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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + +

WORK GROUP ON WORKER OUTREACH

+ + + + +

WEDNESDAY

AUGUST 29, 2012

+ + + + +

 The Work Group convened in the 

Zurich Room of the Cincinnati Airport 

Marriott, 2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, 

Kentucky, at 9:00 a.m., Josie Beach, Chair, 

presiding.

PRESENT: 

JOSIE BEACH, Chair

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member

LORETTA R. VALERIO, Member

 
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ALSO PRESENT: 

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

ISAF AL-NABULSI, DOE*

LYNN AYERS, SC&A

MARY ELLIOTT, ATL

CHRIS ELLISON, DCAS*

MORIAH FERULLO, DOE*

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

STU HINNEFELD, DCAS

J.J. JOHNSON, DCAS

MARK LEWIS, ATL

VERNON MCDOUGALL, ATL

ARJUN MAKHIJANI, SC&A*

JOHN MAURO, SC&A*

L. MICHAEL RAFKY, HHS*

JOHN STIVER, SC&A*

*Participating via telephone
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 T-A-B-L-E O-F C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S 

Welcome and Roll-Call/Introductions ....... 4

Review of OCAS-PR-012 Procedure (NIOSH) and 

SC&A Issue Matrix (SC&A) .................. 6

Break ..................................... 96

Review Worker Outreach Pilot (SC&A) ...... 145

Lunch .................................... 197

Feedback ................................. 198

Ten-Year Review: Quality of Service Action 

Items (NIOSH) ............................ 232

Break .................................... 255

Next Steps for Worker Outreach (All) ..... 256

Meeting Adjourned ........................ 291

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

2 9:00 a.m.

3 MR. KATZ: Okay. Good day, 

4 everyone. The Advisory Board on Radiation and 

5 Worker Health, Worker Outreach Work Group, and 

6 we have mail.

7 (Laughter.)

8 Welcome, everyone, and let's get 

9 started with roll call. We are speaking about 

10 materials related to one site, Rocky Flats, 

11 today.

12 So, please speak to conflict of 

13 interest with respect to Rocky Flats. Let's 

14 go with Board members, beginning with the 

15 Chair.

16 (Roll Call.)

17 MR. KATZ: Very good. The 

18 materials that are publicly releasable and 

19 available, are available on the website under 

20 the Work Group section of the website.

21 And the agenda for this meeting is 

22 there as well, and it's your agenda, Josie.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, thank you.

2 We do have a very full agenda 

3 today. I do want to welcome Loretta. Thank 

4 you for joining us. There's a lot of work and 

5 we're happy that you signed up to help us with 

6 that.

7 Anyway, we do have a full agenda, 

8 like I said. We're going to start with the 

9 procedure, the issues matrix.

10 J.J., did you have anything that 

11 you wanted to start with on the procedure or 

12 have any comments on it? Otherwise, I was 

13 going to go ahead and let Joe go through the 

14 matrix, but I'd like to give you an 

15 opportunity first if --

16 MR. JOHNSON: No, I think on my 

17 part, I think Joe is good to go.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: We'll have 

19 discussion. As we go through the matrix, 

20 we'll have some discussion on various things.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Various issues.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, but we don't 
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1 have anything to really start with.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. I do want to 

3 thank everyone for all the hard work. I know 

4 this has been quite a task, this first pilot, 

5 the Rocky Flats pilot, and it's good work on 

6 all parts.

7 So, I guess we'll go ahead and get 

8 started on the matrix with Joe and Lynn.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, just I want 

10 to give a little, quick background. I did 

11 explain this in an email I sent to the Work 

12 Group, NIOSH, and the parties at the table.

13 We went ahead and streamlined the 

14 matrix. This is different than what you've 

15 seen before.

16 And I thought at this stage, given 

17 the history, it was getting a little complex. 

18 And this is taking it back to something 

19 that's a little easier to follow and can be 

20 used as a tool just to facilitate the 

21 discussion.

22 The biggest change between a year 
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1 ago and now, obviously, is the Work Group 

2 wanted to see the changes that were being 

3 discussed in the Work Group sessions actually 

4 manifest in the draft procedure, which, in 

5 fact, it's been issued twice now since that 

6 last Work Group meeting, I believe, in June of 

7 last year and in June of this year.

8 So, we wanted to reflect that and 

9 what actually was introduced in there, and we 

10 didn't go much further than that.

11 I think that's certainly what the 

12 Work Group wants to discuss and elicit some 

13 discussion on is what those changes mean, how 

14 significant they are, how responsive they are. 

15 So, we didn't go any further than just 

16 highlight what was done in terms of response 

17 to a particular issue.

18 We did have some questions of 

19 clarification we went ahead and jotted down as 

20 more of a placeholder in the matrix to include 

21 in discussion.

22 What I would suggest is Lynn Ayers 
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1 has been doing the absolute yeoman's work. I 

2 give her a lot of credit. You look at the 

3 hundreds of pages. You're looking at the 

4 person who actually had to work through much 

5 and we're the beneficiary of that close 

6 analysis.

7 So, I'd like to have her since 

8 she's the continuity going back on this 

9 procedure, just sort of walk through each 

10 item. Maybe bring the Work Group, since it's 

11 been a while, bring the Work Group up to date 

12 as to where that issue came from, where it was 

13 left and maybe a little perspective on, you 

14 know, some of the discussion that took place 

15 on it.

16 Then, certainly turn to J.J. and 

17 whomever, maybe Stu, to provide the current 

18 status. That would probably be a good plan.

19 MS. AYERS: Okay. Continuity-wise 

20 I probably haven't met most of you. I was 

21 sort of working in the background for a few 

22 years.
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1 I did support Kathy in the initial 

2 review in 2010 that we released in April. And 

3 then Kathy was pretty much still taking the 

4 lead at that point. So, I was involved 

5 largely at her discretion where she needed 

6 support in that, but did contribute to that 

7 report.

8 And other than that for the 

9 matrix, though, pretty much dug through 

10 documents that she left behind and primarily 

11 relying heavily on the Work Group meeting 

12 transcripts from October and December of 2010. 

13 And also, there was one in June, I believe, 

14 of 2011.

15 So, in terms of anybody's position 

16 on anything, that's where I tried to pull that 

17 from. And apologize in advance if - 

18 CHAIR BEACH: A lot of work.

19 MS. AYERS: - we've made any 

20 errors of interpretation there.

21 MEMBER MUNN: Thank you for pulling 

22 that together. It's still terribly confusing, 
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1 but it's a lot better than it was.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Absolutely.

3 MS. AYERS: Thank you.

4 We did mention - I don't know if 

5 it was in Joe's email or somewhere, but 

6 there's a little bit of reorganization of some 

7 action items in terms of which finding or 

8 observation they're associated with.

9 There was a couple that I just 

10 looked at and it kind of - I know there's a 

11 lot of overlap in these issues. And so, 

12 sometimes it just didn't quite make sense to 

13 me.

14 And then when I look back - 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: That's the 

16 purpose, yes.

17 MS. AYERS: - it seemed like it 

18 was, yes, oriented under the - 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: That's the purpose 

20 of the footnotes in some cases.

21 MS. AYERS: Yes.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: We did reorder the 
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1 numbering, and the footnote explains where it 

2 came from.

3 MS. AYERS: So, hopefully we can 

4 follow this.

5 All right. To start, then, I 

6 guess - 

7 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

8 MS. AYERS: - Finding 1, again, 

9 this drives back to the April 2010 report. 

10 The procedure does not provide direction for 

11 tracking training, evaluating or responding to 

12 worker input.

13 In the center section there, some 

14 of the specific concerns that have been 

15 discussed along the way include minutes and 

16 notes, gathering the information from 

17 information-gathering meetings such as focus 

18 groups and outreach, capturing substantive 

19 comments from other forms of meetings that are 

20 not primarily intended to gather information, 

21 workshops, town halls, tracking of comment 

22 resolution and training of recurrent issues. 
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1 There was a concern about the scarcity of 

2 action items that were present at the time in 

3 the OTS database. And just the whole 

4 integration of this procedure, how does it 

5 feed into other efforts at NIOSH and how does 

6 the information collected get in to the people 

7 that are dealing with the technical work 

8 documents.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: I think the 

10 overview on this one as I see it, is sort of 

11 the perpetual balance we have with procedures 

12 as to how much direction, explicit direction 

13 and detail do you want in a procedure.

14 You can go to an extreme where it 

15 becomes almost unusable, but certainly you 

16 need enough direction where it does clarify 

17 what needs to be done as well.

18 So, I think that's sort of the 

19 natural tension that we're talking about in 

20 this one is, you know, what level, what 

21 balance of direction does one need in the 

22 procedure to effect what's expected in terms 
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1 of an outreach? And this covers the 

2 documentation, evaluation and response to 

3 comments.

4 And I think our comments, again, 

5 from an overview standpoint, were that we felt 

6 it was not necessarily clear in all cases. 

7 And I think the Work Group has some specific 

8 actions to sort of ticket that a little bit 

9 and see if there could be more explicitness in 

10 the procedure.

11 I have a general observation. And 

12 this, you know, again, this may be an artifact 

13 of the way procedure is written. But maybe 

14 it's from too many years of looking at Federal 

15 Register Notices, but, you know, it's a 

16 procedure that has a section on procedure.

17 So, it sort of - the first 

18 question that came to my mind when we were

19 looking at sort of the additions that were 

20 made to this particular revision of the 

21 procedure was, you know, a lot of it's in the 

22 appendices, some of it's in the front end. 
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1 So, the front end, back end. And I guess my 

2 general question was, you know, what's the 

3 status of, you know, the information?

4 In a lot of cases, information, 

5 prospectus and guidelines that fall outside of 

6 the section called "Procedures," which to me 

7 is the section that says this is what you're 

8 going to do, one, two, three, four, but may 

9 fall in an appendix which provides 

10 information, background information, other 

11 guidelines and whatnot. That wasn't really 

12 clear to me.

13 And a lot of times you looked for 

14 something from the Procedure section of a 

15 procedure or a rule or a regulation that

16 references the Appendix or references that 

17 particular piece of information that ties it 

18 in, that makes it a part of the actionable 

19 requirement of the procedure, and I didn't see 

20 that.

21 I didn't see that reference that 

22 says, you know, you're going to do it and, oh, 
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1 by the way, Appendix F, you know, gives you 

2 the criteria that you're going to use.

3 So, what I found was sort of a 

4 standalone Appendix F that provided criteria, 

5 but wasn't clear that the expectation was that 

6 that will be applied as a matter of course by 

7 this procedure.

8 Does that make sense? That was 

9 sort of a format issue. Maybe it turns out 

10 the entire procedure is implemented as written 

11 and perhaps just needs to be clarified that 

12 way.

13 That was the comment that was 

14 written as a general observation as far as how 

15 that was written. And I think we're going to 

16 get into that.

17 MS. AYERS: Right.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: There's a lot of 

19 the enhancements, in fact, and the addition of 

20 the various appendices and some of the 

21 references that are made in the procedure. 

22 But, again, is that going to be, you know, is 
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1 staff and organizations going to become 

2 accountable to those provisions or not?

3 CHAIR BEACH: Good question.

4 (Laughter.)

5 MR. JOHNSON: I'm in the hot seat, 

6 right?

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

8 MR. JOHNSON: The appendices are 

9 referenced in Section 5.0. And with regards 

10 to that, that's - the expectation is that the 

11 individuals that fall into and under this 

12 procedure, they use those guidelines to follow 

13 through on their work when it comes to 

14 observing information from respective meetings 

15 or following through and putting it into an 

16 issues matrix for follow up and such like 

17 that.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: You're saying 

19 Section 5.0?

20 MS. AYERS: Yes.

21 CHAIR BEACH: You see right here?

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, okay. Right.
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1 Why - I guess, again, I just want 

2 to clarify. How does that contrast with the 

3 next section, which is the Procedure section? 

4 Not to get too semantic, but, again, I guess 

5 I understand what you're saying that in 

6 general these appendices ought to be

7 referenced, but it seems to me that the 

8 Procedure Section 6.0, is actually the guts of 

9 what would be - what everyone would be held 

10 accountable to if you made the requirement 

11 part of this.

12 MR. JOHNSON: 6.0 is going through 

13 and identifying what the need is for an 

14 outreach event and how it's to be performed.

15 Those references, those sections, 

16 appendices can be referenced in here. I just 

17 have to look at and verify that they can be 

18 placed in the appropriate sections reasonably 

19 and make sure that it flows well enough.

20 But I'm sure I can go back and 

21 look at it and - if you will, a lot of these - 

22 some of these appendices were put in there as 
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1 kind of like a back fit because of issues that 

2 came up in previous - and then some 

3 consequently.

4 That's how Section 5 was updated 

5 with regards to reference to the appendices 

6 and the development of appendices.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think 

8 that's probably an effective way to do it, 

9 because I would suspect that we will be 

10 tweaking this as lessons are learned.

