MAURO: So this concern goes 

13 more toward the individual entity than it does 

14 to the summary level document? 

15 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Right. 

16 MR. MAURO: Okay. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't know why -- I 

18 don't see a problem. 

19 MR. MAURO: Okay. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: I mean we don't have 

21 to know the identity of a person you talk to. 

22 You know, we may ask that if there's some 
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1 salient substantive point that is made in that 

2 communication that we need to follow-up on but 

3 that individual still has I believe a right to 

4 stay anonymous even at that point. We should 

5 be able to hopefully try to figure out a way 

6 to verify what has been said by other means. 

7 I don't understand this one-upmanship that 

8 goes on in this relationship that we all have. 

9 You all should make sure that you make these 

10 folks aware that you work for the government 

11 and any of your products are government 

12 property. That doesn't preclude an individual 

13 from saying they want to volunteer their 

14 information anonymously but it is government 

15 property. So we are not asking for those I 

16 don't believe. We haven't asked for the 

17 identity of the anonymous individuals have we? 

18 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: No, you 

19 haven't but they are provided, labeled as 

20 anonymous. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: But the information 

22 is still -- 
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1 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: There. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: -- there for our 

3 understanding and needs. 

4 MR. ZEITOUN: Correct. 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't understand 

6 the issue though. 

7 MR. MAURO: I'm sorry. I may have 

8 -- it was my understanding that one of the 

9 matters that came up is after the individual 

10 interviews were done. That there was an 

11 interest by and it may have been cleared by 

12 DOE, cleared by the interviewee as being 

13 faithful to the interview that there was some 

14 interest on the part of NIOSH to review that 

15 material, you know, the individual interviews, 

16 not the summary level. If that's not the 

17 case, then I have raised something that's not 

18 an issue. 

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well I think 

20 what you might be raising is that there are 

21 several versions to the interview notes. One 

22 is the raw notes before the interviewee ever 
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1 has a chance to look at them. And we 

2 summarize those and provide it to the 

3 interviewee for comment and they return their 

4 comments, we integrate them. That is at the 

5 point that we give them to NIOSH. In other, 

6 in several situations NIOSH is requested to 

7 see raw notes. 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, and every time 

9 I find out about that I tell them knock it 

10 off. It is the same way with our raw notes. 

11 You take your raw notes and then you write 

12 your summary from it. We're not, just let me 

13 know. When you get one of those requests, 

14 just let me know. 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: It is a tool. I mean 

16 raw notes are a tool that are used at the 

17 discretion of the owner of that tool. Just 

18 like the tape-recordings are a tool. They are 

19 not a deliverable. They are not required 

20 under the contract. The individual author of 

21 the summary notes has decided to use a 

22 recording device as a tool to make sure that 
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1 they captured what was said in the interview 

2 effectively and transcribe that to their 

3 summary notes. You know, people can comment 

4 on the use of recordings but this goes back to 

5 the earlier comments by the advocates. We are 

6 not going to go to recordings. It is just not 

7 going to happen. It is not necessarily just 

8 because of the state's requirements. It is 

9 more that once you have a recording in your 

10 system of records, how do you provide a -- 

11 you've got to go to work to provide a 

12 transcript of that recording. Then you've got 

13 to redact the transcript and this is not the 

14 chosen type of documentation that we've made 

15 for these kinds of interactions. It is a set 

16 of summary notes. It is not a full-fledged 

17 transcript. So we are not going to go there. 

18 I'm just going to be pretty blunt and frank 

19 about that. We are not going to go there. We 

20 are not doing recordings. So if you all want 

21 to make a consensus recommendation to the 

22 secretary, it is going to come right back down 
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1 to me and I'm going to explain to him why we 

2 are not doing recordings. It's done. I am 

3 adamant about that. So in this instance I 

4 don't think we have got a problem. NIOSH 

5 shouldn't be asking. Staff shouldn't be 

6 asking for these raw notes. 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: If they ask for the 

8 raw notes, just let me know. Just let me 

9 know. 

10 MR. SUNDIN: Larry and Stu, this is 

11 Dave Sundin. I do recall at least once 

12 instance where we had a FOIA request from a 

13 member of the public asking specifically for 

14 SC&A's raw notes. So we were advised at that 

15 point we had to go obtain them and then they 

16 were redacted prior to release to that member 

17 of the public. 

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, we will need 

19 to have a discussion outside the room on that. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: So, under FOIA it may 

21 or it may not be permissible to give up raw 

22 notes. That is a determination that has to be 
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1 made by the Freedom of Information Act Office. 

2 And in this instance I guess they determined 

3 it was releasable information. 

4 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: This is 

5 Kathy. 

6 MR. SUNDIN: Appropriately 

7 redacted. 

8 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: 

9 Appropriately redacted, okay. 

10 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: This is 

11 Kathy. Was that an interview or was that 

12 notes from a document? 

13 MR. SUNDIN: I recall that it 

14 included interviews. It was sort of field 

15 notes, I think yours and Arjun's. I don't 

16 even remember the site Kathy. 

17 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Okay. 

18 MR. MAURO: I recall that also. So 

19 yes, I think it was the field notes, yes. 

20 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay, with that why 

21 don't we take a little break for lunch here 

22 for an hour and come back at approximately 
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1 12:15/12:20 or 1:15/1:20. 

2 MS. KLEA: This is Bonnie. Did I 

3 miss a comment period review dealing with the 

4 site experts? 

5 CHAIR GIBSON: No, we just had a 

6 worker advocate comment period a little bit 

7 earlier. We are going to have another one 

8 some time this afternoon after lunch Bonnie. 

9 MS. KLEA: Okay. So California I 

10 should be back on the phone at what time? 

11 CHAIR GIBSON: It would be an hour. 

12 MS. KLEA: Okay. Thank you. 

13 MR. KATZ: So thank everyone on the 

14 phone. We are going to break the line now and 

15 we'll join back up a little bit after 1:00. 

16 (Whereupon, the above-entitles matter 

17 went off the record at 12:14 p.m. and resumed 

18 at 1:22 p.m.) 

19 MR. KATZ: This is Ted Katz with 

20 the work group on worker outreach and we are 

21 starting back up after a lunch break. Let me 

22 just check. Everyone from this morning is 
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1 still here at the table. Let's see about 

2 folks on the phone. Phil, are you still with 

3 us? 

4 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes I am. 

5 MR. KATZ: That's great and who 

6 else do we have, John Mauro? 

7 MR. MAURO: Yes I am here. 

8 MR. KATZ: And do we have, do we 

9 still have our folks from the public? 

10 MS. KLEA: Yes, Bonnie from 

11 California. 

12 MS. BARRIE: This is Terrie Barrie. 

13 MR. KATZ: Welcome. Anyone else 

14 from the public joining us? 

15 MR. RAMSPOTT: John Ramspott. 

16 MR. KATZ: Welcome, John. And I 

17 don't know, I think that's it for what we have 

18 to have on here. 

19 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay, I think we 

20 will start off after lunch with the 

21 petitioners or the advocates made a request 

22 for some more comments before lunch. So we'll 
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1 open it up to the phone and let the worker 

2 advocates or claimants make some comments at 

3 this point and then we will just go back 

4 around the table and see if there is any items 

5 that we need to close up that we were 

6 discussing earlier and then we'll start 

7 talking about a path forward of the next 

8 meeting. 

9 MS. KLEA: Yes, this is Bonnie. 

10 Can I add some comments at this time? 

11 CHAIR GIBSON: Yes, go ahead 

12 Bonnie. 

13 MS. KLEA: Okay. I'd like to see 

14 some kind of rule written about NIOSH cannot 

15 use, cannot consult with the site expert 

16 witness who has testified against the workers 

17 in workers' comp court. That's a situation 

18 that we have. We have a site expert that has 

19 given documents that he wrote and he swayed 

20 NIOSH on excluding the non-monitored workers 

21 on my petition. And this is the same 

22 gentleman who is the site expert in testifying 
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1 in court against community claims and against 

2 workers' compensation claims. And to me it is 

3 a giant, giant conflict of interest and this 

4 same gentleman has also weighed in the work 

5 groups for my petition. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: So, Bonnie this is 

7 Larry Elliott. 

8 MS. KLEA: Yes Larry. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: I would refer you to 

10 the NIOSH conflict or bias policy that is on 

11 our website and in that you will find a way 

12 that you can raise this up with the NIOSH 

13 coordinator on conflict or bias. 

14 MS. KLEA: Okay, I've been speaking 

15 about this issue for at least the last eight 

16 years. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, again I would 

18 ask you to look at the NIOSH policy on 

19 conflict or bias and make your points relevant 

20 to the issue at hand based upon your reading 

21 of that policy and submit them to the NIOSH 

22 designated official. 
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1 MS. KLEA: Okay, and who would that 

2 be? 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: Well the policy 

4 currently lists I believe by title only, not 

5 by name a person that is by title stated as 

6 the NIOSH coordinator. 

7 MR. RAFKY: I would have to look. 

8 I don't remember what the exact title is. It 

9 is spelled out in the policy. 

10 MS. KLEA: Okay, and then I worked 

11 with Terrie Barrie on that issue because she 

12 is so knowledgeable. Also we have a retiree 

13 organization which I belong to that mostly 

14 they don't like what I'm doing. They don't 

15 like the claims process and they are very 

16 secretive about the work and what they know. 

17 So, I don't know if all the retiree groups are 

18 like this but mostly it is management. 

19 MEMBER MUNN: I think that varies 

20 widely from site to site. 

21 MS. KLEA: Okay. Anyway, I would 

22 like to have someone from the program address 
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1 them to see if they could come and speak and 

2 maybe I can work that out with Kathy 

3 Robertson. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, Bonnie this is 

5 Larry Elliott again. 

6 MS. KLEA: Yes. 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: We've had a number of 

8 interactions out there based upon again these 

9 are purpose driven meetings and so I know that 

10 there was a meeting with regard to the SEC 

11 petition process. I believe in the early days 

12 of our site profile development for Santa 

13 Susana Area 4 there was also a worker outreach 

14 meeting to hear thoughts and concerns about 

15 what happened at the site relative to our 

16 ability to reconstruct DOS and what the site 

17 profile should say in that regard. We 

18 certainly have had a board meeting out there 

19 recently. And so you know, as you are 

20 thinking about this, I would just ask that you 

21 be very clear in what you think the purpose of 

22 a meeting would be. 
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1 MS. KLEA: Well I don't know. You 

2 mentioned it. You mentioned the retiree 

3 organization and I don't know if it is to 

4 inform people about the program or is this for 

5 SC&A to do. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: Well I won't speak 

7 about SC&A's motives. They would need to 

8 opine about that. From the NIOSH perspective 

9 we would say that we, our contractors have 

10 touched the various constituencies about the 

11 site to the best of their ability. I believe 

12 that is included depending upon the purpose 

13 for a given meeting, the retirees group. In 

14 other instances it may not have asked for 

15 participation from the retirees group. But 

16 from NIOSH's perspective, you know, I'm pretty 

17 satisfied that we have made attempts to try to 

18 involve the right people for the purpose of a 

19 given meeting out there. 