11 And instead of having to always 

12 rewrite the core of the procedure, you can 

13 attach guidelines like that.

14 I think what you're saying has 

15 merit though. I think maybe anchoring those 

16 additions over time into the body of the 

17 procedure, which is Section 6.0 - 6.0, to me, 

18 sort of strikes me as if you were looking at 

19 what process needs to be implemented, you 

20 would look at 6.0.

21 That served as the - it's sort of 

22 the A to B to C to D of what you need to 
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1 accomplish depending on the type of meetings 

2 and what have you, and I think that's very 

3 good.

4 I think by pointing to the 

5 appendices that carry some of these details, 

6 it sort of makes it very clear to the 

7 implementer that those appendices aren't 

8 simply there for FYI.

9 Actually, they're part of what 

10 needs to be applied.

11 MR. JOHNSON: Right.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: I think that was 

13 the intent. But when I was going through this 

14 it wasn't quite clear, because the general 

15 section, you know, some people may interpret 

16 that to be introduction more than the - or 

17 background more than the actual procedure.

18 MR. JOHNSON: Also, in the future 

19 when this procedure is approved and presenting 

20 it to everybody and having the folks 

21 understand what the procedure is, those 

22 appendices will be identified as expectations.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Instead of general.

2 MR. JOHNSON: Right.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: You know, we wrote 

5 these things, you know, we've developed a set 

6 of expectations for these meetings. And 

7 we've, you know, we've incorporated a lot of 

8 advice from this Work Group in developing 

9 these.

10 And, to me, the execution is far 

11 more important than the structure of the 

12 procedure.

13 So, it certainly - mind you, I 

14 probably bother J.J. more than he cares to in 

15 saying that, you know, the Work Group is 

16 giving us good advice on something here that 

17 is one of the items that I felt really I 

18 wanted to address when I got this job.

19 I can't believe it's been two and 

20 a half years since I got this job. Sometimes 

21 feels like 80.

22 But one of the things that was 
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1 clear to me was we need to make sure that we 

2 are carefully listening to what we're hearing 

3 and carefully considering what we're hearing.

4 And so, for that reason we've 

5 really valued these discussions and we really 

6 want to be responsive to the things we hear 

7 and make sure that they are weighed 

8 appropriately, you know.

9 No matter what we write in the 

10 procedure, there are going to be various, you 

11 know, there's going to be a various degree of 

12 ardor on the part of whoever is our 

13 representative with respect to that.

14 So, it's just up to us in the 

15 execution to make sure that we accomplish 

16 these things that we intend to accomplish at 

17 these outreach meetings, and that we gather 

18 the information and treat the information 

19 appropriately.

20 So, to me, I understand exactly 

21 what you're saying. Usually you go to the 

22 procedure part of a procedure and that says, 
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1 this is what I have to do. And I understand 

2 that comment.

3 Joe, I think what I understood you 

4 to say is maybe working the references into 

5 the procedure part as we get some experience, 

6 might be an appropriate way to go here.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Let me just second 

8 what you just said. I think the expectation 

9 written in an upstream procedure is less 

10 important than the actual execution and the 

11 commitment of the staff to actually make it 

12 happen.

13 But since the context of this 

14 discussion today is upstream of the procedure, 

15 again I thought anything we can do to make 

16 that procedure as clear as possible would be a 

17 good thing to do.

18 And I think there's no 

19 disagreement that sort of as these are all 

20 add-ons and sort of like a house that has all 

21 these sort of rooms that have been attached, 

22 we can integrate that and reference them in. 
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1 Even if you leave them as attachments, that's 

2 going to make it clearer to somebody that 

3 theses aren't simply tacked-on informational 

4 things, but actually part of the procedure and 

5 we execute it as such.

6 CHAIR BEACH: So, I did capture 

7 that in an action - oh, sorry, Wanda.

8 MEMBER MUNN: Well, wouldn't the 

9 meat of your concern with respect especially 

10 to meeting minutes and things of that sort, be 

11 captured by simply adding the appropriate 

12 statement under the five headings of Section 

13 6, which are NIOSH sections? The other one 

14 being DOL, and you can't do much about that.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

16 MEMBER MUNN: But if you simply add 

17 a statement under issues of those five 

18 headings to the effect that minutes should be 

19 taken with regard to concerns expressed and 

20 integrated into the OTS, that's really - 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

22 MEMBER MUNN: - the only thing 
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1 that needs to be done, right?

2 MR. FITZGERALD: This is simply 

3 almost a format clarification thing.

4 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: It's not a major 

6 thing. It's just I thought that was the 

7 intention. But because of the history of the 

8 procedure as things were added on, it became a 

9 little less clear how that was going to be 

10 referenced.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Well, it was pretty 

12 cumbersome. Actually, it's a bit of a 

13 cumbersome procedure.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. It's almost 

15 like housekeeping. Go back and actually add 

16 the references in and make sure it's very 

17 clear that these add-ons are actually now part 

18 of the mainstream procedure even if they were 

19 sort of tacked on the back.

20 MEMBER MUNN: But you don't even 

21 have to tack it on the back. You just need to 

22 have an additional heading under those five - 
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: I think how you do 

2 it is something that NIOSH - 

3 MEMBER MUNN: Section 6.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

5 CHAIR BEACH: So, I captured that 

6 as a NIOSH action item to add the references 

7 in Section 6.0 and the procedure for the - 

8 reference the Appendix section.

9 All right. Next step.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think then 

11 you get into more of the specific actions that 

12 the Work Group arrived at, at the last Work 

13 Group meeting and trying to bring them up to 

14 date.

15 So, I'll kind of go back to Lynn 

16 and start going through those specific ones.

17 MS. AYERS: Okay. So, Page 3, I 

18 believe, begins the action items that we have 

19 on the table related to this finding.

20 Action 1 was to add guidance in 

21 PR-012 to identify the types of events for 

22 which meeting minutes will be taken.
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1 And again there, I think, on first 

2 read through the procedure, what struck us was 

3 there was language in there that said, you 

4 know, minutes are typically taken.

5 And as an outsider looking - I'm 

6 sure it's been clarified over time that there 

7 was a semantic issue, minutes versus notes and 

8 what that means in terms of who produces them 

9 and how they're done.

10 But where it strikes one on their 

11 first read was that it's optional to take a 

12 record, and that was obviously not what was 

13 intended.

14 And we want to make sure that, 

15 obviously, you know, from what Stu just said - 

16 MR. JOHNSON: What it typically 

17 means is such that as you go through into 

18 further Section 5.0, it talks about minutes 

19 and notes.

20 And so, you address, I mean, I can 

21 take the word "typically" out. If you just 

22 give me a word that you would like in there, I 
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1 can put that there. But it's used as a 

2 flexibility, because there aren't necessarily 

3 minutes always or notes always.

4 MS. AYERS: Right. And we 

5 understand that now after it's been discussed 

6 in some of the Work Groups.

7 I was just saying it kind of 

8 matters the first time when we read it, it 

9 looked like, oh, my gosh, minutes are 

10 optional.

11 And that's part of - I'm just 

12 describing where the finding and the concern 

13 came from.

14 MR. JOHNSON: Oh, okay.

15 MS. AYERS: We're not still there.

16 CHAIR BEACH: 2010.

17 MS. AYERS: Right. So, anyway - 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: There's no closure 

19 on that item though.

20 MS. AYERS: Right.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: I think the Work 

22 Group had left it to let's see how it's 
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1 crafted - 

2 MS. AYERS: Right.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: - in the revised 

4 procedure. And of course we didn't have that 

5 revision in front of us. The last Work Group 

6 meeting predated that.

7 So, I guess the question is, is 

8 the Work Group satisfied with what's in the 

9 revision, the OCAS 2012 Section 5, Page 4 and 

10 5. And this is exactly an excerpt of what's 

11 in there now.

12 CHAIR BEACH: My read through, I 

13 didn't have any issues with it. How about 

14 other Work Group Members? Phil or Wanda?

15 MEMBER MUNN: No. And in practice 

16 as I've observed in recent months, seems to be 

17 doing well. In most cases, the notes and/or 

18 minutes have been in concert with my memory of 

19 the actions that had taken place in the 

20 meetings.

21 So, I think that's the - that had 

22 been the real point of concern in the Work 
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1 Group is to make sure that the meat of any 

2 comments especially that were made by workers 

3 or others, were captured and were married into 

4 OTS.

5 And it seems to have been 

6 happening in the minutes recently that I've 

7 seen. Of course, I haven't seen them all, but 

8 you guys did a good job.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: And going back to 

10 Lynn's comment, I think the only hesitation 

11 back when - and this is going back almost a 

12 year and a half, was the interpretation of 

13 "typically" and, you know, as well as 

14 "likely."

15 MEMBER MUNN: Likely.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: And I think J.J., 

17 I think, shed some light on that perspective 

18 that really there was an expectation there, 

19 but it may not be universal in all instances, 

20 I think is what you're saying.

21 MR. JOHNSON: Right.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: That you wanted to 
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1 make clear that, you know, certainly the 

2 expectation is that you will do that, but, you 

3 know, it's not going to necessarily be a 

4 hundred percent of all cases.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Well, yes, in the DOE 

6 world it's "should" or "shall." So, "should" 

7 means kind of likely, and "shall" means you 

8 will do it. So, there' just a terminology 

9 difference.

10 MS. AYERS: Right. I think where 

11 they're trying to maintain the flexibility 

12 between one form and another, but the "shall" 

13 should apply to there shall be a record of the 

14 substantive issues discussed in the meeting.

15 That could precede the sentence 

16 that says "minutes shall typically be taken." 

17 And then you would - there would be a clear 

18 statement that there's going to be a record. 

19 And then you can get into it might be this and 

20 it might be this, which I think would - 

21 something like - I think that was actually 

22 suggested in one of the prior meetings.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: So, are you talking 

2 in both places? Appendix F, and in 5.0?

3 MR. AYERS: This is more, I think, 

4 at 5.0 because - on Page 5 you've got that 

5 minutes are typically taken, but notes may be 

6 taken for smaller groups.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Well, Page 4 

8 references minutes are typically taken as 

9 well.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: So, it's the form 

11 of the - 

12 MS. AYERS: Oh, that's a specific 

13 meeting.

14 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: It's the form of 

16 the record which is optional and needs to be 

17 flexible. But the fact that there's a record 

18 should not - it should not be - there should, 

19 in fact, always be a record of these kinds of 

20 things, focus groups and - 

21 MS. AYERS: I suppose that would be 

22 Page 4, I guess, the very first time where 
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1 it's mentioned in the general description, 

2 might be the place to say - 

3 MR. JOHNSON: So, a record of 

4 pertinent information will be - and then 

5 followed by minutes or notes, you know.

6 MEMBER MUNN: Well, the response, 

7 though, in the issue status as Josie points 

8 out, Appendix F says minutes are likely for 

9 SEC, outreach and town hall meetings, and 

10 meeting notes are likely for focus groups, 

11 right?

12 Isn't that clear enough?

13 CHAIR BEACH: Well, "likely" is 

14 still kind of a wishy-washy word.

15 MEMBER MUNN: If you have no 

16 significant issues that are brought up that 

17 are new, we've already discussed in previous 

18 meetings the fact that if you're talking about 

19 the same issue repeatedly and no new 

20 information is forthcoming, then there is not 

21 any purpose achieved by repeatedly entering 

22 the same issue again and again in OTS.
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1 And that's what we're trying to do 

2 here, is it not, is capture the concerns of 

3 the workers? That's our point, right? That's 

4 our name, Worker Outreach Group.

5 If the workers are not expressing 

6 any new concerns, if all of the concerns that 

7 we had have been recorded, then the only major 

8 concern we have is assuring the worker that we 

9 have heard them and that a response is 

10 underway for their - 

11 CHAIR BEACH: Right. And while 

12 that's true on some meetings, the first one we 

13 were talking about is a focus group, and 

14 that's typically a meeting that NIOSH 

15 initiates looking for information.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Right.

17 CHAIR BEACH: Isn't that one that 

18 you generally take notes at instead of 

19 typically?

20 MEMBER MUNN: Well, it says meeting 

21 notes are likely.

22 MR. JOHNSON: It can go either way. 
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1 If it's kind of like a closed meeting and we 

2 don't have ATL there to support development of 

3 minutes, we use notes and that's the 

4 difference.

5 If there is classified material 

6 being discussed, you have notes.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

8 MEMBER MUNN: Well, let's be very 

9 clear in our instruction to NIOSH if we want 

10 them to use specific language. Let's tell 

11 them what to use.

12 CHAIR BEACH: Well, that's what 

13 we're discussing.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we started 

15 out with just saying, you know, we could 

16 insert a statement that says a record of the 

17 meeting shall be generated.