20 MS. KLEA: Yes, you've done 

21 actually a good job in bringing people to the 

22 meetings and then of course when Laurie Breyer 
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1 came out to talk about the SEC process, that 

2 was mostly claimants because otherwise how 

3 would you know who to send a letter to. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: Right, well we try to 

5 serve the claimant population in a town hall 

6 style meeting to inform the claimants about 

7 the petitioning process and about the dose8 reconstruction process. 

9 MS. KLEA: Right. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: I think one of the 

11 problems that we see with the Santa Susana 

12 site situation is there is a lot of concern 

13 rightfully so but it presents a lot of 

14 confusion and that concern is with regard to 

15 the off-site environmental contamination and 

16 the offsite environmental contamination is not 

17 something that is within NIOSH's privy nor the 

18 board's nor SC&A's. And so we would just ask 

19 that folks understand that if they can and try 

20 to consider that in how they frame their needs 

21 because we are real limited in what we can do 

22 in response to concerns that you all raise 
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1 about environment contamination of public 

2 health problems off the site. 

3 MS. KLEA: Well you know I say if 

4 it is off the site it certainly is got to be 

5 100 times more on the site. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: No argument there. 

7 We don't disagree with that concept at all. 

8 MS. KLEA: Okay, thanks so much. 

9 Thank you for letting me give my comments. 

10 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay thank you 

11 Bonnie. Are there any other advocates or 

12 claimants on the line that want to make 

13 comments at this time? 

14 MS. BARRIE: This is Terrie. We 

15 do have a few comments Mike. One of the 

16 things that drew my attention was John Mauro's 

17 statement that SC&A's policies which meets the 

18 board when it comes to the security review. 

19 And forgive me if this has been already 

20 addressed and I missed. I have been off the 

21 phone for a little bit. This question is 

22 directed to John. Do you receive this as a 
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1 little bit burdensome to SC&A? 

2 MR. MAURO: Well, you know, it can 

3 be because previously you know we would 

4 interact directly with DOE and make our own 

5 arrangements to data capture interviews. Now 

6 in the streamlining process data capturing 

7 onsite interviews will be through the NIOSH 

8 point of contact. And the NIOSH point of 

9 contact will in effect be there to help us. 

10 So in one aspect the streamlining effect may 

11 actually expedite matters because it is going 

12 to one point and easy for DOE. 

13 MS. BARRIE: This is Terrie. I was 

14 disconnected so I didn't hear that. I just 

15 got to dial back in. 

16 MR. MAURO: Oh okay. I'll start 

17 from the beginning. I think what we are 

18 talking about is a situation that could be in 

19 some regards a benefit but also in some 

20 regards a drawback. What I was saying is for 

21 the point of view of how we used to operate 

22 was we would interact directly with DOE, make 
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1 our own arrangements of data capture and 

2 interviews. However, of course at all times 

3 we would keep NIOSH informed and we would 

4 always interface with NIOSH beforehand to make 

5 sure we were not requesting documents that 

6 were already captured. There was a lot of 

7 front end work where we try to reduce the 

8 redundancy. But we were free to interact 

9 directly with DOE to make these arrangements. 

10 But it does turn out that on some occasions 

11 that was somewhat burdensome for DOE. DOE did 

12 a request from both ends, efficiency and a 

13 security perspective to introduce these new 

14 protocols where for onsite interviews and for 

15 data capture retrieval of documents we would 

16 work through the NIOSH point of contact. Now 

17 the way I see it is as long as the NIOSH point 

18 of contact is looking after our needs and 

19 making sure that we get access to the 

20 information we need in a timely way, this 

21 should work out well. If it turns out for 

22 some reason SC&A is sort of put at the back of 
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1 the queue in terms of retrieving documents and 

2 so forth, then of course there might be a 

3 burden here. So I think that if everyone is 

4 well intentioned and moving the whole process 

5 expeditiously it should work out okay. The 

6 fact that we have access to offsite interviews 

7 whereby we can make our own arrangements. 

8 That's important. I was glad to hear that 

9 that's the ground rules. So right now I guess 

10 I would say that we are prepared to move 

11 forward in that manner. We have been moving 

12 in that manner. We have some success on some 

13 recent site visits, for example Mound, that 

14 will work out well. We are about to go 

15 through the very same process. Right now we 

16 are very close to beginning the process for 

17 Savannah River. But we have had situations 

18 where things weren't as efficient. We ran 

19 into some problems on Hanford. So I guess, 

20 you know, we are optimistic that we will be 

21 able to work efficiently under the new ground 

22 rules. 
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1 MS. BARRIE: Okay. I hope for that 

2 also. My other question, well actually it is 

3 a clarification of my earlier comment. I just 

4 wanted to, obviously it sounds like the worker 

5 outreach is much better prepared than it was 

6 with the Rocky Flats plant. At the Rocky 

7 Flats there was only two meetings held on one 

8 day and it did not include the non-production 

9 workers. It was very -- attended by a very 

10 small amount of people. And the question I 

11 have for consideration in the future that 

12 doesn't need an answer, with the advisory 

13 board public comment period, many, many people 

14 offer insight and information of their work. 

15 And I'm just curious to see if things obtained 

16 were not on file in the public commentary from 

17 the board meeting. 

18 And my last comment is I'm a little 

19 bit surprised by Mr. Elliott's attitude on 

20 recording these meetings. He said that if the 

21 board recommended to the Secretary of Health 

22 and Human Services that they should be 
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1 recorded and transcribed that he's not going 

2 to do it. He is adamant about that won't be 

3 done. That is very disconcerting. 

4 And actually I do have one more. I 

5 would recommend that this working group 

6 recommend to the full board a public comment 

7 period be scheduled for all working group 

8 meetings. Thank you. 

9 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay, thank you Ms. 

10 Barrie. Is there any other advocates or 

11 claimants on the line? Okay if not I guess we 

12 can just open it up here in the room for 

13 NIOSH's work group, any follow-ups or anything 

14 we want to talk about on things we've 

15 discussed earlier today or anything we didn't 

16 privy? 

17 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well, we 

18 have one additional finding. 

19 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay, go ahead. 

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: That is a 

21 two-track system appears to exist for 

22 obtaining employee and site expert input. And 
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1 by that it's the interview process the site 

2 experts versus the outreach process with site 

3 experts. 

4 MR. MAURO: Excuse me, Kathy, maybe 

5 you could get a little closer to the 

6 microphone. I'm having a little difficulty 

7 hearing you. 

8 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Me too. 

9 MR. KATZ: Let me just remind the 

10 folks on the phone too the problem might be 

11 that not everybody is muting their phone 

12 that's on the line. So we are actually 

13 hearing a lot of sort of background noise from 

14 your phones. So please everyone if you don't 

15 have a mute button, use *6 and mute your 

16 phone. Thanks. 

17 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Okay, I was 

18 saying that there is one final finding and 

19 that's related to having a two-track system to 

20 collect information from the workers and by 

21 that I mean you have your worker outreach and 

22 you have your small focus groups or 
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1 interviews. And someone needs to be 

2 collecting the information into some sort of 

3 database that is provided in these more 

4 focused interviews, so that they can also be 

5 responded to. 

6 CHAIR GIBSON: Does NIOSH have any 

7 comment? 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think there 

9 might two parts in this. One is I think in 

10 terms of capturing the information I think 

11 interviews are now are captured in the same 

12 manner regardless of who we are interviewing. 

13 And I think, certainly when you did this 

14 PROC-097 review, our interviews were 

15 overwhelmingly management and I think since 

16 then we probably do other -- we have done 

17 better at doing other non-management 

18 interviews, more worker, on the line worker 

19 type interviews. Although I would not say that 

20 it is a balancing. It is not necessarily a 

21 balanced representation. So with respect to 

22 actually the documentation of an interview, I 
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1 believe we are pretty consistent on how we do 

2 that. Then what was, is there more to this 

3 about the treatment of the information from a 

4 meeting, from an outreach meeting and how is 

5 that addressed. 

6 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: You have 

7 statements that are given to you in a worker 

8 outreach meeting and you respond to them. 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. 

10 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: And the 

11 question is, you have comments that are given 

12 to you in an interview. How is that tracked? 

13 MR. HINNEFELD: So now you are 

14 talking about, for instance, some other avenue 

15 other than exactly a worker outreach meeting 

16 but a claimant or a petitioner or interested 

17 party who would say have you considered these 

18 things here, and these other comments we 

19 received? Well Larry kind of talked about 

20 that earlier. I mean there are a number of 

21 avenues that those come in by so our response 

22 and our document kind of depends on how the 
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1 response is. So I think maybe we might be 

2 able to summarize that in some sort of 

3 response to this. 

4 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Let me kind 

5 of give you a better example. You know the 

6 personal communication documentation that 

7 NIOSH or ORAU fills out? 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. 

9 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: After 

10 they've conducted an interview. 

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. 

12 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: There are 

13 elements that are brought up in those 

14 interviews and how are they being tracked in 

15 relation to how it may impact the technical 

16 work product? 

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. I'd have to 

18 -- I'm not prepared to give you an answer 

19 today but it will be part of what we have to 

20 do. 

21 MR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. 

22 Interestingly enough your concern Kathy also 
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1 applies to SC&A in that we often get, I often 

2 get a phone call, phone calls from interested 

3 parties who are wanting to communicate 

4 information to me. And sometimes they will 

5 send me files. Sometimes, you know -- 

6 whatever -- material comes in. What I always 

7 do is I say it is important that whatever you 

8 send to me you also send to NIOSH and they 

9 respect that and understand that situation. 

10 But there is one circumstance that happened 

11 recently that was very interesting. There is 

12 a particular individual that has called me a 

13 great deal and provided me verbally over the 

14 phone with information and here's the point. 

15 I didn't summarize this information. I didn't 

16 write it down, but in the course of providing 

17 that information, there were certain aspects 

18 of it where I used my personal judgment. Now 

19 here's where things become subjective. Where 

20 I felt that is especially interesting and that 

21 I did write down and I did send on to the 

22 working group and also to interested parties 
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1 at NIOSH. But I was a filter. In other words 

2 in effect the information was coming into me 

3 and I made a judgment on what I thought might 

4 be relevant. I passed it on. So we do have 

5 the circumstance where people send material. 

6 Now when they send it be e-mail, they'll send 

7 files. We have it, we forward it up to NIOSH 

8 and make sure they get everything we have, but 

9 there also are times we have people just 

10 communicating, volunteering information and 

11 right now all I can do is when I felt that 

12 there was something that was explained to me 

13 that could possibly be important, I would 

14 write it down and communicate it to the 

15 working groups and NIOSH. We really have 

16 never written down a procedure to that effect. 

17 In fact, we have never even had a 

18 conversation when that happens with me. Now 

19 when you are involved, Kathy, when you are 

20 involved in actually interviewing people of 

21 course you have a formalism to it. But you 

22 make me think about it a little bit, what 
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1 about me? I don't normally participate in 

2 these. I have only been on one interview case 

3 with Chapman Valve, but I do get phone calls 

4 quite often from interested parties and my 

5 protocol right now is just the way I 

6 described. I was selective in what I think is 

7 important and pass it on. 

8 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well, one of 

9 my experiences is by the time someone is 

10 providing me with documentation, they have 

11 already provided it to NIOSH, but of course we 

12 can make sure that they have it. 

13 MR. ZEITOUN: We usually ask about 

14 that. Did you provide to it NIOSH and they 

15 said yes. 

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Like I said I'm not 

17 prepared to talk about it today. I'd have to 

18 find out and see. 

19 CHAIR GIBSON: Anything else? 

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: That pretty 

21 much sums up the findings that we had. 

22 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay. 
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1 MEMBER BEACH: I have something. 

2 Could I ask a question for NIOSH? Can you 

3 describe briefly or however in-depth the 

4 process of when you decide to have a worker 

5 outreach meeting, how that process unfolds 

6 basically? I know there's one coming at W. R. 

7 Grace. So what would your process be? 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Do you want to take 

9 that Vern? 

10 MR. McDOUGALL: Yes. W. R. Grace's 

11 nuclear field services is a little bit 

12 different situation but most of our outreach 

13 meetings -- most of our outreach meetings are 

14 basically driven by something that happens 

15 with OCAS. In the old days they used to be 

16 driven largely by the development of site 

17 profiles. And the mission was to identify 

18 stakeholders and get to them, get them a 

19 chance to have input early on in the process. 

20 And they would have to after the site 

21 profiles were developed, go back and say, 

22 okay, well here it is more of a closed-ended 
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1 question, here's the document that is 

2 involved. This is an opportunity for you to 

3 critique this and provide additional 

4 information and show NIOSH where they are 

5 mistaken. 

6 MEMBER BEACH: And that was per 

7 097? That was that procedure that drove that 

8 early on? 

9 MR. McDOUGALL: Well actually this 

10 really started late 1993/1994 -- 

11 MR. HINNEFELD: You mean Procedure 

12 097. 

13 MR. McDOUGALL: Yes, well before 

14 the procedure. 

15 MEMBER BEACH: Well before, okay. 

16 MR. McDOUGALL: Now with the SEC 

17 petitions kind of the same thing happens 

18 because what will happen -- let me say 

19 recently with Los Alamos, for example. The 

20 petitioner there was a member, he was 

21 associated with one of the stakeholder groups 

22 out there. And when we see any kind of a 
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1 petition filed and most petitions aren't even 

2 filed by anybody, they are mostly filed by it 

3 seems by survivors. So a lot of the 

4 organizations that we've been dealing with 

5 over the years don't know when this petition 

6 has been filed necessarily. So what we do is 

7 we reach out, when we see the petition filed, 

8 we reach out to the stakeholder organizations, 

9 explain to them where this thing is in the 

10 process, a little bit about why it affects 

11 them. You know, this is -- there is going to 

12 be some decisions made in the next several 

13 months that are going to affect their members' 

14 compensation possibly for a long time to come. 

15 And kind of work with them to see what their, 

16 what level of interest there is in having 

17 input into the process. 

18 MEMBER BEACH: Okay and so then you 

19 plan a meeting. 

20 MR. McDOUGALL: We plan a meeting -

21 - if they are interested. If they are 

22 interested, yes we plan a meeting. There have 
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1 been times, I'm trying to think of the site 

2 recently. Mark you went out by yourself the 

3 first time I think to talk to somebody. I'm 

4 drawing a blank right now. But yes, we plan a 

5 meeting. We give them an opportunity to, we 

6 give them an opportunity to learn about the 

7 process, where things are in the process, and 

8 to provide the input. 

9 MEMBER BEACH: So you actually do a 

10 presentation at the meeting? 

11 MR. McDOUGALL: Yes, we don't. It 

12 is usually somebody from OCAS. Laurie and/or, 

13 usually a health physicist, yes. 

14 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, so then -- 

15 MR. McDOUGALL: Because it is a two16 way street. There are still learning. These 

17 people are still, you know, they are not 

18 experts who -- most of these people, the 

19 stakeholders we reach out to are not people 

20 who deal with these issues on a day-to-day 

21 basis. 

22 MR. ELLIOTT: They may not even 
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1 have claims. 

2 MR. McDOUGALL: Yes, yes they most 

3 of them probably won't have current claims. 

4 So it is an educational process for them and 

5 it is an educational process -- its really a 

6 two-way communication process because they are 

7 learning about the process, about the 

8 implications for their future and at the same 

9 time, NIOSH is getting feedback where we can. 

10 We try and identify some key issues that 

11 NIOSH wants to collect information on, get it 

12 into their hands ahead of time so that when 

13 they come to these meetings, NIOSH captures 

14 information that's going to be helpful to them 

15 in reviewing those petitions. 

16 MEMBER BEACH: I guess that's what 

17 I am looking for. A real history of why you 

18 decide to go to a site, what you do when you 

19 get there, what questions you give them in 

20 advance? Do you do a presentation? 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: It comes, it comes -- 

22 there's a variety of ways that we could become 
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1 engaged with folks at a site. An SEC petition 

2 is one way. Somebody expresses an interest to 

3 file a petition but doesn't fully understand 

4 and ask Laurie or Denise to come and help them 

5 and in conjunction with that, there's an 

6 offer. Would it be helpful if we talk to a 

7 broader-based group than just you? And so 

8 that gets put into play. In some instances, 

9 we are asked. We were asked to come to speak 

10 to the guards union at Portsmouth, Ohio, 

11 because they had a special concern that they 

12 wanted to raise specifically with me and Dr. 

13 Neton. 

14 MEMBER BEACH: So once you decide, 

15 Larry, to go to that site, do you broadcast 

16 that information? 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: No. 

18 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, that's what 

19 I'm looking for. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: Not necessarily do we 

21 broadcast that information because the purpose 

22 may dictate that it is better for us to talk 
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1 with a small group of knowledgeable people. 

2 The purpose may say to us, well here's a 

3 situation where a large number of claimants or 

4 just general people in the population don't 

5 understand what's going on around the site, 

6 whether it is an SEC process or whether it is 

7 DOS reconstruction. And it makes sense to us 

8 to respond with a town hall meeting. 

9 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: And go out and you 

11 know we just open it up. We will have a short 

12 presentation and then, you know, we have 

13 public, we hear people's comments. And we try 

14 to deal with that in that kind of a setting. 

15 So, it could be a situation where the purpose 

16 says to us, there is a technical issue on the 

17 table, badges are left behind. Okay, so who 

18 do we go talk to, to find out about that? We 

19 will, SC&A would focus our interaction with 

20 people who have either said they've done that 

21 or they have reported they know of others who 

22 have done that. And in that situation we may 
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1 say to ourselves well this takes a broader 

2 venue than just a small working group, a small 

3 focus group. We may want to have a more 

4 public. And in the more public sense, when we 

5 have a town hall meeting style, yes we 

6 announce that to the public. We want as many 

7 people to come bring as many perspectives as 

8 can be offered. On the other end of the 

9 spectrum though is the need to nail down some 

10 technical issue and try to identify those 

11 individuals who in a small group or even a 

12 one-on-one setting with us, can elucidate the 

13 issue for our better understanding. So it 

14 happens in a variety of ways. I mean, I'm 

15 sure Vern and Mark could go on and on and on 

16 about the ways we've tried to be proactive and 

17 reach out to people. And at the same time 

18 have a listening ear open and ready to respond 

19 as soon as we hear somebody say hey, you need 

20 to come and talk to us. And in some instances 

21 where they have reached out, they have a cold 

22 shoulder. They don't want to talk to you. 
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1 MEMBER BEACH: Right. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: We don't want to get 

3 involved. In some instances where they have 

4 tried to reach out and say, you know, out here 

5 in INEO we would like to sit down and talk to 

6 everybody involved. Well, the painters don't 

7 want to be in the same room as the carpenters. 

8 And the carpenters don't want to be in the 

9 same room as the electricians and those kind 

10 of things happen. So we end up with fractured 

11 meetings where we only meet with one organized 

12 labor group at a time because they function 

13 better that way. So, it is a very dynamic 

14 process that is driven in many different ways. 

15 That is the best I can describe it for you. 

16 MS. BREYER: I was going to say not 

17 to be repetitive but to give you some specific 

18 examples of what Larry is talking about, you 

19 know, and what Vern is speaking to as well. 

20 You know, if an SEC petition comes out from a 

21 survivor, you know, some of the union groups 

22 at the facility may not know about it or even 
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1 the workers. They may do outreach to the 

2 union groups and say hey we have this SEC 

3 petition just to let you know. And then the 

4 unions may ask for a meeting at that point to 

5 provide input. And that would happen with Los 

6 Alamos. 

7 There is another example where we 

8 received an SEC petition for Texas City 

9 Chemical, which is a very small site and so 

10 the health physicist working on that says we 

11 have some information but I would like to talk 

12 to the workers and ask them some information. 

13 So he had ATL put together some small 

14 meetings with some individual workers. And in 

15 the process of having that small worker 

16 outreach meeting it was determined that there 

17 was a lot of confusion down there. So then we 

18 decided that it might be proactive of us to go 

19 to Galveston and hold a town hall meeting. So 

20 when we did the town hall meeting, then we 

21 would have done huge -- you know we would have 

22 sent letters to anybody that we had letters 
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1 about. We would have tried to get retirees. 

2 ATL would have tried to get the unions. We 

3 would have put out a press release. It would 

4 have been on our website. In those type of 

5 instances then we would do a large amount of 

6 outreach. And then with the meetings like 

7 with Denise and I, people have either asked 

8 and said can you come out and explain the SEC 

9 to us or between Denise and I we would have 

10 gotten a lot of calls. So we've determined 

11 hey you know, this might be a good site to go 

12 out and do an SEC outreach meeting and again 

13 that would be a large audience that we would 

14 try to get there so we would do letters, press 

15 releases, put it on the website. So those are 

16 just examples like Texas City Chemical where 

17 we were proactive because there was a lot of 

18 confusion just about NIOSH and where we also 

19 did a small -- just with a small group of 

20 workers and I mean those are just some more 

21 hands-on examples of when in situations we've 

22 held some of these meetings by request or when 
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1 we went out and talked to people. 