18 MEMBER MUNN: Shall be kept.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: And then just 

20 saying it could be notes or minutes, you know.

21 CHAIR BEACH: That's exactly - 

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Whether there's 
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1 anything new or not, somebody is going to be 

2 sitting there writing these things down 

3 anyway. There's going to be something taken 

4 in the meeting.

5 MEMBER MUNN: Right, right.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: So, I don't know 

7 that anything other than that, you know, if 

8 that's what - if you'd like to say there shall 

9 be a written record of the meeting - 

10 MEMBER MUNN: Are you going to take 

11 it and do we want it recorded in OTS then?

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we can get to 

13 OTS later on.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: You have to 

15 determine that and - but I think that's where 

16 we had left that, that with that preparatory 

17 statement, then the rest of it makes a lot of 

18 sense, because you need flexibility as far as 

19 what form you record the information on.

20 But the fact that you're going to 

21 record it shouldn't be a - 

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: - discretion.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Right. Okay.

3 Got that?

4 MS. AYERS: All right. Okay, Item 

5 2. Action Item 2 under Finding 1 was 

6 referenced as appropriate DCAS procedures. 

7 And that was probably completed as of December 

8 of 2010.

9 They've added references to 

10 several policies and PROC-10 is their data and 

11 interview procedure. That's a DOE 

12 classification review procedure.

13 So, those were the ones that had 

14 been committed to being added.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Which I think was 

16 the - 

17 MS. AYERS: As far as I know --

18 MR. FITZGERALD: - scope of what 

19 the --

20 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

21 MS. AYERS: - that was completed.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: - Work Group was 
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1 interested in. I think that pretty much is 

2 completed.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, I think 

4 that's completed, closed. Unless there's any 

5 objections to Number 2, I think that's been 

6 done.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Number 3.

8 THE COURT REPORTER: Could I just 

9 remind people to please try and speak one 

10 person at a time?

11 CHAIR BEACH: Thank you. Thank 

12 you.

13 MS. AYERS: Okay. Number 3, 

14 develop appropriate wording characterizing the 

15 requirements to capture worker input from 

16 information-gathering meetings. So, this is 

17 more like the focus groups, what we're talking 

18 about there.

19 Let's see. The Work Group meeting 

20 transcript indicates the procedure should 

21 clearly require an accurate account - oh, this 

22 is what we've really been just discussing is 
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1 Number 3 there. We did talk about that 

2 language.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Which is the 

4 preparatory statement.

5 MS. AYERS: Right, the preparatory 

6 statement.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

8 MS. AYERS: Regardless of whether 

9 the format is minutes or notes, just make it 

10 clear that there shall be a record.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

12 MS. AYERS: And that was still 

13 lacking and we've just discussed that under 

14 Item 1.

15 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, we can say 

16 we are going to make it clear that notes will 

17 be taken and this Item Number 3 can be closed 

18 as well or considered complete?

19 Does everybody agree with that?

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: One of the notes we 
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1 took is that we would include that statement.

2 MS. AYERS: Right. Okay. Page 4, 

3 Item 4, evaluate the OTS and WISPR database 

4 compatibility to determine if comments and 

5 action items from WISPR can be added to OTS.

6 CHAIR BEACH: Vern, I think - 

7 MS. AYERS: And I think that was in 

8 progress.

9 CHAIR BEACH: I think this one's 

10 yours, Vern.

11 MR. McDOUGALL: Okay. All of the 

12 action items, all of the comments and action 

13 items in WISPR have been transferred to OTS. 

14 And we invite you to go in and look at them 

15 there.

16 CHAIR BEACH: You know, I actually 

17 went in and looked, but I didn't - I couldn't 

18 tell that everything had been transferred. 

19 So, you actually - 

20 MR. FITZGERALD: What's the 

21 effective date? Was it recently or - 

22 MR. McDOUGALL: About a week ago. 
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1 I don't know that there's an easy way to 

2 navigate it to see which ones came from WISPR.

3 But I think the best thing we need 

4 - 

5 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

6 MR. McDOUGALL: We really have to 

7 pick a meeting from that era and go in and 

8 look at the individual to test it. Kind of go 

9 in and look at the notes on that particular 

10 meeting.

11 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

12 MR. McDOUGALL: It's pretty old 

13 now. I don't think anything is - when did we 

14 end this program?

15 CHAIR BEACH: 2007. Okay. So, all 

16 data has been transferred as of last week.

17 MR. McDOUGALL: Yes.

18 MS. ELLIOTT: And that may be 

19 either meeting or site action items or into 

20 the individual meetings.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, perfect. I 

22 guess that's to other actions proposed or 
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1 considered.

2 MS. AYERS: Okay. So, NIOSH 

3 proposes adding an appendix, Appendix E, 

4 describing the criteria for determining action 

5 items.

6 That has definitely been done, but 

7 we're going to cover that in more length under 

8 Finding 2 where it's more directly applicable.

9 B, let's see, the importance of 

10 documenting comments and questions from 

11 information-gathering, giving or information12 giving meetings. So, this is in lieu of 

13 taking formal meeting minutes or notes.

14 So, basically, in the context of 

15 the Work Group meeting, there seemed to be 

16 agreement between NIOSH and SC&A and the Work 

17 Group that that was an important objective to 

18 make sure that we captured those regardless of 

19 what kind of meeting they came from. And we 

20 had recommended that that be reflected 

21 somewhere in the procedures.

22 Now, for town hall meetings there 
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1 is a statement. Let me see what page it is.

2 CHAIR BEACH: It is on Page 5 and 

3 it says, minutes will be taken. It was added, 

4 because it's - 

5 MS. AYERS: No, this isn't about 

6 the minutes.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

8 MS. AYERS: Oh, just that there was 

9 a potential for them to receive - it's under 

10 the specific description of that meeting. 

11 Page 5. This was actually already in the 

12 original text of the procedure.

13 Typically, NIOSH may not be 

14 seeking any new information from the audience 

15 in a town hall meeting. However, comments for 

16 new information may be obtained and, yes, 

17 minutes are taken because of the nature of 

18 that meeting.

19 CHAIR BEACH: So, then they're 

20 captured.

21 MS. AYERS: Yes, that's the only 

22 information-giving/gathering type of meeting 
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1 that actually says that kind of thing that 

2 there is a potential for us.

3 Even though it's not the primary 

4 objective of the meeting, there's a potential 

5 for us to receive new information that's 

6 relevant to dose reconstructions and general 

7 work products and we want to capture them.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: So, are we saying 

9 that that language is now there or was there?

10 MS. AYERS: No, it was there only 

11 for that one kind of meeting.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Just the town 

13 hall. Town hall meeting.

14 MR. JOHNSON: But by virtue of the 

15 expectation of a town hall meeting or a focus 

16 group meeting, we want to capture information.

17 MS. AYERS: Right.

18 MR. JOHNSON: So, whether I say it 

19 or not, that's why we have the meeting, the 

20 expectation.

21 And, therefore, the appendices for 

22 attempting to identify through information 
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1 that either affects a TBD or new information 

2 or issues that may not be able to be addressed 

3 at that point in time, have to come back and 

4 provide feedback to the individual that asked 

5 the question.

6 CHAIR BEACH: So, if I'm reading 

7 this right, you're not worried about the town 

8 hall. Because if you look under the actions 

9 proposed, it says with the exception of the 

10 town hall.

11 MS. AYERS: Right.

12 CHAIR BEACH: So, you're interested 

13 in other meetings where - 

14 MS. AYERS: Right. Other types of 

15 information - 

16 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

17 MS. AYERS: - giving, gathering. 

18 So, over on the other side, workshops, invited 

19 forums, joint outreach meetings, DOL meetings 

20 - 

21 CHAIR BEACH: So - 

22 MS. AYERS: So, any kind of meeting 
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1 that they have, there's a potential for new 

2 information to come. Which, as you said, the 

3 Appendix E covers what you're looking for.

4 CHAIR BEACH: So, Mark Lewis, you 

5 have a town hall - or you have a workshop 

6 meeting, you invite people from DOE side, you 

7 may get information there that is important 

8 that - I think that's what the reason for this 

9 comment was to gather that.

10 MS. AYERS: Right.

11 CHAIR BEACH: And you guys 

12 typically, you take notes at some point, don't 

13 you, during those meetings, or not at all?

14 MR. LEWIS: More commonly we make 

15 sure that they know - me and Steve, we make 

16 sure that the site that they're talking to, we 

17 make sure that they get with the person that's 

18 from the site.

19 Like, if it's - 

20 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

21 MR. LEWIS: - WR Grace, we'll make 

22 sure they give them to Tom. Tom's, you know, 
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1 the person there. Make sure they get the 

2 feedback to there and they get the 

3 communication line set up.

4 CHAIR BEACH: But because of your - 

5 MR. LEWIS: I don't get it and say, 

6 could you write that down, or I don't document 

7 it.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Right, right, right.

9 MR. LEWIS: I just make sure that 

10 they - especially if it's in a workshop and 

11 we're close there, you know, I just may hook 

12 them up right there face to face, you know, 

13 but I'll make sure that they communicate with 

14 a person from the site.

15 CHAIR BEACH: I think that's a 

16 reasonable expectation and - comments on this 

17 one? Any other - 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Does it need to be 

19 clarified in the procedure, or is that the way 

20 it is? I mean, guess that's the issue, right?

21 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

22 MS. AYERS: I guess Appendix F does 
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1 state this in the observation. Appendix F 

2 does list action items as a potential product 

3 of all types of outreach.

4 So, there's an implication there 

5 that, yes, we might have action items 

6 regardless of what type of meeting it is. And 

7 that's kind of what this point is about.

8 Is that clear enough? Are you 

9 satisfied with that?

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Could that be 

11 addressed as part of referencing the 

12 appendices into the procedure process?

13 Because Section 6 is where you 

14 actually site these different types of 

15 meetings, provide a process that you would 

16 follow.

17 And we were talking about, you 

18 know, sort of referencing to the appendices 

19 and F seems to be the one that actually 

20 provides - 

21 MS. AYERS: E is the one.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Or E. I'm sorry. 
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1 The expectation that if you referenced E as 

2 enveloping these different meeting types, that 

3 would be it. I mean, it just sounds like a 

4 little bit of a clarification, but sort of in 

5 the context of what we were talking about 

6 earlier which is, you know, some of this new 

7 stuff that you've added actually kind of 

8 addresses this, but it's sort of, you know, it 

9 doesn't tie back into, or, in this case, the 

10 different types of meetings.

11 It's only kind of referencing the 

12 town hall, but you really intend it to be 

13 broader than just the town hall.

14 MR. JOHNSON: Kind of like a dotted 

15 line versus a solid line.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. So, you 

17 know, I think when one is trying to format 

18 this and referencing the appendices, I think 

19 that's an easy fix by just saying, you know, 

20 tying Appendix E back into the, you know, the 

21 full spectrum of meetings rather than just 

22 having town hall be the only place that you 
. 

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1 kind of explicitly reference it.

2 And I think it's the explicit part 

3 that you're looking for, right?

4 MS. AYERS: It's similar to the 

5 other one more like a - 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I don't think 

7 - a lot of these are - 

8 MS. AYERS: The general section 

9 that - 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: I don't hear any 

11 disagreement. A lot of what you're saying, 

12 J.J., is pretty much what, you know, you were 

13 saying. Of course the intention is to take 

14 the notes and to look beyond just town hall 

15 for that purpose.

16 So, I think it's a matter of just 

17 clarifying it very simply, not too much effort 

18 in the formatting of the procedure as we 

19 discussed it. I don't think it's going to 

20 take that much at all.

21 CHAIR BEACH: I agree.

22 Okay, ready for C?
. 

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1 MS. AYERS: Yes.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Trying to fix it 

3 is much easier than the issue.

4 MS. AYERS: Well, it's very easy 

5 when it's something that you're already doing, 

6 and you just have to say that you're already 

7 doing it. That's the nice kind of procedure 

8 change I like to make.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Anyway, so are you 

10 going to C?

11 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

12 MS. AYERS: Item C, tracking and 

13 trending. NIOSH has indicated that tracking 

14 and trending can be performed on just about 

15 any field in the OTS. And the particular 

16 discussion was regarding action items.

17 There aren't any recommendations 

18 in the procedure to do so. I don't - I guess 

19 that would be up to the Work Group to 

20 determine if that was a concern or not.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Well, that the 

22 procedure would tell them to go in to put the 
. 

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1 information into OTS.

2 MS. AYERS: Let's see. No, this is 

3 - 

4 MR. JOHNSON: This is addressing 

5 the tracking and trending on either likely a 

6 periodic basis and/or - and I've left it such 

7 so that ad hoc reports can be generated based 

8 upon management's need for a trend, not 

9 necessarily to go out there and look for a 

10 trend.

11 Because if you, like was 

12 addressed, there aren't that many points out 

13 there. And to trend a couple issues doesn't 

14 make a lot of sense, you know, until which 

15 time - and I would assume that's why the 

16 expectation was to go back and repopulate the 

17 issues in WISPR so that there would be 

18 something out there that there would be a 

19 tracking and trending capability. At least a 

20 database for that.

21 So, it was left open as a 

22 management tool for their capability, but with 
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1 no expectation of a periodic review.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. That makes 

3 sense. I mean, it should be at your 

4 discretion or NIOSH's discretion when they 

5 need that information, I would say.

6 Do we need something in the 

7 procedure? That's the question.

8 MS. AYERS: Well, the procedure 

9 does say pretty much what J.J. just said.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

11 MS. AYERS: It says it is possible 

12 to do it.

13 MR. JOHNSON: Right.

14 CHAIR BEACH: Perfect.

15 MS. AYERS: And as far as tracking 

16 an individual thing through to resolution, 

17 your Appendix E does deal with that as well. 

18 And we will get to that in the - 

19 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

20 MEMBER MUNN: That was the 

21 expectation here.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: And so, the 
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1 previous version of the procedure was silent, 

2 but now there's actually some statement that 

3 it can be done at discretion. There's a 

4 second part.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Second part.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Which gets to the 

7 status of the OTS tracking system, which we 

8 heard a little bit about in terms of the 

9 uploading of the legacy items from WISPR.

10 I guess the question that we would 

11 have is there were six action items literally 

12 in OTS back two years ago or whatever when 

13 somebody looked at it. Then the Rocky Flats 

14 was added, and you have since added WISPR in. 

15 So, there's some larger number.

16 Are there action items, I'm 

17 assuming, from other sources or ongoing 

18 sources that are being added as you go in 

19 addition to these pieces, the Rocky Flats 

20 piece, the WISPR piece?

21 And then I guess there were 

22 originally six action items that were reviewed 
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1 at the very beginning of this Work Group.

2 It's kind of hard to discern that. 

3 You say it's kind of, you know, you're just 

4 looking at this grouping, but have you been 

5 adding in real-time, action items and is there 

6 some sense about, you know, what the numbers 

7 might be over the course of a year or - 

8 MR. McDOUGALL: I don't know that 

9 they're identified as action items. We've 

10 done a lot of focus group-type meetings in the 

11 last year, but I don't know that the records 

12 of those themselves - I think it's implied, 

13 you know, that NIOSH is going to take this 

14 information and use it largely in evaluating 

15 SEC petitions.

16 I don't know that there's written 

17 into those specific tasking.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: The reason I'm 

19 asking, you know, sort of what's emerging is 

20 some thought to what kind of criteria might 

21 inform identifying the action item. I mean, 

22 that's one of the appendices.
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1 And, clearly, there's some thought 

2 that, yes, you probably do need to have some 

3 basis for plucking out of these meetings those 

4 items which need some significance and attach 

5 - and management attention attached to them.

6 And I was wondering, you know, in 

7 addition to sort of this nascent here is some 

8 criteria that we need to think about, is there 

9 any process that's ongoing to pull out items 

10 that would be considered action items?

11 I can understand you're inheriting 

12 action items, but are you generating action 

13 items?

14 MR. McDOUGALL: Okay. Well, I can 

15 say - 

16 MR. HINNEFELD: You go ahead and 

17 say what you were going to say.

18 MR. McDOUGALL: Okay. I can say 

19 we're not generating action items. If you 

20 think about these meetings, if you take, for 

21 example, the Nuclear Metals meeting, okay - 

22 meetings - I think it's implied that the 
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1 health physicists that were in those meetings 

2 are going to go back and digest what they 

3 heard and apply it in the Petition Evaluation.

4 Is anybody writing specific 

5 tasking, you know, kind of sketching out 

6 specific tasking, you know, look at this 

7 issue, look at this issue, look at this issue? 

8 And that's certainly - that's certainly 

9 beyond our - beyond our expertise.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: But, again, this 

11 kind of points out - maybe I'll review again 

12 for flexibility here, because the recent 

13 efforts are things like Nuclear Metals, which 

14 was done specifically for an SEC, you know.

15 We had an SEC Petition. And so, 

16 we initiated this focus group with workers as 

17 part of the preparation process for the 

18 Evaluation Report.

19 It was done at Rocky Flats. It 

20 was done someplace up at Fort Wayne, Indiana 

21 at Joslyn or something.

22 And so, they were done for that 
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1 specific purpose. And so, the HP rather than 

2 go through the meeting minutes and his notes 

3 from those meetings and decide what are these 

4 things I have to act on, he takes the body of 

5 information whether - his notes in combination 

6 with the minutes, and uses that in 

7 constructing a new document, Evaluation 

8 Report, for the SEC Petition.

9 So, it's not really - it doesn't, 

10 you know, we kind of crafted this, this part 

11 of this procedure as though, well, we've got a 

12 Site Profile, we're doing, you know, we're 

13 presenting it or we're doing some other sort 

14 of worker outreach, and there's a technical 

15 document that is influenced by the 

16 information. And they say okay, guys, we've 

17 got this existing technical document that we 

18 should go back and here's some things that we 

19 probably should make sure we cover, you know, 

20 sufficiently in our existing approaches and 

21 technical documents and things like that.

22 For these meetings that are 
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1 written specifically for the purpose of 

2 writing a new document, the idea of going 

3 through there and saying here's an action 

4 item, here's an action item is a little - it 

5 places an additional burden on the health 

6 physicist, which he was going to do that 

7 anyway.

8 He's going to go through there and 

9 say, these are the important things that I 

10 have - that have to be considered. But to 

11 then to build this administrative system is 

12 just sort of artificial act.

13 And so, I think for that reason 

14 you won't see a lot of action items coming out 

15 of an SEC focus group, because it's just not - 

16 it doesn't fit the process.

17 Those will come out of other types 

18 of meetings where there's an established 

19 practice that we need to consider whether this 

20 input causes us to alter or establish 

21 practice.

22 So, for that reason, I don't see - 
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1 and, boy, lately I think we've done mainly SEC 

2 focus groups, haven't we?

3 So, I don't see a lot of actions 

4 being generated this past several months 

5 anyway, because we mainly have done SEC focus 

6 groups.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: I kind of agree 

8 with that. I think we certainly saw that in 

9 the Rocky Flats study as well.

10 I think the analogue is where the 

11 Advisory Board as a whole came to a couple 

12 years ago where, you know, the question was 

13 you sort of have a lot of comments added and, 

14 you know, what do you do to disposition and 

15 not lose those comments? And a tracking 

16 system such as it is and was, was set up for 

17 the Board.

18 But clearly, you know, when you 

19 have sort of a Board meeting at a SEC site, 

20 you get, you know, a lot of commentary that 

21 goes directly to the SEC.

22 I think the notion there which is 
. 

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1 similar to what you're saying is that, you 

2 know, the Board doesn't need to capture that 

3 so much as to make sure that NIOSH and the 

4 Work Group and SC&A hear those comments and 

5 include those comments as part of the 

6 proceedings.

7 But on the other hand, you do get 

8 some generic comments made that may not bear 

9 on that particular site and you don't want to 

10 lose those.

11 And I think that sort of the real 

12 reason for the tracking system is to make sure 

13 that those go to some sort of disposition, and 

14 I think this is the case here.

15 And I hear what you're saying 

16 that, you know, if the worker outreach program 

17 is 95 percent devoted to SEC focus groups, 

18 that's the answer.

19 You're not going to have a lot of 

20 actions generated just by the sheer notion 

21 that, you know, it wouldn't make any sense. 

22 And I agree with that. 
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1 I was kind of getting at, you 

2 know, in having different worker outreach 

3 meetings, not just the SEC focus groups, but 

4 other forums, you would have a process, I 

5 would assume, given the Appendix and some of 

6 the discussion in this procedure, to both 

7 record, capture, and then attribute some 

8 significance to items that should be elevated 

9 if - any that come from left field, but it 

10 seems like it's a technical issue that may not 

11 have been addressed before. You wouldn't want 

12 to lose it and I was interested in the

13 process.

14 Certainly the criteria is a good 

15 start. It gives you some sense about how you 

16 would judge the significance and make 

17 something an action, but I - when I read that 

18 I was thinking, what's the process?

19 Who actually, you know, given the 

20 source of information of this SEC focus group, 

21 that's the answer. All those issues in that 

22 context are going to go to who's handling the 
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1 SEC.

2 But for everything else, you know, 

3 what's the process if you were to kind of 

4 scratch your head and say, you know, that's

5 kind of an important issue. How can we make 

6 sure it doesn't get lost in the process?

7 And you're saying you can't really 

8 - and I agree with you. You can't apply the 

9 technical judgment necessarily at the meeting 

10 level, but how does that go from your 

11 capturing it to maybe an HP in DCAS saying, 

12 you know, that's something we haven't seen 

13 before, we probably need to spend some time 

14 looking at that.

15 It may be a generic issue, it 

16 might be a site-specific issue, but make sure 

17 it doesn't get lost. That - and I think then 

18 the criteria makes sense.

19 Somebody will apply the criteria, 

20 maybe an HP, but, you know, going from you to 

21 the HP, it's not clear to me how that happens.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I can speak 
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1 to that. And actually, you made me rethink my 

2 last statement a little bit.

3 In these SEC evaluations, 

4 meetings, SEC focus meetings, first of all, it 

5 depends upon where we fall on our Evaluation 

6 Report whether the comments - whether there 

7 might be additional comments beyond what's 

8 being written into the Evaluation Report.

9 For instance, if we - if we in our 

10 Evaluation Report conclude that we - dose 

11 reconstruction is infeasible throughout the 

12 cover period, most of the stuff we're going to 

13 hear will be wrapped up in the Evaluation 

14 Report.

15 If in our evaluation process we 

16 say, well, we believe doses can be 

17 reconstructed, then there could be items that 

18 we hear or even if can be reconstructed 

19 proportionately, there might be items that we 

20 hear in this meeting that relate to these 

21 people's work experience that are outside the 

22 covered period or inside.
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1 And so, we need - I think if we're 

2 - I think we'll address certain of them more 

3 specifically.

4 And I'm thinking exactly of Rocky 

5 Flats now when we had a 1973 event and actions 

6 were taken after 1973 at Rocky Flats where 

7 they say, okay, we know better, we've got 

8 things under hand, but we got comments 

9 certainly from people who worked after 1975.

10 And so, those areas we need to 

11 look carefully and make sure we're considering 

12 what they're telling us in the context of the

13 whole - other information we received there 

14 since 1975.

15 So, to me, I'm going to relax my 

16 last statement a little bit. I think you're 

17 right and we need to make sure we carefully do 

18 things like that even on these SEC outreach.

19 Now, we have yet, so you won't see 

20 any action items in here yet, but that might 

21 be something - because I think we're going to 

22 get that later on in terms of process of 
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1 identifying action items. We're going to get 

2 to that, I think, a little later on in the 

3 procedure.

4 And so, there is a process, we're 

5 going to get to it, and maybe I should just be 

6 quiet and wait until we get to the procedure.

7 But I think I do want to relax 

8 that last statement. Just because we're in an 

9 SEC focus meeting, does not mean - that does 

10 not relieve us of the responsibility of 

11 looking through notes and minutes to see 

12 whether or not there are action items that 

13 need to be addressed beyond the technical 

14 document we're currently writing.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: We've been 

16 through, for example, some of the Site Profile 

17 revisits. And there are still some issues 

18 that require some disposition on a technical 

19 level, but are fairly significant even though 

20 they weren't of SEC significance. And it just 

21 seems like there's a number of items that you 

22 want to capture.
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1 And I thought the criteria were 

2 good criteria, just without getting ahead of 

3 myself, but I - sort of a hip bone connected 

4 to the leg bone type of thing. I wasn't quite 

5 sure how those things would get to the 

6 individual who could apply those criteria and 

7 sort of say, yes, this is something that 

8 should be nailed down better and we need to 

9 track it. It needs to go into some kind of 

10 system so it doesn't get lost, and that 

11 process wasn't clear.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we'll have to 

13 - we've got a process now. We'll have to 

14 maybe look at some of those kinds of meetings, 

15 you know, maybe look back at some of the old 

16 meetings and see whether we can go through 

17 that process there.

18 I was just going to suggest that 

19 coming out of here we could - we'll work with 

20 the ATL to identify some of those types of SEC 

21 or Site Profile revisit meetings.

22 I don't want to go back, you know, 
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1 eight or nine years, but we can go back a 

2 couple anyway and then go through the process 

3 with the record from those meetings whether 

4 it's meeting minutes or notes.

5 Then, the process is all on our 

6 side. We'll just work with the ATL to 

7 identify which are those meetings. And we'll 

8 go through that process on our side and see if 

9 we can arrive at - see if we arrive at actions 

10 and see if we can go back a little bit.