2 MEMBER BEACH: Thank you. 

3 CHAIR GIBSON: So even though 

4 there's many different forms, it sounds like 

5 to me there's basically two basic types of 

6 involvement with workers. I'm sure there's 

7 some of it crosses over but one of it's 

8 basically NIOSH is offering information to the 

9 general public, workers or workers have 

10 requested information from NIOSH whether it is 

11 a program, whether it is a SEC and then there 

12 is also types of meetings where NIOSH is 

13 seeking input from workers on a specific site 

14 or an issue or the workers have contacted you 

15 and said we have information we want you to 

16 hear. So it is kind of like two categories. 

17 I mean -- 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: It could be viewed 

19 that way. 

20 CHAIR GIBSON: Kind of hear 

21 information from your general meetings that -- 

22 MR. ELLIOTT: And I could portray a 
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1 meeting for you where both occurs, you know. 

2 CHAIR GIBSON: Yes, crossovers. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, it crosses over, 

4 and we get more than we thought we bargained 

5 for or more than we went in for and I think 

6 and I hope that the people who came to attend 

7 learn something and got more out of it than 

8 they had anticipated as well. So it can be a 

9 beneficial exchange that way. 

10 CHAIR GIBSON: I'm just trying to 

11 get this thing structured to where we can kind 

12 of put some legs underneath of it and see 

13 what, you know, try to set some metrics for us 

14 to look at to measure to work against. Would 

15 it be fair to kind of categorize them into 

16 those two groups understanding that there is 

17 crossover information or is that -- 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: I think that's a fair 

19 way to categorize in a categorical form what 

20 our outreach efforts are. 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: No, I agree. I 

22 think it is a decent way to think about it. 
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1 MS. BREYER: From our perspective 

2 yes. 

3 MR. MAURO: Mike, this is John 

4 Mauro. There is one point I would like to 

5 bring to the table that I neglected to mention 

6 when I was responding to the last question. I 

7 think we need to all be sensitive to this. In 

8 the previous way in which we interacted 

9 directly with DOE, one of the things that 

10 happens is on let's say a data capture effort, 

11 very often it is an iterative process. As I 

12 understand and Kathy certainly could weigh in 

13 on this, whereby it is not a very linear 

14 process by way in which we capture data. We 

15 have certain areas of interest and then very 

16 often we need to in an iterative process 

17 refine the request for information to make 

18 sure that we get what we are looking for. And 

19 that requires some interaction between NIOSH, 

20 I'm sorry, between SC&A and DOE. With the new 

21 arrangement where we have a point of contact 

22 I'm a little concerned that t hat iterative 
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1 nature of the interaction might be diluted -- 

2 MR. KATZ: John, could you hold one 

3 second. Go ahead John, I'm sorry. 

4 MR. MAURO: Okay, yes. I'll say it 

5 again but briefly. In the new paradigm where 

6 we work through a point of contact, to take 

7 data capture, one of my concerns and I think 

8 we should all be concerned with this and be 

9 attentive to it, is the loss of what I would 

10 call to be the direct iterative interaction 

11 between SC&A and DOE, that sometimes is 

12 necessary in order to make sure that we get 

13 the information we need, because it is not a 

14 very linear process. There is interaction 

15 here. And one way of course is the point of 

16 contact could serve as sort of our agent in 

17 those interactions, or once we make our 

18 initial contact through the point of contact 

19 and describe what we need, at that point 

20 perhaps SC&A would have a certain degree of 

21 flexibility of talking to the DOE folks 

22 directly, once we get into the interactive 
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1 mode. I'd like to get some sense from NIOSH 

2 and the work group as to that strategy or that 

3 concept. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: John, again, we are 

5 talking about the security plans and the two 

6 companion, one procedure, one policy under 

7 that relevant to the NIOSH plan, and I don't, 

8 I know for a fact that those plans and that 

9 procedure and that policy do not go into great 

10 levels of detail for perhaps good reason. We 

11 want to be as flexible as possible, and in the 

12 example that you just raised, I would expect 

13 that once the NIOSH point of contact has been 

14 touched and confirmed that we don't already 

15 have the information readily available for use 

16 by SC&A and has made in the spirit of 

17 coordination the prioritization of work for 

18 that particular DOE facility that we've talked 

19 about and made that aware to both the DOE 

20 point of contact and the SC&A contact. SC&A 

21 would be enabled at that point to speak to DOE 

22 directly about their particular needs. 
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1 MR. MAURO: I appreciate that. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: We have not 

3 characterized this role of coordination as one 

4 of gatekeeper. That's not the role. The role 

5 is to coordinate to provide the most efficient 

6 path forward, and where NIOSH has already 

7 retrieved or assembled information that goes 

8 to the question at hand that SC&A is pursuing, 

9 they need to be made aware of that, and if 

10 there are pieces that are not in that 

11 assemblage of information that SC&A wants to 

12 pursue they should be able to pursue that with 

13 DOE directly. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: I think -- this is 

15 Stu. For the sake of the objective that we 

16 are adopting this, just so it is on the 

17 record, we did not ask to be the coordinators 

18 of this. We did not want this coordination 

19 job. We are doing this for DOE. So to the 

20 extent -- so bearing that in mind as the 

21 intent, I don't see any particular reason why 

22 we would have to continually coordinate your 
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1 communications with DOE. I think it would be 

2 important for each of us, NIOSH and SC&A, to 

3 inform the others when we make these iterative 

4 approaches so that we'll be aware and maybe 

5 can dovetail and coordinate activities that 

6 may be coordinate-able. Not that we are going 

7 to sit and watch you but if for instance -- 

8 not to cause DOE less interruption or less 

9 cost. That's what we are really talking about 

10 is what are we costing the DOE. So, I don't 

11 see any particular reason to continue to 

12 coordinate as long as we inform each other 

13 about our activities, our respective 

14 activities and so each one can then look for 

15 opportunities for coordination if need be. 

16 So that's my view as well, John. I 

17 don't think there is any need for us to always 

18 have to, you know, you guys come to us always 

19 when you go back with a request. It may not 

20 have worked that way up to now. 

21 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: It is not. 

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. 
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1 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Let me kind 

2 of give you a reality check on how it's going 

3 down. 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. 

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: A site, 

6 which shall remain nameless, basically NIOSH 

7 has identified boxes and people that they 

8 wanted to interview onsite. They've put it 

9 into a data capture plan. They have sent it 

10 to us. We add on any key words that we want 

11 searched, any authors that we want searched, 

12 and so on and so forth, and then it is sent to 

13 DOE. But we also have to have the flexibility 

14 to submit those independent, like when we 

15 submit pre-decisional documentation as an 

16 example of when we would not involve NIOSH in 

17 that process. One of the problems that I'm 

18 seeing is that we are not the priority. We 

19 are having difficulty getting things out of 

20 site X. We have been having difficulty. I 

21 have seen that they are much more cooperative 

22 in releasing things to NIOSH, including 
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1 interview notes. And still we're being asked 

2 to go through the NIOSH POC instead of going 

3 directly to the EEOICPA contact for everything 

4 from I want to interview Joe Smith on such and 

5 such a date, to I want to pull X boxes. And I 

6 don't have a problem with informing NIOSH that 

7 we're going to pull X boxes and even inviting 

8 them on, but we don't have the liberty to go 

9 directly to DOE at this point. 

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, I'll talk 

11 with you offline here so I can get a little 

12 more detail. 

13 MR. ZEITOUN: They don't return the 

14 calls sometimes. 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, they're not 

16 supposed to, because DOE is not going to 

17 respond to a contractor. I'm sorry, I'm 

18 trying to be frank about it. 

19 MR. ZEITOUN: Well, I'm trying to 

20 follow up on your ideas that, at the time the 

21 contacts are made, it's practical now that you 

22 just get your job done and moving, but I'm 
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1 just saying probably they misunderstood that 

2 direction in general, and they say, we're not 

3 going to do anything with anybody unless the 

4 POC comes to us and tells us, go ahead. So 

5 that concept also needs to be clear during the 

6 process. 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: I agree. 

8 MR. ZEITOUN: It doesn't have to be 

9 immediate, but at least work on it between 

10 both of us, so they understood that we're not 

11 trying to circumvent anybody, but we're trying 

12 to get the job done. 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: I agree. I think 

14 we're on the same page. 

15 MR. ZEITOUN: I'm listening, I'm 

16 hearing you. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: This is an evolving 

18 experience, too, and certainly the one site 

19 you mentioned, Kathy, is problematic because 

20 of recent history in interacting with this 

21 site. And so where we have a whole different 

22 experience in another site. You know, I think 
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1 we're seeing some overshadowing response to 

2 the recent history, in some ways, at the site 

3 you mentioned. 

4 But we're going to have to work 

5 together to iron out these kinds of wrinkles 

6 as they appear. And it's not our intent to be 

7 a gatekeeper, nor do these points of contact, 

8 who are technical staff, who are researchers. 

9 Believe me, they do not want to be burdened 

10 down with this additional mantle of being a 

11 coordinator of SC&A and NIOSH interests. They 

12 find that to be difficult, at best. 

13 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: One of the 

14 other things that I noted in doing these 

15 parallel reviews, for example, at site X, is 

16 NIOSH has not made up their mind how they want 

17 to come down on the issue, and that makes it 

18 really hard for us to know what we want to 

19 look for. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: This is a big 

21 problem. I will sign on to this problem 100 

22 percent, Kathy, and I would ask that the 
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1 working group or the board needs to take up a 

2 deliberation of this issue alone, because this 

3 is problematic. When does SC&A's review of a 

4 product really start? And in this site 

5 example that you mentioned, because a site is 

6 so huge, and the history is so long, and the 

7 effort to evaluate a petition has now strung 

8 into, we're into probably our fourth 

9 evaluation of the remaining class. We just 

10 keep chipping off pieces of it. And what does 

11 SC&A actually pick up to use in their reviews? 

12 And you're absolutely right, Kathy. NIOSH 

13 has not made a decision in some regards as to 

14 where we stand, and I understand the dilemma 

15 that presents to you, because you don't know 

16 what to evaluate at that point. And it's 

17 premature to say, well we think this ought to 

18 be this way, until you hear what NIOSH says. 

19 In other words, you're setting the policy, the 

20 practice, the procedure, and probably before 

21 we've made the decision. But it is a problem, 

22 because it's different than, in the early 
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1 days, when NIOSH and ORAU are out there on 

2 their own developing a site profile, and the 

3 technical basis approaches for a given site, 

4 and then we put that on the table. We don't 

5 see that as much anymore. We're more involved 

6 in evaluations of classes and technical issues 

7 that have been placed on the board's 

8 deliberation table for their work group 

9 process, and that confuses, I think, in many 

10 instances, what it is you guys want to go 

11 track down that we didn't. 