11 Like I said, I don't want to go 

12 way back, but I'm willing to go back a couple 

13 years.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Now, this process 

15 is outreach-oriented. This is really the ATL16 oriented just to clarify. I mean, everything 

17 else that comes open transom, you know, 

18 wouldn't fall into this venue at all.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: I mean, if 

21 somebody writes in and says, you know, I'm at 

22 such and such a site and I've got this 
. 

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1 technical issue, you would disposition that as 

2 a separate response.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: And I know Chris 

4 had to drop off our phone call and she's 

5 probably not on right now. And Chris in the 

6 past six months has been - had a detail or she 

7 had like a - I forget - eight-month detail as 

8 deputy director of the division, our division.

9 And she just started a detail on the World 

10 Trade Center for the majority of her time.

11 So, progress on some items are not 

12 going, you know, have not gone as quickly as 

13 they would have otherwise, but the - but our 

14 view is that we don't want to try to address 

15 all those various inputs in what we call an 

16 output procedure. We want to address them, 

17 and we want to have a system for addressing 

18 them.

19 And so, that has not proceeded as 

20 far as maybe it would have had we not had 

21 other conflicting resource demands.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: So, there is 
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1 certainly an intent to integrate - 

2 MR. HINNEFELD: The same kind of 

3 process. We expect to use the same kind of 

4 process, which is having the cognizant health 

5 physicist from our side go through the 

6 information as provided whether it comes from 

7 an outreach meeting, whether it comes in 

8 through, you know, any of the various sundry 

9 ways that information just pops into us, go 

10 through the same thing and determine, okay, 

11 what is, you know, what is the thing here, are 

12 there action items here, and capture it in 

13 some fashion.

14 Probably not in outreach tracking, 

15 but something akin to outreach tracking or 

16 maybe into an integrated system that include 

17 both the outreach tracking system and actions 

18 and things that come in otherwise.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, on the 

20 matrix, the second portion I'm going to call 

21 completed, because I think the essence of it 

22 was the WISPR.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: This more gets 

2 into - 

3 MS. AYERS: These specific things 

4 are done.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, okay.

6 MS. AYERS: And the others are 

7 going to come up later, probably.

8 CHAIR BEACH: So, that will put us 

9 into this F2. You're going to jump on that 

10 one?

11 MS. AYERS: All right. Finding 2, 

12 the procedure does not specify criteria for 

13 identifying action items or evaluating the 

14 adequacy and timeliness of response 

15 resolution.

16 So, here we go. Okay. So, this 

17 is leading right into what we're talking about 

18 already. The procedure described a process 

19 for documenting action items rather than every 

20 comment that was collected. And, therefore, 

21 identifying/capturing those action items is a 

22 key element of being responsive toward 
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1 comments and getting them considered just as 

2 we have said. So, that's what this one was 

3 about.

4 Work Group-recommended actions; 

5 Number 1, additional guidance will be 

6 incorporated into PR-012 to address action 

7 items final disposition determination. 

8 Responsible address commitment date, review 

9 for technical adequacy, designation of whether 

10 technical document requires an update and 

11 identification of how the action item was 

12 closed.

13 And that is all coming through in 

14 Appendix E.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: And that was 

16 discussed in the very last Work Group meeting, 

17 but had not been manifested in the revision of 

18 the procedure before the Work Group.

19 So, now it has been. So, it's 

20 consistent with the direction or the 

21 recommendation of the Work Group. So, that's 

22 where it stands.
. 

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1 CHAIR BEACH: So, that one is 

2 considered completed, unless I hear otherwise. 

3 So, Number 2.

4 MS. AYERS: Actually, Number 2 - 

5 Number 1 and Number 2 are both - 

6 CHAIR BEACH: Exactly the same.

7 MS. AYERS: They're pretty much in 

8 the same boat.

9 CHAIR BEACH: And thank you for 

10 referencing the transcript, too, to be able to 

11 go back and look at that. That was helpful.

12 MS. AYERS: Got to keep my brain 

13 straight to make sure - 

14 CHAIR BEACH: That was very 

15 helpful. You did a good job, Lynn.

16 MS. AYERS: Okay. Oh, there's the 

17 three - oh, WISPR comments. I guess it 

18 affected a lot of things. So, I guess - 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: I think we 

20 discussed that.

21 MS. AYERS: Appears to be - 

22 CHAIR BEACH: Make sure there's 
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1 nothing missing.

2 MS. AYERS: This was the end of F2.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: The same as the 

4 previous one.

5 MS. AYERS: Right.

6 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, we're 

7 calling F3 completed - never mind. I got it.

8 MS. AYERS: We haven't gotten to F3 

9 yet.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, go ahead.

11 MS. AYERS: Okay. F3 is the 

12 majority of expected documentation is not 

13 available at the time of the review in OTS for 

14 the meetings conducted within the effective 

15 period of PROC-12.

16 Kathy did prepare a follow-up 

17 review in - when was that? December of 2010. 

18 It included several recommendations. 

19 Incorporate guidance provided in those extra 

20 informational - I think they might have been 

21 slides at the meeting. Classification of 

22 worker outreach meetings and types of NIOSH 
. 

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1 meetings. I believe that's been done in one 

2 of the appendices.

3 Complete communication and 

4 training of facilitators and hold them 

5 accountable. So, those were our 

6 recommendations for the follow-up for it.

7 So, action items, SC&A had an 

8 action item to validate one of the updates of 

9 OTS result that concerned under Finding 3. 

10 That's the report from 2010, what we just 

11 described.

12 NIOSH action items. Number 1, 

13 reevaluate the meeting minutes from meetings 

14 conducted since the implementation of OCAS-PR15 012 based on the new criteria and determine if 

16 there are additional action items.

17 MR. JOHNSON: And we did that and 

18 we identified what meetings had minutes or 

19 were required to have minutes. And I sent a 

20 memo out to the respective HPs.

21 They reviewed the minutes and 

22 responded back in all cases indicating that 
. 

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1 there were no additional action items 

2 identified in the minutes.

3 CHAIR BEACH: So, is that captured 

4 anywhere? It's not, is it, in the procedure. 

5 That's - 

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I mean, 

7 there's really nowhere in the procedure to 

8 write something like this.

9 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: That's more of a 

11 historical actions taken.

12 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: It occurs to me 

14 that's a one-point decision, you know. One 

15 person looks at it and says there's nothing 

16 new.

17 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: I'm toying with 

19 whether or not there may be a sampling of 

20 those ought to be looked at by a second person 

21 on our side or your side or something.

22 MS. AYERS: You have a list of the 
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1 meetings that we reviewed in that matter?

2 MR. JOHNSON: This is a listing of 

3 the procedures in yellow. And those were the 

4 folks that were - that it was sent to. And 

5 then attached to it is their responses.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Well, in the 

7 essence of cooperation, I think I'd like to 

8 look at this and maybe share it with the Work 

9 Group and SC&A, rather than say, okay, well, 

10 our people said it's okay, so it's okay, you 

11 know. I'd like to look at it for --

12 CHAIR BEACH: So, could we do

13 something, some kind of a sampling?

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I mean --

15 MR. JOHNSON: How many are there? 

16 It might not - 

17 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, how many are 

18 there?

19 MR. HINNEFELD: There are - well, 

20 in terms of number of sites, there are - or 

21 number of meetings. These are eight meetings.

22 Two of the meetings are GE 
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1 Evendale, which is an NCC approval period. 

2 Two of the meetings are Paducah. They've got 

3 six sites.

4 The others are Kansas City, Weldon 

5 Springs, Huntington Pilot Plant and Simonds,

6 or "Simmons," Saw and Steel.

7 We've been calling it Simonds. 

8 Somebody from the neighborhood up there called 

9 it "Simmons" one time. So, we were wondering 

10 if maybe we were wrong.

11 (Laughter.)

12 MR. FITZGERALD: These are outreach 

13 meetings, not the SEC focus meetings. We've 

14 had eight of those since the - 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, the earliest 

16 one on here is on August of 2009. And the 

17 latest one looks like it's in July of 2010. 

18 And these were - well, let me think.

19 I think there may have been a 

20 variety of reasons for having these. I'm not 

21 really sure.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Just seems like 
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1 eight --

2 MR. HINNEFELD: GE Evendale, I 

3 believe, was the focus group meetings we had 

4 when we were trying to finalize that 

5 Evaluation Report and to vote on the 

6 Evaluation Report, because we were having a 

7 series of focus meetings with those people. 

8 That's probably what those were.

9 Paducah in December of `09, Chuck 

10 Nelson was there - or at least he's the guy 

11 who looked at the - he's the one who looked at 

12 the minutes.

13 MEMBER MUNN: Well, certainly eight 

14 meetings would not be burdensome for us to 

15 take a look at.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: No, no. I thought 

17 it would be more than that.

18 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

19 CHAIR BEACH: So, Jim, do you want 

20 to take a look at those and then share them 

21 with the Work Group, SC&A possibly?

22 MR. HINNEFELD: I would love for 
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1 Jim to do that, but I'm afraid I'm going to 

2 have to.

3 (Laughter.)

4 CHAIR BEACH: I'm sorry, Stu. I 

5 was with Jim all day yesterday. I was with 

6 Jim all day yesterday.

7 Okay. So, Stu, would you like to

8 take a look at those and then --

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Nobody on our golf 

10 league can tell us apart either and we've been 

11 playing in that league for five years.

12 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, so I don't feel 

13 so bad.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: No, no.

15 CHAIR BEACH: How do you want to 

16 share that?

17 MR. HINNEFELD: I'd like to read it 

18 first, and then I'll just - it's an email.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: They can send me 

21 the email version and then I want to go 

22 through it and see what I think, and then I'll 
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1 just add it on to the --

2 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, the action 

3 is for Stu to review and then to send it on to 

4 the Work Group.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Just for 

6 curiosity's sake, any action items come out of 

7 the --

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, the HPs all 

9 said there's nothing new.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Nothing new, okay.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: See, the problem 

13 with that is it's a - it's beneficial to you 

14 to say there are no new action items if you're 

15 the HP, because you're the HP that's going to 

16 have to deal with it. So, that's why I'm 

17 thinking about the one point - it's a one18 point decision.

19 All these people are good people 

20 and conscientious people. I think they 

21 probably made the right decision.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Sure.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: But I just like to 

2 know what we're saying. Unfortunately, we 

3 don't all think alike in our organization.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Or maybe 

6 fortunately.

7 CHAIR BEACH: So, we'll put that as 

8 an action coming from you, Stu. I even put 

9 your name down spelled correctly.

10 Okay. So, two.

11 MS. AYERS: Two, incorporate 

12 guidance for classification of worker outreach 

13 meetings and types of NIOSH meetings into PR14 012 or internal guidance document. NIOSH 

15 added Appendix F, examples of likely outreach 

16 meeting documents. So, that would be the 

17 response to that issue.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. And I'm going 

19 to assume we're all happy with these being 

20 completed as they are - as we go through them, 

21 unless I hear differently.

22 So, F4.
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1 MS. AYERS: Page 7, F4.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Moving right along.

3 MS. AYERS: Finding 4, the 

4 procedure fails to consider other venues of 

5 worker outreach. The multiple venues are not 

6 subjected to equivalent standards for 

7 documentation. Of particular concern is the 

8 two-track system for obtaining and documenting 

9 worker input that appears to give site expert 

10 interview records more weight than worker 

11 input obtained through outreach meetings.

12 Okay. Background here. Some of 

13 the venues that were brought up include, but 

14 are not limited to, Advisory Board meetings, 

15 the OCAS website, docket, CATIs and close-out 

16 interviews.

17 This is specifically not when 

18 information may be discussed in one of those 

19 interviews that goes beyond the application to 

20 just the individual case.

21 General information, emails, 

22 letters, inside expert interviews. Some of 
. 

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1 those procedures are formalized, but existing 

2 procedures don't provide a mechanism by which 

3 site-specific - general site-specific 

4 information may be captured for consideration 

5 and technical work products.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, if I may, 

7 this sounds like what Stu was referring to as 

8 Chris' project, a thankless project --

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: - to find a - to 

11 develop an integrated tracking system that 

12 would somehow envelope both the outreach 

13 meetings as well as other sources. And I 

14 would assume that includes interview sources 

15 as well.

16 Just make sure that significant 

17 inputs aren't lost by virtue of where they 

18 came from, I guess, is the best way to put it.

19 I guess the only question there 

20 would be - for the Work Group would be, you 

21 know, a little bit of sense of time frame.

22 I guess Chris sounds like she is 
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1 pretty busy.

2 CHAIR BEACH: So, that gets us back 

3 to Number 1, right?

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

5 CHAIR BEACH: And the action was 

6 status unknown. So, I guess NIOSH - Stu, if 

7 you could maybe tell us what you're thinking 

8 on that time frame-wise or --

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, sitting here 

10 today I don't really have a good answer. This 

11 is also - and I don't think you should expect 

12 that this is going to be complete any time 

13 soon.

14 And the reason I say that is some 

15 of these input avenues you've talked about are 

16 going to be complicated. CATI in particular 

17 is going to be very complicated. Close-out 

18 interview may be not quite as complicated.

19 And then some of them won't be 

20 very complicated, you know, like matching this 

21 to the docket or to our inbox, our email 

22 inbox. I mean, building a system for those 
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1 will not be very complicated, but some of 

2 these other avenues are going to be 

3 complicated and difficult.

4 And by difficult, I mean resource5 intensive to impose, to put something like 

6 this in.

7 MEMBER MUNN: But the Advisory 

8 Board meetings is done.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, the Advisory 

10 Board meetings are done.

11 MEMBER MUNN: That's a big lump.

12 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, start with the 

13 small, simple. And I think some of this was 

14 in the ten-year review, too.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

16 CHAIR BEACH: And I know Chris is 

17 going to report on that later today when she's 

18 back on the line and when we get to that 

19 section.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Just to go back, I 

21 mean, yes, I think this is a complex 

22 undertaking. Programmatically you're crossing 
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1 different venues, different sources and 

2 they're not very much the same. The form of 

3 the input is very much different. So, it's 

4 not an easy thing to do.

5 What I think we emphasize, though, 

6 was the importance of proceeding, because in a 

7 way, the concern that we had originally going 

8 back a year or two is that somehow it was 

9 almost like the tail wagging the dog.

10 The tracking system, the rigor of 

11 the process, the attention given to that 

12 process could very well - and, I think, in the 

13 opinion of our reviewers in the past, did - 

14 influence what inputs got, you know, what 

15 visibility in the system.

16 That because outreach, because of 

17 the good efforts of ATL and others, there was 

18 a fairly rigorous process of capturing, you 

19 know, what was being said in these worker 

20 outreach meetings and some of the venues.

21 That came out with a pilot study, 

22 in fact, that, you know, these, just by virtue 
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1 of the way they were handled, were more 

2 readily captured, more readily handled and 

3 managed.

4 Other venues were less so and not 

5 because there was any intent not to give them 

6 attention. It's just the regime, the tracking 

7 system, the process, was not quite as rigorous 

8 and they didn't necessarily wind up in the 

9 same place as perhaps the SEC focus groups or 

10 some of these other rather intense spotlight11 type worker outreach things.

12 So, I think, if anything, what 

13 Chris is doing is a leveling effort. It sort 

14 of levels the playing field, you know. In 

15 terms of comments, they're going to be given 

16 attention by virtue of their significance 

17 apart from where they came from and how they 

18 came into the organization, which I think is a 

19 pretty important thing, but it's not an easy 

20 thing.

21 So, I just wanted to throw that in 

22 because I think the basis for the concern came 
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1 from a sense that there was maybe a two-level 

2 process or, you know, sort of a bifurcated 

3 process of which, you know, one source wasn't 

4 quite given the visibility that the other 

5 source was, not by intention, just by virtue 

6 of the process that had been originally set 

7 up.

8 And now, you know, eight, ten - 

9 nine, ten years into it and that's where I 

10 think the ten-year review gets into it, 

11 looking back realize that, okay, this is the 

12 way things proceeded over time.

13 But if you want to make it much 

14 more homogeneous, then you certainly would 

15 look at how you would actually do it if you 

16 were to do it today. And you'd probably make 

17 it more leveling, you know, more inclusive 

18 than maybe it is now.

19 And I think looking at some of the 

20 stuff, Rocky was the notion that, yes, back in 

21 2004, the context and the focus was how can 

22 one capture the specific information to be the 
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1 Site Profile and to get into an SEC review, 

2 and that was it.

3 I mean, that was, you know, sort 

4 of remember those days, you know. You really 

5 didn't have much time for anything else.

6 Now, it's gotten to be a little 

7 bit different in terms of the tempo and what's 

8 being looked at. And I think that's where it 

9 makes more sense to sort of step back and say, 

10 can you do that. And it sounds like it's 

11 going that way.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: I just really can't 

13 offer up a time today for sure. And Chris 

14 isn't a hundred percent on the World Trade 

15 Center. So, I can still go talk to her about 

16 it.

17 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Seems like the 

18 CATIs, particularly the close-out interviews, 

19 are at a higher risk of HIPAA violations that 

20 you almost have to - you almost walk on 

21 eggshells in some of those cases.

22 You get the information that could 
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1 be used in this database, but still not have 

2 any type of personal identifiers.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, depending 

4 upon, you know, as long as this database stays 

5 within the program, it's not a problem where 

6 the privacy - we are all Privacy Act-trained. 

7 We all know our responsibilities under the 

8 Privacy Act.

9 So, the difficulty becomes when 

10 you want to make information part of the 

11 public and it becomes a little more difficult.

12 But it would seem to me that we 

13 could deal with it as an internal resource, 

14 meaning internal to all of us who work the 

15 project.

16 The difficult thing, to me, is 

17 that there are so many CATIs and so many 

18 close-out interviews. And the people who do 

19 those interviews are very good at doing the 

20 interviews, but they're not health physicists.

21 And so, to get health physics to 

22 interject into that process to determine, you 
. 

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1 know, and this has got to be the health 

2 physicist who's knowledgeable about the site 

3 you're talking about where the person worked 

4 at. So, it can't just be anybody.

5 To go through that and determine 

6 this is a generic comment that this person 

7 made. That they made it in the context of 

8 their own claim, but it's generically 

9 applicable. And so, that is just a huge 

10 undertaking.

11 And my mantra whenever we talk 

12 about things like this in any Work Group 

13 meeting is, the effort we spend on this is 

14 effort we're not spending on doing new dose 

15 reconstructions and evaluating SEC Evaluation 

16 Reports and, you know, going back and 

17 revisiting Site Profiles, many of which have a 

18 number of open findings on them.

19 So, for that reason I try to be a 

20 little bit stingy in trying to really promise 

21 that we're going to put HP resources into this 

22 effort when, by and large, the comments you 
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1 hear on CATI and close-out interview are 

2 claim-specific and you don't understand my 

3 experience or things to that event, you know. 

4 Here's what I know about what I did.

5 And what we hear normally is 

6 consistent with our understanding of how 

7 things worked at the site, but this person may 

8 tell us something about their personal 

9 situation that maybe we would not have 

10 realized otherwise.

11 So, to me, it's a lot - it seems 

12 to me like a big investment. And the only way 

13 you're going to do it is to look at every one. 

14 You've got to have somebody with the 

15 technical expertise at each one.

16 And so, that one, to me, is one 

17 that I don't relish taking on any time in the 

18 near future. Some of the other avenues I 

19 think we can take care of relatively 

20 straightforwardly.

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Well, I think 

22 you addressed one of my concerns is basically 
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1 keeping CATIs internalized and giving that

2 interviewer the opportunity if they see 

3 something they feel is, you know, applicable 

4 site-wide, then they can take that out of the 

5 CATI interview.

6 Obviously, it's going to have to 

7 be cleaned up and then transferred over and 

8 then someone else can take a look at it, but 

9 otherwise - 

10 MR. HINNEFELD: We have discussion 

11 with our contractor ORAU, our other 

12 contractor, about what might be done.

13 A couple of the CATI people are 

14 technically smart - or, I mean, technically 

15 competent.

16 MR. LEWIS: They're not health 

17 physicists.

18 MR. KATZ: Doesn't the DR person 

19 for a claim review the CATI interview?

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, that's the 

21 other thing. The dose reconstructor will 

22 look, you know. So, there is always an HP 
. 

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1 that looks at the CATI.

2 MR. KATZ: Right.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: It might be able to 

4 catch it at that. So, that would be something 

5 for us to talk to ORAU about.

6 MR. KATZ: Yes.

7 CHAIR BEACH: So, let's go ahead 

8 and talk about Two, and then we'll take our 

9 morning break.

10 So, let's finish that one up. 

11 We've discussed some of it, but - 

12 MS. AYERS: Okay. Two said, 

13 "develop a proposal for resolving the dual14 track system for site expert interviews and 

15 worker outreach meetings. This will take into 

16 consideration different types of comments, 

17 various sources and how it informs the review 

18 preparation of technical work documents. 

19 Consideration given to resolving how comments 

20 from different types of workers or site 

21 experts are weighted."

22 This feels like it's all part of 
. 

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1 one conversation, so I'm not quite sure what

2 that might look like.

3 Obviously, Appendix E is dealing 

4 specifically with the outreach meetings. And 

5 that piece is complete.

6 CHAIR BEACH: And it's captured in 

7 Appendix E.

8 MS. AYERS: Right. NIOSH has 

9 already said that PR-012 is not going to 

10 attempt to cover the broad range of venues. 

11 So, we don't know exactly what actions they 

12 would be taking in that regard.

13 CHAIR BEACH: Well, we're still 

14 looking for a proposal of how they're going to 

15 resolve that issue. And I think that goes 

16 back to Stu to, number one, a timeline. And I 

17 think that's kind of on you, NIOSH, to kind of 

18 answer.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

20 CHAIR BEACH: So, they're coming 

21 together. It's partially answered.

22 Okay. Anything else? Joe, any 
. 

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1 other --

2 MR. FITZGERALD: No.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Let's go ahead 

4 and take a 15-minute break. Everyone okay 

5 with that?

6 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

7 matter went off the record at 10:26 a.m. and 

8 resumed at 10:44 a.m.)

9 MR. KATZ: We are back, re10 convening after a short break. Worker 

11 Outreach Work Group. Josie?

12 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, we are on 

13 to Number F5. And, again, I'll have Lynn go 

14 ahead and go through that.

15 MS. AYERS: Okay. Finding 5, the 

16 procedure does not describe a process for 

17 assuring that worker feedback is accurately 

18 and completely documented.

19 This was dealing primarily with 

20 the affirmative sign-off by meeting 

21 participants who provided input and the 

22 destruction of audiotapes which might prevent 
. 

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1 the resolution of issues that might arise 

2 regarding omissions or misrepresentation.

3 SC&A recommended a feedback loop, 

4 including a specified review period for 

5 verifying accuracy and completeness of meeting 

6 minutes, notes or interview summaries. 

7 Furthermore, the procedure should address how 

8 comments provided during - well, we talked 

9 about that already - comments during 

10 information-giving meetings are to be 

11 documented and resolved.

12 Okay. So, action item - oh, SC&A 

13 recommended that the invitation letter should 

14 include a disclosure that tapes being made by 

15 NIOSH and its contractor will be destroyed, so 

16 that participants can bring their own 

17 equipment if they desire to record the 

18 proceedings.

19 So, Action Item 1 for NIOSH in 

20 OCAS-PR-012, "include additional wording at 

21 the end of the statement addressing the 

22 recording of the meeting stating that copies 
. 

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1 will not be available for public 

2 distribution."

3 So, that is in Appendix A, general 

4 meeting structure and discussion points and 

5 announcement made at the start of the - oh, 

6 that's where it's addressed.

7 And SC&A remaining observation is 

8 that if they just make the announcement at the 

9 start of the meeting, that wouldn't 

10 necessarily address this opportunity for 

11 people to be able to bring their own 

12 equipment, if they want, to record the 

13 proceedings.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Unless we announce, 

15 as we announce the meeting, unless we tell 

16 them the meeting is going to be recorded, and 

17 then at the meeting tell them, well, it's 

18 going to be recorded, but it's going to be 

19 destroyed, it's not available - 

20 MS. AYERS: Right.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: - what would 

22 prevent them if they wanted to record it, what 
. 

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1 would prevent them from bringing it anyway?

2 If they want to record the meeting 

3 and we don't say anything about it being 

4 recorded, if they want a recording of it, they 

5 would bring their own equipment.

6 We don't ever promise - we don't 

7 say anything about recording until we're 

8 there.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Given the state of 

10 digital technology now, anyone who wants to 

11 record anything can record it.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Can record 

13 anything, yes. Find yourself on YouTube.

14 MEMBER MUNN: It's not 2005.

15 MS. AYERS: So, the announcement's 

16 there.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: I just don't - I 

18 don't think there's a need to do that. I 

19 think that if they want a recording, they can 

20 bring their equipment, they can record it.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Well, as I looked at

22 the procedure, Appendix 8 is four pages long. 
. 

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1 It's a long appendix. And I made a note that 

2 what you added under the focus meeting on Page 

3 13, "makes announcement addressing the 

4 recording of the meeting." And I said it 

5 needs a better explanation of "recording of 

6 the meeting." But then when you go back to 

7 Page 16, it tells you this meeting is being 

8 recorded. So, it just seems cumbersome to me.

9 I guess I was wondering why what 

10 was noted on Page 16 wasn't on Page 13.