12 MR. MAURO: Larry, I can't tell you 

13 how much I agree with you on that particular 

14 matter. In an effort to streamline and 

15 expedite the review process, achieve closure 

16 on issues, one of the problems is that we've 

17 entered into an iterate process where both 

18 organizations are simultaneously peeling away 

19 at the onion. In theory, you know, once -- 

20 you know, in a perfect world NIOSH would 

21 complete all of its work, deliver its product 

22 to the board, and the board would authorize 
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1 SC&A to take a look at it, and then bring it 

2 back. But in an effort to streamline this 

3 whole process to expedite it, for a lot of 

4 reasons, I note I now see that we are moving 

5 in parallel to a certain degree, which is a 

6 subject that I think the board needs to 

7 engage. I would recommend to the work group 

8 that the fact that we're moving in parallel 

9 at the site where the issues are unfolding 

10 before us together is very unusual for an 

11 auditing organization or a review 

12 organization. Usually you wait until the 

13 NIOSH or this organization has a chance to 

14 finish its work. But so this is a big -- I 

15 think it's a very important issue. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: I agree. 

17 CHAIR GIBSON: That's certainly an 

18 issue that does seem important. I don't 

19 believe that it's necessarily -- fits within 

20 the realm of this work group. I think it's 

21 more global, but we can certainly take this 

22 concern to the board. 
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1 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't know that -- 

2 I'm not advocating that there should be 

3 different rules or behavior patterns that are 

4 adhered to if it's NIOSH alone versus NIOSH 

5 and SC&A trying to pursue the same line of 

6 questioning. Maybe there is a need for 

7 different rules or different modes of behavior 

8 if we find ourselves in one camp versus the 

9 other camp. Certainly if it's just NIOSH and 

10 it's contractors doing what we need to do to 

11 establish our position on a site profile, or 

12 an evaluation of a class, and we have 

13 established by practice how we operate in that 

14 arena, but when we come in and we're walking 

15 side by side with SC&A and trying to pursue 

16 the same line of questioning, maybe the rules 

17 of engagement are slightly different. It's 

18 something to talk about. 

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well my 

20 thought is that, you know, occasionally it 

21 happens that we agree on an issue, and then 

22 SC&A just wasted all that time. So they could 
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1 have concentrated on another issue. 

2 MEMBER MUNN: At this juncture, it 

3 appears that the issue is still amorphous. 

4 We're working under a new set of rules here, 

5 and it's questionable whether the board 

6 understands what those rules are and how they 

7 are going to operate. It would seem wise for 

8 SC&A and NIOSH to have some offline 

9 discussions about how best to address this, 

10 and what kind of recommendation to bring to 

11 the board, rather than for us to drop this on 

12 the board and say, do something. Past history 

13 would warn us that the full board is not the 

14 best forum for resolving issues to their 

15 essence, and perhaps there's some 

16 communication and agreement with respect to 

17 how to proceed that should preclude this 

18 group's recommendation. 

19 MR. KATZ: Just as DFO, but I'm 

20 also project officer for SC&A, this is I think 

21 something John and I need to discuss and sort 

22 of delve into in more detail just to 
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1 understand, too, because it's unclear to me 

2 whether the problem is one of tasking, that 

3 they're getting tasked to do things 

4 prematurely, or whether it's an implementation 

5 question, and that SC&A just needs to hold its 

6 horses so that products can be delivered first 

7 before SC&A delves into them. It's really 

8 unclear from the sort of general discussion 

9 we've had, you know, what's the problem, but 

10 John and I look forward to talking to you 

11 more, and hearing the details so we can sort 

12 through this. 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: I certainly think 

14 that the new DOE requirements that are being 

15 placed on us will impact more this category of 

16 work where we're walking down the trail 

17 together. 

18 MR. MAURO: What I think will be a 

19 fundamental governor's issue emerged during 

20 the outreach discussion. And you're 

21 absolutely right, it has an affect. I mean, 

22 how are we -- our data capture protocols. How 
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1 we do it? Outreach activities and gathering, 

2 which is just part of gathering information. 

3 Ultimately, yes, it's funny that it would lead 

4 to a very fundamental issue, and I agree, Ted, 

5 you probably, you and I could talk this 

6 through a little bit, because it's interesting 

7 that things are unfolding this way, where the 

8 separation in time of our activities is really 

9 not that separate anymore. They are actually 

10 moving together, as Larry said, down the path 

11 together. And I think that we need to talk a 

12 little bit about that. 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: And the board and 

14 SC&A has some experience now with looking at - 

15 what do you call them - paper-only studies, 

16 reviews where you are using only the available 

17 documentation that was used to establish the 

18 NIOSH position. And I raise that because, on 

19 one hand, I find those to be informative, but 

20 they lack something. 

21 MR. MAURO: Absolutely. In fact, I 

22 would say that that idea of a paper study that 
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1 emerged, oh back, I'm not sure -- that was an 

2 unusual circumstance, because a contract was 

3 ending, and we really had to limit. In other 

4 words, we thought there would be some 

5 productive work that could be done in the two6 month period before our contract ended that we 

7 could put in place as a document, and then the 

8 next contractor could seamlessly pick it up 

9 and go on from there, which is what we're 

10 doing. And now we have, on those three sites 

11 that we're calling the paper study, Santa 

12 Susana, Savannah River Construction, and one 

13 more, oh the other one, Pantex. We did put 

14 these studies out, paper studies. But I agree 

15 with you, in retrospect I think we would be 

16 better off if we did the full blown job, 

17 rather than come out with a paper study. I 

18 don't think we're going to run into the 

19 circumstance again. 

20 MR. KATZ: Right. Okay. 

21 CHAIR GIBSON: This is a setup we 

22 first talked to SC&A about, but I still 
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1 believe that this issue, before we would 

2 recommend SC&A and NIOSH to get together 

3 offline and completely address this issue, or 

4 discuss this issue, that we should at least 

5 make the board aware of this whole potential 

6 problem, just because, you know, I feel they 

7 all -- all board members have the right to 

8 weigh in, and not just these working groups. 

9 MR. KATZ: I concur. What I meant 

10 is, I mean if John and I have to talk offline, 

11 and if we need to bring in OCAS, too, to talk 

12 offline, but we just need to clarify what it 

13 is we're talking about. Because to me, from 

14 this general discussion, it is not clear 

15 exactly what the root of the matter is, and 

16 the board has issues to deal with, absolutely, 

17 but we need to put this up before them, 

18 though, in a way that's clear so that they 

19 understand where the problem lies. 

20 CHAIR GIBSON: A lot of it may fall on 

21 other working groups, and some of it may fall 

22 back into this working group. But I think 
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1 it's certainly larger than this working group. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: Can I offer, I hope, 

3 a concise statement of the issue as I see it, 

4 and maybe ask Kathy to either verify that I've 

5 got it right, or embellish it if she feels the 

6 need to? But the issue as I see it is that, 

7 when NIOSH and its contractors are pursuing a 

8 line of inquiry at a DOE site, and we're 

9 walking down the trail with SC&A pursuing the 

10 same line of inquiry, it gets confused in a 

11 way as to who has the priority. This is going 

12 back to Kathy's comment that they're getting 

13 short-changed, or they're not getting the due 

14 diligence that their request needs, or that 

15 theirs is put on the back of the burner, on 

16 the back of the stove, or even falls off the 

17 stove, who knows. But you know, I think 

18 that's the issue, as I see it. You know -- 

19 MR. KATZ: But, well go ahead. 

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well, it's 

21 very difficult to review something that's not 

22 been finalized, and that impacts how you look 
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1 through the records and interview people. 

2 MR. KATZ: Right, and so what I'm 

3 saying about this is, it's not clear to me 

4 from this general discussion why SC&A would be 

5 walking down the path at the same time as 

6 OCAS, is what I am saying. So I understand 

7 that -- how that would be a problem. I don't 

8 understand why we're in that situation, 

9 really, versus SC&A having before them a 

10 product to evaluate, versus trying to evaluate 

11 a situation while you yourselves at OCAS are 

12 evaluating that same situation. It's unclear 

13 to me what -- 

14 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Can I give 

15 them an example? 

16 MR. MAURO: Can I add a comment on 

17 that? I think what Genesis was -- I think 

18 it's more an SEC issue than it is a site 

19 profile issue, and I'll explain what I mean by 

20 that. Very often SC&A -- our review of site 

21 profiles is very clean right now. By that I 

22 mean we are authorized to review a site 
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1 profile, and we go down that road, and we put 

2 out our independent, standalone, complete 

3 product in accordance with all of our 

4 procedures. When we got to the stage -- let's 

5 say we were then authorized, okay, there is an 

6 SEC -- let's talk, Hanford, perfect example. 

7 We put out a site profile review on Hanford. 

8 Then there is an SEC petition, and the first 

9 step that we always do is identify, amongst 

10 all of the various issues that we've 

11 identified in the site profile, which ones 

12 clearly and unambiguously at this point in 

13 time cross over the bridge and continue to be 

14 SEC issues? And we do the best we can, 

15 because we cull down the ones that we think 

16 are really fundamental. And that usually goes 

17 to data completeness and data integrity. And 

18 that becomes the front-burner issue. Do we 

19 have sufficient data to understand the 

20 neutron-to-proton ratio. So right off the 

21 bat, that issue becomes a front-burner issue 

22 for the SEC petition. A work group meeting is 
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1 held, and very often what happens there at the 

2 work group meeting is -- let's now start the 

3 SEC process, not as a standalone separate 

4 report where SC&A said, okay SC&A, go out and 

5 do your independent review of the evaluation 

6 report with all the site interviews, etc. 

7 What really happens then is the work group 

8 says, okay here's an issue. Neutron-to-proton 

9 ratios are very important. We would like both 

10 organizations to continue those 

11 investigations. And what we find ourselves 

12 doing is together moving down this path, and 

13 especially now with the new protocols, really 

14 moving down the path together. And I think 

15 it's an outcome of the intention of 

16 expeditiously addressing issues on the SEC. 

17 There's so much pressure to get an SEC 

18 decision out as quickly as possible, and I 

19 think as a result of that we find ourselves 

20 moving this thing together. In a perfect 

21 world, you know, we would just sit tight and 

22 let all, after the evaluation report comes out 
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1 and is completed, then SC&A would be 

2 authorized to do a full-blown review of the 

3 evaluation report, etc., and put out a 

4 separate product. That's the way it was 

5 originally intended. But I think what 

6 happened along the way in order to expedite 

7 the process, so we don't -- it's not 

8 protracted, we are actually moving down the 

9 path together on lots of these issues. And I 

10 think it was an unintended consequence of 

11 expediting the ability to get information 

12 before the board as quickly as possible so 

13 that they could vote on a particular matter. 

14 And we find ourselves in this very unusual 

15 place right now. 

16 MR. KATZ: Kathy, you wanted to -- 

17 did you have something to -- ? 

18 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well, I was 

19 going to give you an example, because there is 

20 a slight different element to this, also. 