11 MS. AYERS: Is it just because it 

12 comes up in each different meeting type?

13 CHAIR BEACH: I don't know.

14 MS. AYERS: Do you want it repeated 

15 each time?

16 CHAIR BEACH: I'm not sure. I was 

17 going to ask J.J. about - 

18 MR. JOHNSON: Because what is on 16 

19 is what is announced, made as an announcement.

20 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, then the 

21 double asterisk, what was the purpose of that 

22 on Page 13, makes the announcement?
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1 So, does the double asterisk, does 

2 that mean that it's going to be an 

3 announcement or - I was trying to figure that 

4 out.

5 It's just kind of confusing, I 

6 guess. I'm a little confused by this.

7 MR. JOHNSON: The thing is, I put 

8 the double asterisk so that a person can go 

9 back here and see what is being said about the 

10 --

11 MEMBER MUNN: Read the quote.

12 MR. JOHNSON: Pardon?

13 MEMBER MUNN: I said perhaps you 

14 should read the quote, so everyone can hear 

15 what that says.

16 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, at the bottom of 

17 Page 15.

18 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

19 "This meeting is being recorded. 

20 The purpose of the recording is to help 

21 prepare accurate meeting minutes. Thus, the 

22 recording is a tool and will be destroyed once 
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1 the minutes of this meeting have been 

2 finished. Does anyone object to the use of 

3 the recording?"

4 If there's no objection, you 

5 record.

6 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

7 MEMBER MUNN: If there are 

8 objections, then we have to resolve it on the 

9 spot.

10 CHAIR BEACH: And then on Page 16, 

11 you've got the double asterisk. And 

12 additionally as appropriate at the beginning 

13 of the meeting interview, OCAS team facility 

14 or DCAS representative will address and 

15 discuss the sensitive classified material.

16 Okay. It just seemed a little 

17 disjointed to me. Maybe that's just a flow 

18 thing for me.

19 MR. JOHNSON: I'll look at it and 

20 see what I can do to kind of streamline it.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I think it was 

22 constructed that way because at least in two 
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1 locations, one under the focus group for 

2 outreach and another one under the worker 

3 outreach town hall meetings, both those 

4 announcements are made.

5 So, rather than repeat those 

6 fairly lengthy announcements in two places, 

7 there's just a discussion of recording 

8 announcement with an asterisk.

9 Then you look at the asterisk, and 

10 then it tells you what the recording 

11 announcement is, and the security 

12 announcement, which is two asterisks. Then 

13 you look at the two asterisks and you see what 

14 security means. It's to abbreviate the 

15 procedure rather than write those two 

16 announcements out twice.

17 CHAIR BEACH: That's clearer now 

18 looking at it. It was a few days ago that I 

19 actually wrote that comment, but okay.

20 So, everything is covered, it just 

21 - it's just cumbersome. It's four pages 

22 there.
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1 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, but Mark 

2 can tell you from his experience, and the 

3 number of them that I have attended, a lot of 

4 people if they see you taking notes, they 

5 think you're taking - they need to understand 

6 that it is verbatim what's being said. Then 

7 some of them will come back and say, well, 

8 where's the transcript, you know? So, if they 

9 expect a transcript, you know, or there isn't 

10 one being done, it definitely should be 

11 addressed up front so people understand this.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: I mean, they don't 

13 say it a lot of times. Maybe it's not in here 

14 that there's no transcript.

15 It would be easy enough to put in 

16 the recording, you know, saying, "there won't 

17 be a transcript prepared, but the recording is 

18 used to help prepare the minutes of the 

19 meeting, but there won't be a transcript 

20 prepared."

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I think that 

22 would be sufficient.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: It says minutes of 

2 the meeting.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

4 MEMBER MUNN: It says minutes.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Anything else 

6 on Appendix A covered in this Topic Number 1?

7 (No response.)

8 CHAIR BEACH: We'll go ahead and go 

9 to Two if there's no objection.

10 MS. AYERS: Two, evaluate the 

11 feasibility of incorporating a feedback loop 

12 into PR-O12. Feedback for a large group 

13 meeting may be obtained from the meeting 

14 organizer after a specified target date. Lack 

15 of response is interpreted as consent or 

16 agreement. It's a little bit cumbersome here.

17 Okay. Appendix G of the draft 

18 describes a feedback loop in which draft 

19 outreach meeting minutes are distributed to 

20 the post -- organization and posted on the 

21 website for 60 days. So, that's NIOSH's 

22 action.
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1 And I wrote a comment: to promote 

2 review and comment by individual participants, 

3 I suggest that we could inform participants at 

4 the time of the meeting that the minutes will 

5 be posted for their validation after all these 

6 steps are completed so they might know to look 

7 for it, that they would have that opportunity 

8 to give feedback.

9 CHAIR BEACH: So, that's a 

10 recommendation that came out of - 

11 MS. AYERS: Right. That's our 

12 observation.

13 CHAIR BEACH: And Appendix G - 

14 Appendix G was all written after our last Work 

15 Group meeting, correct? After the June 29th?

16 MS. AYERS: Yes.

17 CHAIR BEACH: So, this is sort of a 

18 new section, yes.

19 Did you get a chance to review 

20 Section G? Any comments on it?

21 MS. AYERS: I think that's the end 

22 of the comment.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: That's the end 

2 comment there, okay.

3 MS. AYERS: But I tended to do more 

4 of an observational thing. This is what they 

5 did and, you know, leave it to the Work Group 

6 to determine if they were satisfied with it.

7 So, Appendix G is on Page - 

8 CHAIR BEACH: 30.

9 MS. AYERS: - 30.

10 CHAIR BEACH: And 31.

11 MS. AYERS: That's the whole 

12 development process for the worker outreach 

13 minutes. 

14 CHAIR BEACH: So, J.J., is that 

15 comment doable, SC&A's comment recommending 

16 informing the participants at the time of the 

17 meeting that the minutes will be posted for 

18 their validation?

19 Is that something that's --

20 MR. JOHNSON: I can put a triple 

21 asterisk on here.

22 (Laughter.)
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1 MR. JOHNSON: And add that in, you 

2 know, as a comment right up front.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: It kind of fits 

4 with the recording.

5 MS. AYERS: With the recording, 

6 yes.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: You can put it in 

8 the recording part, because that's where 

9 you're talking about preparing minutes.

10 MR. KATZ: You can stick with just 

11 two asterisks.

12 CHAIR BEACH: Well, we've already 

13 got two asterisks used. So, we have to - 

14 (Simultaneous speakers.)

15 MS. AYERS: Would the notes be 

16 posted in a meeting that you weren't 

17 recording?

18 MR. JOHNSON: Say that again.

19 MS. AYERS: Would the minutes/notes 

20 be posted in the same way if there wasn't a 

21 recording? I'm just wondering if there's an 

22 either/or there.
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1 MR. McDOUGALL: For our meetings, 

2 there's never been not a recording.

3 MS. AYERS: Right. So, the only 

4 ones are like the focus groups and things 

5 where ATL is not represented wouldn't have a 

6 recording, would they post the minutes for 

7 that? Would there be this feedback loop?

8 Because that would be the only 

9 reason you wouldn't put it right in with the 

10 recording is if you could sometimes have the 

11 minutes available for review when there's not 

12 a recording.

13 MR. JOHNSON: That would - 

14 MR. McDOUGALL: Well, in practice, 

15 there's not minutes. If we're not involved, 

16 there's not minutes. All there is, is an HP's 

17 notes.

18 MS. AYERS: So, when there's an 

19 HP's notes, is there a feedback loop for 

20 participants to agree that it's been captured 

21 correctly?

22 MR. JOHNSON: Not necessarily. I 
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1 can someplace address that to make sure that 

2 the notes are either reviewed by the 

3 participants or gone over with the 

4 participants.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Does that 

6 answer your question sufficiently or - 

7 MS. AYERS: I think so.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I mean, you 

9 know, I think the process is pretty detailed 

10 and the assignment of responsibilities by 

11 organization is pretty clear.

12 So, you know, I think with that 

13 addition I don't have any problems with the 

14 way it's laid out.

15 MS. AYERS: If they add that they 

16 would have them.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think as a 

18 postscript.

19 CHAIR BEACH: My only other 

20 comment, J.J., for Appendix G is you use a lot 

21 of acronyms. And I know this is an in-house 

22 procedure, but there's no, like, acronyms list 
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1 at the front to say - 

2 MR. HINNEFELD: It's at the back.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Is it at the back? 

4 Oh, I looked at the front. Where is it at? 

5 Oh, right there. Okay, 31.

6 MS. AYERS: Is that just for that 

7 piece?

8 CHAIR BEACH: That's just for that 

9 piece, and I didn't notice it anywhere else.

10 MR. JOHNSON: No, that was just the 

11 style that I woke up with that morning.

12 (Laughter.)

13 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. All right. 

14 That takes care of that then. All right. Any 

15 other comments on this particular finding?

16 (No response.)

17 CHAIR BEACH: So, action out of 

18 that, could you - J.J., did you get an action 

19 that I neglected to write down?

20 MR. JOHNSON: I would add or 

21 include into the discussion of sharing or 

22 readdressing or covering notes - 
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Essentially, we 

2 verified with the attendees that the HP's 

3 notes appropriately captured what was said.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: I think 

6 realistically the best time to do that is at 

7 the meeting, at the end of the meeting.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Thank you. 

9 And the next section is on observations.

10 MS. AYERS: Observation 1, the 

11 procedure does not address the possibility 

12 that sensitive or classified information could 

13 be shared at worker outreach meetings. At a 

14 minimum, the procedure should alert the staff 

15 to submit the recordings, minutes and notes 

16 for classification review if they have any 

17 doubt.

18 So, that was probably something 

19 that was already being done and hadn't been 

20 captured in the procedure.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, it was in 

22 abeyance and we were waiting for it to come 
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1 out in the procedure.

2 MS. AYERS: Right. So, Number 1, 

3 add a reference and sentence in PR-012 to note 

4 the review of minutes by the Department of 

5 Energy.

6 That is mentioned in Section 5 and 

7 in Appendix G as a step in the development 

8 process for worker outreach minutes. So, 

9 that's been done.

10 Any concerns or questions on that 

11 one?

12 (No response.)

13 MS. AYERS: Moving on. Number 2, 

14 address or reference the process in PR-012 for 

15 the discussion of classified sensitive 

16 material. References and information have 

17 been added in Section 3 in Appendix A.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: That's Observation 

19 1, which has been completed.

20 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, Observation 1 is 

21 completed.

22 MS. AYERS: Oh, is that all of it?
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

4 MS. AYERS: So, that is complete.

5 Observation 2, the procedure does 

6 not provide an opportunity for workers to 

7 discuss potentially classified information. 

8 The workers may be restricted from openly 

9 discussing site-specific information due to 

10 security concerns.

11 So, the procedure should describe 

12 a process for those who wish to share at a 

13 discussion, to include an announcement that 

14 they are not to discuss classified/sensitive 

15 information and a separate interview can be 

16 arranged.

17 That Number 1 has been added in 

18 Appendix A as discussed at the December 16th, 

19 2010 meeting. So, that's complete.

20 Number 2, address or reference the 

21 process for the discussion of 

22 classified/sensitive materials. Complete a 
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1 note in Appendix A, directs the staff to 

2 conduct and document special interviews in 

3 accordance with Section 5.2 of PR-10 due to 

4 access and interview procedures. So, the 

5 reference is there, and the tie-in to the 

6 procedure. 

7 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, that one 

8 has been done and completed. Closed.

9 MS. AYERS: Complete. Okay.

10 Are you ready, Josie?

11 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

12 MS. AYERS: Okay. Observation 3, 

13 there are no provisions for soliciting 

14 comments from workers who are unable to 

15 physically attend meetings.

16 The action item was to address 

17 independent interviews associated with the 

18 specific outreach meeting will be collated 

19 with the minutes of the group meeting, the 

20 capture of special interviews in OTS.

21 So, if someone could not attend 

22 and they were interviewed separately, that 
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1 would be added into OTS in conjunction with 

2 the meeting that it was associated with, 

3 correct?

4 MR. JOHNSON: Well, what I need to 

5 do is we need to back out of that a little 

6 bit, meaning that the interviews are done by 

7 ORAU and we - when we complete the minutes, we 

8 input those into the outreach tracking system.

9 Now, what I would have to do is 

10 obtain the interview, which is now already in 

11 the SRDB, Site Research Database, and put it 

12 in OTS.

13 Once I put it in OTS, it 

14 automatically goes back over to ORAU to 

15 reinsert back into the SRDB. So, there is 

16 that loop.

17 What we are doing is, we've made a 

18 connection between the minutes and separate 

19 interviews. Meaning that on ORAU's side when 

20 it comes to interviews associated with a 

21 particular SEC or outreach meeting, that they 

22 will have documented communication.
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1 And if it's an SEC, SEC 00192, and 

2 then some additional information, whatever 

3 ORAU wants to put on there as a trail for that 

4 particular documentation.