21 NIOSH and ORAU have made several box pulls at 

22 Hanford, and they have invited us to come look 
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1 at those boxes. And part of the reason that 

2 they have done that is because DOE does not 

3 want to retrieve those boxes twice. They 

4 don't want to have to pull workers out of the 

5 field for interview twice. And so we're put 

6 into that situation, and Hanford doesn't want 

7 to keep those boxes around until -- 

8 MEMBER MUNN: From a DOE 

9 perspective, that puts everyone at loose ends. 

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. 

11 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Right. 

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. And from an 

13 SC&A standpoint, what are we reviewing? What 

14 should we be looking through these boxes for, 

15 because we don't know what it is we're 

16 reviewing. Is that it? At least part of it? 

17 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Yes. We do 

18 the best we can. 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. But just 

20 because you look good now doesn't preclude the 

21 fact that you may, once you see our product, 

22 may want to go look back at those same boxes. 
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1 MR. ELLIOTT: Another wrinkle is 

2 when we say, oh, in that box we want document 

3 X, document Y, document 220 and document 580, 

4 that's the only five documents we want out of 

5 that box, they go to the classification 

6 officer for review for release, but SC&A may 

7 want ten more documents in addition to the 

8 ones we've requested. And they don't want to 

9 send those boxes back. They don't want to 

10 relieve that derivative classifier from the 

11 duty until SC&A has identified what their 

12 needs are. So this is -- it's compounded by 

13 this DEO requirement that is placed upon us. 

14 MR. KATZ: I don't want to derail 

15 this, because this work group really, this 

16 isn't the focus of this work group, and I 

17 don't want to derail it more. And it was 

18 actually really helpful to hear that point, 

19 and so it at least makes some of the issues 

20 clearer for other groups to address. Mike, I 

21 will turn the reins back to you. Sorry for 

22 that tangent. 
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1 CHAIR GIBSON: Well, is there any 

2 more comments from anyone in the room, or on 

3 the phone just in general about worker 

4 outreach or work communication? 

5 MR. McKEEL: This is Dan McKeel, and 

6 I have a comment. 

7 CHAIR GIBSON: Sure, go ahead Dan. 

8 MR. McKEEL: I understand that the 

9 issue of the DOE new requirements related to 

10 security are not exactly the purview of the 

11 outreach meeting, but since the discussion 

12 came up, I do have to throw in my two cents' 

13 worth, and that is that it certainly would be 

14 helpful to the advocate, the petitioner and 

15 the public if somebody at NIOSH in particular 

16 I think would be appropriate, Mr. Katz maybe, 

17 could make it clear to us why it is that seven 

18 to eight years into the program, and almost 

19 eight years after 9/11, why are we getting all 

20 of this sudden interest in security access 

21 from the Department of Energy? And it's just 

22 not clear at all. But the other thing is I 
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1 just cannot -- I mean I think it requires some 

2 explanation why these repeated Department of 

3 Energy reviews are so readily accepted as 

4 being necessary by NIOSH and by HHS, and I 

5 mean, that's not clear to me at all. It seems 

6 like they've made a request, to me, a quite 

7 unreasonable request, without much additional 

8 explanation, and yet nobody even seems to be 

9 questioning their right to do this. I mean, 

10 they are requiring all sorts of new procedures 

11 that definitely slow down the process. 

12 Department of Energy already -- I mean, I know 

13 everybody is trying to be collegial, but 

14 they've already been indicted in one sense in 

15 the EEOICPA by having Part B taken away from 

16 them because of the slow way that they've 

17 performed their job. And a lot of us think 

18 that they are still foot dragging mightily. 

19 So I just make a plea that the public, the 

20 advocate, the SEC petitioners, we don't 

21 understand why all of this is necessary. I 

22 don't think this is the forum to go into it. 
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1 But if there are communications from this work 

2 group meeting to the full board and back home 

3 at CDC and HHS, I sure wish that explanation 

4 would be forthcoming. Thank you very much. 

5 MR. KATZ: Thank you Dan, and you 

6 know, I'm sure there will be plenty of 

7 discussion when the security matters get 

8 placed before the board, whenever that time 

9 is, I think there will probably be a very full 

10 discussion about some of these issues. 

11 MR. ELLIOTT: There's been 

12 explanations given as to why we are going in 

13 this direction. You can find those on the 

14 transcripts of the advisory board meetings for 

15 I believe the last three meetings. But 

16 essentially what is going on here is, as I 

17 said earlier in this meeting, DOE has the 

18 prime authority and responsibility to protect 

19 national security based information, which 

20 also includes official use only and 

21 unclassified nuclear control information. And 

22 we, in our responsibilities within HHS, do not 
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1 have the ability, nor do we have the 

2 infrastructure, to maintain or protect that 

3 kind of information. So we operate in an 

4 environment where we are given information 

5 from the Department of Energy, as the 

6 Executive Order requires them to do, for use 

7 in our responsibilities here. And we have to 

8 take it on face value that that information is 

9 cleared for our use, is not of a sensitive 

10 nature unless it is so marked UNCI or OUO, and 

11 we will have to protect it in accordance with 

12 these policies and procedures that you will 

13 see forthcoming. 

14 MR. McKEEL: I understand all of 

15 that, I think, perfectly well. What I don't 

16 understand is the timing in late 2008 and 2009 

17 that just doesn't -- from everything I know 

18 about our country and national security and 

19 all that, the timing of this doesn't make any 

20 sense. And let's just let it go. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't know what to 

22 say about the timing. In 200- -- 
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1 MR. McKEEL: Well, it hasn't been 

2 explained, let's put it that way. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: In the late 1990s, 

4 DOE made a massive effort to release 

5 information that before was classified. Then 

6 in 2000 and 2002, they started tightening up. 

7 And then in certain -- you can look back in 

8 certain points in times where the loss of a 

9 laptop, or the loss of a hard drive situation, 

10 or data files from a site were found to be in 

11 the public arena where they weren't supposed 

12 to be, that has resulted in renewed interest 

13 to protect this information, and maintain it 

14 properly. 

15 MR. McKEEL: But we also are well 

16 aware that the Bush Administration has 

17 quintupled the amount of data that's been 

18 reclassified. So I understand the general 

19 trends that are going on. Maybe that's all we 

20 need to say for today. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: That's all I can say 

22 about it. 
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1 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay, thanks Dan. 

2 You know, we do understand the concern of you 

3 and the workers, and I share a lot of those 

4 concerns. It does, in my personal opinion, 

5 not as a board member, seems late in the game 

6 for DOE to be throwing up what appears to be 

7 road blocks. But again, that will be for 

8 another venue. 

9 Okay, anything else as far as 

10 communications, worker outreach? 

11 MR. KATZ: Do you -- Mike, do you 

12 want to sort of clarify the scope questions 

13 that you'd want to bring back to the board, if 

14 you want to do that? 

15 CHAIR GIBSON: That's what I was 

16 getting ready to try to kind of wind things up 

17 here. I think we need to develop a question 

18 type to the board of what was the intent of 

19 their scope when the board passed the motion 

20 to establish this work group. And I think we 

21 could probably develop a fairly simple 

22 question in that order. I think it probably 
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1 would help if -- Larry, if you or your staff 

2 could maybe -- but the different types of 

3 databases that communication which claimant 

4 stuff is filed in so that we could have at 

5 least a list of all those databases to present 

6 with our questions to the full board, so they 

7 could understand the -- 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: We should volunteer 

9 it, but we don't have to anymore. 

10 MR. KATZ: I don't know if this 

11 will be helpful, Mike, but I just sort of 

12 jotted down the different kinds of activities 

13 beyond the one that's sort of formally defined 

14 here as outreach, as the way Larry and company 

15 have described it, but maybe that would be 

16 helpful. Do you want me to just reiterate 

17 these different activities that may or may not 

18 come within the scope? 

19 CHAIR GIBSON: Sure. 

20 MR. KATZ: As a way of framing 

21 this? So the one that sounds like it's 

22 already covered in the heart of it is the 
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1 classic outreach activities that OCAS does, 

2 and those have sort of two purposes. One to 

3 inform and educate, but also to collect 

4 information as well needed for site profiles 

5 or SECs, and also I assume then as part of 

6 that to identify site experts who may not be 

7 identified yet. So that's sort of the heart, 

8 sort of clearly covered under the scope you 

9 have already. 

10 Then other things we talked about 

11 here that are slightly tangential. One is 

12 site profile and SEC interviews. That 

13 process, which it's not clear to me whether 

14 they are considered within that outreach 

15 activity or tangential to it, and then there 

16 is a second other areas. Interactions with 

17 petitioners and claimants during the 

18 consideration of their claims, or during the 

19 consideration of a petition, in case you had 

20 some lack of clarity as to whether that's 

21 covered. And the third activity is assistance 

22 to petitioners and claimants to facilitate the 
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1 process, and we've talked about, for example, 

2 Denise Brock and Laurie Breyer's activities 

3 and so on, and whether that's also considered 

4 part of outreach in a more general sense than 

5 was clearly defined by the board in charge. 

6 Those were the ones, anyway, that I wrote 

7 down. 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: Does a workshop fit 

9 in number one or number two? 

10 MR. KATZ: Which kind of workshop 

11 are you talking about? 

12 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: The March -- 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: The one where we 

14 invite interested parties to come and work 

15 through a session with us on what it takes to 

16 process a petition. How do you file a 

17 petition? That's the last -- 

18 MR. KATZ: That's part of the 

19 assistance. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: Dose reconstruction, 

21 we give them a tutorial on how we do dose 

22 reconstruction, those kind of things. 
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: I think it's a 

2 combination. I think you will find activities 

3 that will fill more than one of these. If you 

4 are looking at these as purposes of what is 

5 accomplished, for instance, assistance and 

6 informing would both be accomplished. 

7 MR. KATZ: Right, so would fall 

8 already, I think, in the scope when you are 

9 running a workshop. I think that's clearly 

10 covered. 

11 CHAIR GIBSON: The assistance thing 

12 you talked about before, I would call them 

13 probably one of two parts. One that we talked 

14 about where they kind of overlap sometimes. 

15 MEMBER BEACH: Would it be 

16 appropriate to request SC&A to review the new 

17 Procedure 012 when it comes available, or is 

18 that something we would have to wait until it 

19 actually hit the street? 

20 MEMBER MUNN: I think it's 

21 premature, myself. 

22 MR. ELLIOTT: I think you're going 
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1 to review it anyway when it hits the street. 

2 But it's not going to hit the street until 

3 it's ready. 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: What typically has 

5 happened is it's essentially part of our 

6 response to findings. You know, like these 

7 findings, any finding we said we are going to 

8 fix this in the procedure, that's going to be 

9 in abeyance in the database. And so that will 

10 stay there until whichever work group, now 

11 this would be for the board to decide which 

12 work group's going to do this, whichever work 

13 group then is going to take care of these 

14 things once our procedure is out, and we say 

15 this is the fix for this finding, then 

16 normally the work group weighs in on whether 

17 they feel like that's an appropriate fix for 

18 that finding. And if so, then they could go 

19 from abeyance to closed. So that's what would 

20 happen there, and so as part of that, I mean 

21 they sort of get that second, that review of 

22 the new procedure. 
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1 MEMBER BEACH: Would this work 

2 group get it, or would the procedures work 

3 group get it, and then would we have to make 

4 that determination at that time if it would 

5 filter back here? 

6 CHAIR GIBSON: I think the board 

7 would have to make that decision. But I mean 

8 it's -- I would make the case that it would be 

9 the responsibility of this working group, 

10 since it directly has to do with worker 

11 outreach. I don't know. Wanda may have a 

12 different opinion, but -- 

13 MEMBER MUNN: Well if you think I'm 

14 going to argue that it should come to 

15 procedures -- 

16 (Laughter.) 

17 MEMBER MUNN: -- you may be pushing 

18 my limits here, although I don't see how it 

19 would fail to come through procedures if it 

20 were, in fact, a closure mechanism for our in 

21 abeyance activities from PROC-097. 

22 MR. ELLIOTT: Just transfer those 
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1 findings to outreach. Transfer all the 

2 findings to worker outreach, and be done with 

3 it. 

4 MEMBER MUNN: All abeyances go to 

5 worker outreach, all right. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: We will issue 

7 Procedure 012, OCAS Procedure 012. That will 

8 -- it will be posted on our website, and you 

9 all, the board will get a notice that it's now 

10 a living document on our website and is in 

11 use. And at that juncture, I would suspect 

12 there's going to be people on this work group 

13 and people on Ms. Munn's procedures work group 

14 that are going to be quick to raise their hand 

15 and say, here's a new procedure, we got to 

16 look at it. 

17 MEMBER BEACH: And 010, as well? 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: Pardon me? 

19 MEMBER BEACH: Procedure 010, also? 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: Oh, sure. 

21 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, okay. 

22 MR. ELLIOTT: That's going with the 
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1 package of security plan and procedures. 

2 MEMBER BEACH: Right. 

3 MR. MAURO: If I could jump in, if 

4 we're talking about this new procedure as 

5 being a continuation of the closeout process 

6 for, I guess it's 097, the implications are 

7 that, okay, reviewing that procedure is part 

8 and parcel of the continuation of what we've 

9 been doing under Wanda's group. 

10 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

11 MR. MAURO: If it turned out that 

12 this is the review of the new procedure, that 

13 usually, new procedure reviews are usually 

14 authorized by the full board. 

15 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

16 MR. MAURO: And not by the work 

17 group. So we're in an interesting situation 

18 in terms of, if it's going to be an 

19 independent new review of a procedure, the 

20 entire procedure, then I think that's 

21 something the board has to authorize under our 

22 contract. Now if it turns out it's just a 
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1 review of, continuation of a review of the 

2 issues that were raised in 097, then I think 

3 the work group certainly can direct the 

4 procedure. So an interesting judgment needs 

5 to be made here. And I look to really, if 

6 this was me, I'd look to the -- Ted, maybe you 

7 could help us with this. 

8 MEMBER MUNN: Well, we have 

9 precedence with respect to your first comment 

10 about whether this is simply closing out and 

11 responding to the issues that were raised in 

12 097. If that turns out to be the case, and we 

13 certainly can't pre-judge that, not having 

14 seen the procedure yet, then there may be 

15 adequate justification for you to address it 

16 as we have done in the past as a simple 

17 closure and extension of the original 

18 procedures that you were charged with 

19 following through. If, however, there are 

20 significant other issues or concerns that are 

21 addressed in the new procedure, then I would 

22 agree with you it needs to go to the board for 
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1 specific instruction to have SC&A review it. 

2 I don't think we can tell until we see the 

3 procedure, can we? 

4 MR. MAURO: I think the same way 

5 you do, Wanda. 

6 MEMBER MUNN: I don't think we can 

7 judge it until we see the procedure. I wrote 

8 three items of potential action down, if you 

9 would like to hear them. 

10 CHAIR GIBSON: Sure. 

11 MEMBER MUNN: I had indicated on my 

12 own notes here that the preliminary statistics 

13 that Kathy had put together were going to be 

14 looked at by NIOSH and SC&A to see (1) if 

15 these were significant and (2) if they are -- 

16 I mean, do they really tell us anything that 

17 we need to know? We haven't decided inside 

18 this group whether we do need to know how 

19 effective our actions have been. That was a 

20 question that was raised earlier, but I don't 

21 think we fully addressed that. But we're 

22 going to take a look at what Kathy had put 
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1 together to see if that comes close to 

2 addressing the concern. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: Wait a minute. On 

4 that, I didn't see it. I know Stu looked at 

5 it briefly, but it was a table of sites. 

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Sites, claim 

7 numbers, whether it had the site profile, 

8 whether worker outreach has been done, and 

9 there are some other data fields in there. 

10 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, what we've done, 

11 yes. And a beginning point for, do we need 

12 statistics of this sort? Are they helpful? 

13 Do they tell us anything about how effective 

14 the program has been? And if we don't need 

15 it, say so. If we do need it, then that was 

16 my understanding that SC&A and NIOSH were 

17 going to take a look at them and discuss 

18 whether it is of value. 

19 MR. ELLIOTT: Well let me just, you 

20 know, Stu and J. J. may have studied this, or 

21 Mark, I don't know. They certainly have had 

22 an opportunity, more than I have, but I guess 
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1 looking at this, there's a premise here that 

2 we need to do something at every site. 

3 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: No, I 

4 wouldn't say that. 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay. 

6 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: We've done a 

7 lot of sites that have one claim, and you've 

8 got to weigh whether that's worthwhile to do 

9 that. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: I understand. Well 

11 in this context, I would say it doesn't come 

12 so much to NIOSH to weigh in on whether this 

13 is useful for you, the working group, as much 

14 as it is the working group. So you know, I 

15 can look at this, and you know, Stu and others 

16 may have opinions about it, but I don't know, 

17 I don't know what we would make of this. 

18 MEMBER MUNN: Well the basic 

19 question remains, do we have any interest in 

20 attempting to evaluate the effectiveness of 

21 the worker outreach program as it exists? 

22 That's the basic question. If we do, how are 
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1 we going to do that? What Kathy has presented 

2 to us here is her initial effort at an attempt 

3 to get a handle on what we actually have 

4 completed. 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: It seems like that 

6 might provide -- yes, I support that. 

7 MEMBER MUNN: That follows into 

8 this question, so SC&A and NIOSH were, I 

9 thought, going to take a look at it to see, is 

10 this getting us where we need to be, or is it 

11 helping to get us where we need to be? If 

12 not, then what tactic should we take? 

13 MR. MAURO: To me it's just a 

14 history. It's a history of what's been done 

15 and at what sites. 

16 MEMBER MUNN: Well, and you have to 

17 start with a history. 

18 MEMBER BEACH: Right. 

19 MEMBER MUNN: Or else you can't 

20 evaluate. So we're back to the basic 

21 question, do we need an evaluation of 

22 effectiveness, because we need to start 
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1 somewhere if we're going to do it. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: Certainly, I don't 

3 disagree with that. And just based on casual 

4 review, this looks like that's a good starting 

5 point to give you a basic understanding of 

6 where our outreach efforts have been, and 

7 where they have not been. But I would suggest 

8 that you need some measure of effectiveness. 

9 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. Absolutely. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: Because if the 

11 measure of effectiveness is you need to go to 

12 all sites where you've got 20 or more claims -

13 - 

14 MEMBER MUNN: No. 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: -- and do an outreach 

16 effort, then I'm going to tell you right now, 

17 we've already failed. 

18 MEMBER MUNN: No, no. 

19 MR. ELLIOTT: If the measure of 

20 effectiveness is where we have a given site 

21 situation, has NIOSH and its contractors 

22 performed an adequate outreach effort? That's 
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1 a whole different analysis that can be done. 

2 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, it is. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay? And the 

4 outcome of that will be perhaps mixed, 

5 depending upon which and how many sites you 

6 look at. 

7 MEMBER MUNN: And it may be an 

8 additional step that needs to be taken with 

9 respect to circulating among a few of the 

10 claimants a survey sheet. Do you feel you've 

11 had adequate response? And that may be all we 

12 need to do. But it would be a tool to get 

13 some feel for whether or not the public that 

14 we are attempting to serve feels that we 

15 served them. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: We need approvals on 

17 surveys. 

18 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, that's hard, 

19 though. 

20 MEMBER MUNN: I realize that. 

21 MR. McKEEL: This is Dan. Wanda, 

22 may I make a comment please? 
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1 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

2 MR. McKEEL: Kathy Demers sent me 

3 from SC&A, when they were doing their review, 

4 as one of I think six advocates, just exactly 

5 such a survey as you mentioned, and I remember 

6 mine was several pages long and the response, 

7 and I wondered if anybody ever looked at that. 

8 So there should be at least six set surveys 

9 that left the SC&A that you all could look at 

10 and at least get some definite input as to how 

11 effective the NIOSH outreach program had been. 

12 So maybe Kathy could help generate those. 

13 MEMBER MUNN: That's what we're 

14 trying to define. Thank you, Dan. We're 

15 trying to define what we've done, and whether 

16 that gives us the information we need. At 

17 least that's what I thought we had discussed 

18 earlier. 

19 CHAIR GIBSON: And I think, you 

20 know, that Kathy can, if she can distribute 

21 that to the work group, you know, we can look 

22 to that and see if that's the starting point, 
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1 and look through the history and stuff. But 

2 you know, I think your point's well taken, 

3 Wanda, but we need to leave this question on 

4 the table, but I don't think we're to the 

5 point where we can, at this point, actually 

6 define -- I think there has to be some 

7 measurements and some metrics and stuff 

8 memorialized, but I think it's still a little 

9 early. 

10 MEMBER BEACH: Mike, you have that. 

11 It's just part of NIOSH, or in SC&A's report 

12 of 097. It's at the back. So everybody 

13 should have had a chance to look at that. 

14 MEMBER MUNN: It's just an action 

15 item. 

16 CHAIR GIBSON: Yes, absolutely. 

17 MEMBER MUNN: The second action 

18 item that I had was that I thought that Vern 

19 had indicated that it would be doable for ATL 

20 to compile a list of their activities. We had 

21 discussed that as a possibility, as well. And 

22 that is another set of data that needs to be 
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1 incorporated into the effectiveness question 

2 if we are going to address that at some 

3 juncture later. 

4 And the final item that I had as 

5 action was one Ted touched on a little 

6 earlier. What I wrote was goal definitions to 

7 the full board. We were still discussing 

8 goals, and what our real charter is going to 

9 be. I have to repeat what I said earlier. 

10 History tells us that just throwing an open 

11 question like that out to the full board is 

12 not very productive. It seems to work much 

13 more effectively if there's a straw man for 

14 the board to look at. If we feel that the 

15 charter that's been stated is incomplete, then 

16 it would be my suggestion that we attempt to 

17 undertake incorporation of several of the 

18 items that you mentioned, Ted. And if we feel 

19 that it needs to be broader, at least list 

20 those items in some fashion if we're going to 

21 present it to the board, because these kinds 

22 of discussions with that many people get to be 
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1 pretty cumbersome. 

2 CHAIR GIBSON: Right. So that's 

3 where I wanted, once we get the list from 

4 NIOSH of the various forms of worker outreach 

5 and communication, of which - not necessarily 

6 which database they're in, but I think that's 

7 how you describe them - that will at least 

8 give us a set of communications to set before 

9 the board, and say here's the type of issues 

10 we're talking about. Is our scope with all 

11 this just worker outreach meetings, or -- and 

12 once they've established what their intent was 

13 for our scope, then I think we can do the 

14 review of the history and everything else to 

15 better try to, as a work group itself, set 

16 forth what we're going to measure against. 

17 MEMBER MUNN: That's good. 

18 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Can I make a 

19 clarification on this history? 

20 CHAIR GIBSON: Yes. 

21 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: I know that 

22 there have been meetings that have occurred 
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1 that are not on this list, but it was based 

2 upon WISPER, and going on the O: drive, and 

3 looking specifically for meetings, and then 

4 going on the NIOSH website. So this is what's 

5 available right now. 

6 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay. 

7 MR. KATZ: I mean, I think that 

8 limitation's okay because -- I mean I think 

9 what you're kind of trying to come up with at 

10 this point is, generically, what are your 

11 evaluation questions? And so this is really 

12 just stimulation for what are the proper 

13 questions. So I don't think the fact that 

14 WISPER is limited in whatever findings is 

15 going to cause you any trouble. I mean I 

16 would suggest that, just to make the next work 

17 group meeting productive, probably the work 

18 group members need to start coming up with 

19 actually thoughts about evaluation questions 

20 and so on so that sort of groundwork has 

21 developed before, and I don't know whether you 

22 want to charge SC&A with helping with, or sort 
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1 of do that spade work. But I think if you 

2 don't do that work -- I mean, it's very hard 

3 to do that kind of thinking in this kind of 

4 work group setting. You may want to do the 

5 initial thinking individually among the work 

6 group members -- what do our evaluation 

7 questions need to be, and then from that, 

8 think the next step how do you measure that. 

9 Think about that separately, and then you can 

10 bring that together in the next work group 

11 meeting. And again like I said, if you need 

12 SC&A to help you with that, you can task them 

13 to some extent to help you with that ground 

14 work. 

15 CHAIR GIBSON: We're sure open to 

16 it. But again, until we really get the exact 

17 scope, the depth and breadth of the work 

18 group's responsibility charged from the board, 

19 it's hard to start with evaluation questions, 

20 because it's going to be different depending 

21 on a broad scope or just a very narrow worker 

22 outreach scope. 
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1 MS. BREYER: The audience is going 

2 to be the most important part of any kind of 

3 evaluation. 

4 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry, John? 

5 MR. MAURO: Yes, when we last, when 

6 SC&A was last tasked to look into outreach 

7 matters, it was when we reviewed those 

8 procedures, 090, 094 and 097, and it was done 

9 under the procedures work group, and it was 

10 very clean. What I mean by that is, it was a 

11 set of procedures, and we were asked to review 

12 them with respect to their completeness, their 

13 clarity. In fact, we actually have procedures 

14 that we use to review procedures. And we did 

15 that. And we also, as part of the mandate in 

16 reviewing those procedures, was to actually 

17 sit in on some, I believe closeout interviews, 

18 and review the degree to which those, the 

19 implementation of the procedure, was in accord 

20 with the procedure. In other words, it was 

21 fairly regimented. I think Arjun and Kathy 

22 were key to that, and a lot of the findings 
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1 that you discussed earlier today came out of 

2 that activity. We're in effect now talking 

3 about, I guess a follow -- I'm not too sure of 

4 how what we're talking about now is different 

5 than what we did before. See now we don't 

6 actually, we're not really talking about a 

7 particular procedure that we're going to be 

8 reviewing on behalf of the board or the work 

9 group. It's more of an amorphous kind of 

10 discussion as to the kinds of records that are 

11 kept and their completeness, whether or not -- 

12 and how do you measure their effectiveness. 

13 So I mean I'm a little at a loss of what the 

14 action item might be. 

15 CHAIR GIBSON: Just -- right now, 

16 just draft input if you have any. Don't take 

17 any extra, additional items or anything like 

18 that. Just if you had some, you know, Kathy 

19 or Arjun or some of your team had some draft 

20 ideas for this work group, just submit them to 

21 the work group in an informal email. 

22 MR. MAURO: Okay, that's helpful, 
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1 because it makes the scope a little narrower. 

2 Very good. We can take care of that. 

3 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay. Is there 

4 anything else? So if the members of the work 

5 group -- we can just start thinking of some 

6 ideas, and if OCAS has the opportunity to 

7 forward to us the different types of 

8 communications that are filed in the database, 

9 I'll put together a draft question for the 

10 board. I'll submit it to the work group 

members, and we'll have that finalized the 29th 11 

12 to submit to the board in the February 

13 meeting, and then hopefully, shortly 

14 thereafter, we can have a little more ground 

15 rules established, and see if we can't come up 

16 with some of these metrics and stuff on which 

17 to start building off. Does that sound 

18 acceptable? 

19 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

20 CHAIR GIBSON: Larry? 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: I would offer, as an 

22 open invitation to any of the board members, 
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1 when you're here in Cincinnati for another 

2 work group meeting, if you'd like to come over 

3 to our offices and view the new database 

4 that's being, has been developed before you 

5 can actually see it from your own, from your 

6 laptop that NIOSH is going to issue you, if 

7 you want to get an advanced look-see at this 

8 when you're in town, or you want to schedule 

9 one of your future work group sessions to 

10 include this kind of a thing, we can 

11 accommodate that. It might get us a leg up on 

12 looking at it before we can go with access to 

13 the firewall. 

14 MEMBER MUNN: Do you provide 

15 chauffeur service? 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I think we 

17 could probably look into that. 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: We can look into that 

19 for sure. 

20 MEMBER MUNN: Thank you. 

21 MEMBER BEACH: I think that would 

22 be beneficial for this work group to see that 
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1 for sure. 

2 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: And one 

3 other suggestion I would have in order to 

4 develop these goals is to actually sit on a 

5 worker outreach meeting. 

6 CHAIR GIBSON: You haven't been to 

7 one, Kathy? 

8 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: I have not. 

9 Well, a smaller group meeting. 

10 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay. 

11 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: But not one 

12 organized by ATL. 

13 MR. McDOUGALL: SC&A has never been 

14 to anything that we set up. 

15 MS. BREYER: We have been to the 

16 SEC evaluation for Hanford. 

17 MR. McDOUGALL: We didn't set up the 

18 Hanford. 

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: I think you 

20 did some contacts for Hanford. 

21 MR. McDOUGALL: We were between 

22 contracts when Hanford took place. 
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1 MS. BREYER: Right. 

2 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: I believe we 

3 actually went to Bethlehem Steel, but that's 

4 the only one that comes to mind. 

5 CHAIR GIBSON: If you're going to 

6 be, you know, the point of contact for SC&A 

7 for this work group, you know, I don't see any 

8 reason why Kathy couldn't go along. 

9 MR. KATZ: Absolutely. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: No, of course. We 

11 put out there on the calendar these events, 

12 and the board members are welcome to attend 

13 those. SC&A can attend them for their 

14 appropriate tasks. 

15 CHAIR GIBSON: John, would that be 

16 okay with you? 

17 MR. MAURO: Yes, that's fine. 

18 Attending the meetings, that would be a -- 

19 think of it like this. Attending those 

20 meetings would give us a baseline of what's 

21 going on. I don't know if we actually come 

22 out with any kind of reports until we refer 
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1 the task. That is, for example, in the past, 

2 as I mentioned earlier, when we were actually 

3 tasked to sit in on a number of closeout 

4 meetings, for example, where we -- part of our 

5 deliverable was to report on that. In this 

6 case, it sounds like that SC&A will just join 

7 in on some of these meetings whether they 

8 were, you know, information -- whether NIOSH 

9 is providing information or gathering 

10 information, but I don't know. Is there 

11 anything that you would like us to deliver to 

12 the work group as a result of participating in 

13 those meetings by way of an action item? 

14 CHAIR GIBSON: Not at this point. 

15 Just to gain experience and see the process. 

16 MR. MAURO: That's fine. That's 

17 certainly within our budget and scope, and we 

18 can do that, sure. 

19 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: We would just ask 

21 that you remind yourself of the purpose of a 

22 given meeting. There are, as I tried to 
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1 explain to you at the start of this session 

2 today, there are various purposes that would 

3 call for that meeting. And so, you know, you 

4 may want to look at it that way, that a town 

5 hall meeting is something you haven't seen and 

6 you want to go see. And if it's a focus group 

7 or a small session with three or four workers 

8 looking at a particular issue on a site, and 

9 it's going to an evaluation of a class, or 

10 it's going to the development of a site 

11 profile related issue, just keep that in mind, 

12 that's the purpose behind it. Or if it's an 

13 SEC petition outreach effort, that's going to 

14 be different than the other two that I've just 

15 described. If it's a workshop like we're 

16 going to have in March, that's going to be an 

17 entirely different purpose and scenario in and 

18 of itself. So keep in mind the purpose behind 

19 the meeting. Keep in mind who the audience 

20 is, and if you're there as observers, please 

21 be there as observers and don't, in that 

22 regard, please try not to interfere with the 
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1 process that we tried to establish in these 

2 meetings, because it can derail us. If you're 

3 there and you ask questions about, why aren't 

4 there more people involved in this, then that 

5 derails the purpose of the meeting. 

6 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: I would 

7 suggest that it be an information-gathering 

8 meeting. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: Your purpose in 

10 attending? 

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Well actually what 

12 she means is the meeting where we're trying to 

13 gather information, as opposed to where we're 

14 presenting it. 

15 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Right. 

16 MR. MAURO: It occurred to me, it's 

17 my understanding that you would be extending 

18 to SC&A, and I guess to the work group and the 

19 board members to come and watch, and we 

20 understand that, and respect the fact that we 

21 are just observers. 

22 CHAIR GIBSON: Okay, is there 
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1 anything else? Before we adjourn, any other 

2 comments from the phone? Thanks a lot. Then 

3 we're adjourned for today. 

4 (Whereupon, the foregoing meeting 

5 was concluded at 3:03 p.m.)