5 On our side, we're going to put in 

6 documented communication SEC 00192, and our 

7 identification of what it is, and they both go 

8 into the SRDB.

9 They go in the SRDB on the ORAU 

10 side, and then separate into ORAU and NIOSH's 

11 SRDB.

12 And then when we input our 

13 minutes, they go to ORAU and they take those 

14 minutes and classify them as the same name 

15 trail and input it.

16 So, when somebody does a search, 

17 they do a search on SEC 00192 or documented 

18 communications, and they're tied together. 

19 So, they pull them up that way.

20 MEMBER MUNN: I hope nobody's 

21 motherboard fails.

22 (Laughter.)
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1 MEMBER MUNN: I'm not sure I 

2 followed that completely, J.J., but - 

3 MR. KATZ: Wanda's motherboard 

4 failed.

5 (Laughter.)

6 MR. HINNEFELD: We have a fairly 

7 complicated backup system. These are all 

8 running on our server systems.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Right.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: And so, there's a 

11 fairly complicated backup for the servers.

12 MEMBER MUNN: I have a hard time 

13 getting to the SRDB for some reason. I can 

14 get to the OTS easily, but I don't know why I 

15 --

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Really?

17 MEMBER MUNN: Maybe I need help.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, the thought 

19 process behind the system is that ORAU's side 

20 and our side are used to working out of SRDB 

21 as the repository for information.

22 And so, by putting the OTS 
. 

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1 information automatically into SRDB, it gets 

2 it automatically in front into the data 

3 collection that people are working from.

4 MEMBER MUNN: Where you want it.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: And by this - 

6 you're adopting - this is essentially a file7 naming convention that J.J. is talking about.

8 You then - the type of search that 

9 you would use to find one, will find the 

10 other. And so, that's the idea that you will 

11 then pull these things up.

12 This is also trying to sort out 

13 that dual-track issue with worker input kind 

14 of gets treated differently than interview 

15 input, because this puts it all in the same 

16 place, it makes it all findable with the same 

17 kind of search you would do and brings it up 

18 together.

19 So, it's an attempt to try to 

20 systematize what we intend to do, which is to 

21 get all this information in front of the 

22 technical people so they can weigh it all 
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1 appropriately.

2 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: That's good.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, J.J., the 

4 second part of that is consider adding 

5 documentation on special interviews as 

6 appropriate to the list of potential documents 

7 associated with the types of outreach meetings 

8 in Appendix F.

9 Is that something that based on 

10 what you just described that is covered or - 

11 MR. JOHNSON: Yes, yes.

12 CHAIR BEACH: So, we don't 

13 necessarily need to document that in F, unless 

14 - 

15 MR. JOHNSON: No.

16 CHAIR BEACH: I guess I'm looking 

17 just for some thoughts from you on that 

18 comment.

19 MS. AYERS: So, that would make it 

20 similar to action items. It's just something 

21 that - 

22 MR. JOHNSON: If it's associated 
. 

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1 with an outreach, it will be connected.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, that's kind of 

3 what I gathered.

4 MR. JOHNSON: That was the intent.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Right. It sounds 

6 like a good system. What's your thoughts on 

7 it? Because this was an SC&A recommendation 

8 there, I believe.

9 MS. AYERS: And that was just one 

10 of these procedural consistency sort of 

11 things. Like, if we have an Appendix F that 

12 says this is what we might find in OTS, then 

13 should those go there as something we might 

14 find?

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Just for 

16 clarification, though, it sounds like it's all 

17 right the way it is.

18 MS. AYERS: Yes, I agree. 

19 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Great. So, 

20 the second part of this - let me catch up 

21 there.

22 MS. AYERS: Page 12. Two, check 
. 

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1 into posting the presentations from the worker 

2 outreach meeting on the NIOSH website. NIOSH 

3 was investigating the feasibility of posting

4 the outreach meeting presentations. But at 

5 the June 2011 meeting, we noted that the 

6 government is restricted from posting things 

7 if they aren't official numbered documents and 

8 you would need to request special permission 

9 to do so.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Stu, do you have any 

11 updates on that or - 

12 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't have any 

13 updates on that. I don't know if Chris is on 

14 the phone now or not, because I think that 

15 she's the one who knows about the restrictions 

16 and requirements that are laid down on us for 

17 our website, you know. We're not completely 

18 free to do what we want with our website.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: And I am not 

21 familiar with those and haven't talked to her 

22 about it. So, I don't have anything to add on 
. 

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1 that.

2 On the face of it, it seems like a 

3 reasonable idea. But I don't know where the 

4 agency is with respect to, you know, to say 

5 this is, you know, if we're going to go to a 

6 group of people and we're going to provide 

7 this presentation, it's essentially our 

8 product, you know.

9 Whether we put a number on it or 

10 not, it's essentially our product. So, I 

11 don't really quite get it entirely especially 

12 if we're going to put draft minutes up there, 

13 you know.

14 So, I just - I'll have to do some 

15 more research. I'm not prepared to really say 

16 much more about it.

17 CHAIR BEACH: No, that's okay.

18 MEMBER MUNN: Does the Work Group 

19 really feel that strongly about it?

20 CHAIR BEACH: Well, that was going 

21 to be my next question of how - what we think 

22 about that.
. 

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1 MEMBER MUNN: Isn't it one of those 

2 nice to have, but nobody is going to die if we 

3 don't do it?

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, the context 

5 was just checking into it. And I think the 

6 initial reaction was that it may be harder 

7 than you think, and this is the reason why, 

8 which was some ambiguity about whether or not 

9 you could do it easily because of that 

10 restriction.

11 MEMBER MUNN: It sounds like 

12 there's a barrier to doing that. And in my 

13 personal view that's a nice to have, but not 

14 necessary.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. If it's not 

16 easy to do or straightforward, it probably 

17 isn't worth it. Or at least that's the 

18 question.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Well, it's going to 

20 be captured in Issue 3, one of the actions for 

21 the ten-year review also that that directly 

22 relates to posting. And so, I guess we can 
. 

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1 wait on that one for Chris. So, it is 

2 captured there.

3 What's your thoughts on should we 

4 complete this, close this?

5 MS. ELLISON: This is Chris. I'm 

6 sorry. I just walked in and kind of missed 

7 part of the conversation.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Well, thanks.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Good timing.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, Chris, what 

11 we're doing is we're looking at the 

12 observations of the matrix.

13 And one of the items - I don't 

14 know if you have the matrix in front of you or 

15 not. The question was, we were checking into 

16 posting the presentation from the worker 

17 outreach meetings on the NIOSH website.

18 And as of the June meeting, in 

19 short, we were told that they would need a 

20 special request and permission to be able to 

21 post that. And we were kind of wondering 

22 where that was, or if it's anywhere at this 
. 

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1 time, for informal presentation.

2 MS. ELLISON: I think this is the 

3 item maybe that J.J. and I talked about the 

4 other day.

5 MR. JOHNSON: Yes.

6 MS. ELLISON: And currently, I 

7 think we need to meet with Stu to discuss the 

8 posting procedures for those presentations. 

9 Because it's my understanding at the current 

10 time, I'm not sure what clearance levels those 

11 presentations go through prior to those worker 

12 outreach meetings.

13 MEMBER MUNN: On that, it sounds as 

14 though that even if we were going to go the 

15 clearance route, it would impose an additional 

16 burden in preliminary preparations for a 

17 meeting with regard to having to clear it more 

18 so than - 

19 MS. ELLISON: Right, things to 

20 consider. At the current time, I'm not exactly 

21 sure. I don't see those presentations. I 

22 don't know what information is contained in 
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1 them and I'm sure there is some site-specific 

2 information.

3 So, it might also even include DOE 

4 clearances, you know, on what type of 

5 information, you know, is for those worker 

6 outreach meetings, because typically the 

7 worker outreach meetings are for an invited 

8 set of audience.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Well, it runs in 

11 my mind, and of course this is going on faulty 

12 memory, about five, six years back Larry 

13 Elliott addressed this issue publicly; that 

14 these aren't posted, because they're not 

15 official transcripts.

16 And so, this is the reason they 

17 weren't being posted to the site. I may be 

18 wrong. Maybe Stu remembers - knows about that 

19 or not.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: I really don't 

21 recall. It seems like - 

22 MS. ELLISON: This is Chris. I 
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1 don't recall. And, you know, back when Larry 

2 was the director, at that time we were not 

3 posting any of the, like the presentations for 

4 the Board meetings or anything. That's a 

5 newer policy.

6 So, you know, things have changed 

7 since then. So, I'm not aware of that 

8 statement that he made.

9 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Well, this is 

10 just addressing these worker outreach 

11 meetings, not the full Board meetings.

12 MEMBER MUNN: Well, and we're just 

13 talking about presentations - slide 

14 presentations and things of that sort.

15 Especially if it imposes a pre16 meeting burden on the presenters, then that's 

17 not desirable either.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, I would 

19 suggest that we leave this open, allow Chris 

20 and Stu and J.J. to complete that, because I 

21 know there's been a lot of progress made in 

22 that area.
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1 So, if that is okay with the rest 

2 of the Work Group - 

3 MEMBER MUNN: If it's a matter of 

4 they're just checking on it, my personal 

5 feeling still is if the situation is, as one 

6 gathers from reading this statement here, that 

7 preliminary information must be cleared in the 

8 event that we're going to post it and that it 

9 requires additional numbering and things of 

10 that sort, then I would propose that we 

11 consider closing it at the time that NIOSH 

12 reports back on the current status, simply 

13 because it is a nice to have, but not 

14 necessary thing.

15 CHAIR BEACH: Yes. If it's doable, 

16 I think it's well worth pursuing. Because I 

17 know it is nice if you're not going to be able 

18 to attend a meeting, to see what's posted, 

19 what's being presented. And that's been 

20 handy.

21 MEMBER MUNN: There would be 

22 nothing to prevent a person from asking for 
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1 that, I would think.

2 MS. AYERS: It sounds like there 

3 might be a precedent at the Board meeting 

4 presentations that are now able to be 

5 published. I didn't realize that.

6 MEMBER MUNN: But everything about 

7 the Board is completely wide open. It's quite 

8 different with the worker groups.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Anything that goes 

10 public has some kind of clearance process. I 

11 think that's the issue here and it's just - it 

12 may be fairly simple. It may be a simple 

13 clearance process, but we'll talk about it 

14 back in the office.

15 MS. AYERS: Okay. Other actions 

16 proposed or considered; A, NIOSH proposed 

17 adding the following verbiage: Support efforts 

18 where individuals - anyway, I don't need to 

19 read the whole thing.

20 CHAIR BEACH: No.

21 MS. AYERS: They were going to add 

22 verbiage describing that ATL would support 
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1 getting individuals a way in who can't attend 

2 the meeting. And that has been incorporated 

3 in Section 6.2.6, Page 7.

4 CHAIR BEACH: So, that's been 

5 completed.

6 MS. AYERS: Okay. Done with that 

7 one, Observation 3.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

9 MS. AYERS: Observation 4, there's 

10 no requirement for disclosure of conflict of 

11 interest during worker outreach meetings. 

12 That has been added in Appendix A through just 

13 discussing the double asterisk comment.

14 CHAIR BEACH: Yes. So, that one is 

15 completed, and it runs on into Page 13.

16 MS. AYERS: Page 13, that's 

17 completed. Everybody give it up?

18 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

19 MS. AYERS: Observation 5, the Site 

20 Profile and TBD procedure references PROC-0097 

21 which has been replaced.

22 So, there was an email sent to 
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1 ORAU informing them that the reference should 

2 be updated or removed, and that would be done 

3 during the next update to the procedure.

4 We don't know what the status of 

5 that procedure is, PROC-31.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I moved that 

7 one up. That's been changed. What I did was 

8 I did a word search on PROC-31. And the only 

9 reference, you know, for 0097 it only pops up 

10 once and at the end of the record it changes 

11 where it says, "this was changed to remove 

12 0097."

13 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, okay.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: One of the changes 

15 that was done.

16 MS. AYERS: So, it has been 

17 revised. All right.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Now, you say you 

20 got copies of it?

21 MR. JOHNSON: I thought I had one.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. You can just 
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1 go ahead and give it to Josie.

2 CHAIR BEACH: So, 31.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, if you just 

4 look in the - like, the first thing on the 

5 page has the publication record. For that 

6 revision, it should say that it was revised to 

7 remove PROC-0097. It's one of the first 

8 pages.

9 MS. AYERS: Yes.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, right here. 

11 Cancellation of 0097. Okay, beautiful.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, that's the 

13 only place 0097 popped up when I did the word 

14 search on that.

15 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, that 

16 brings us to outstanding findings.

17 MS. AYERS: This is a legacy issue 

18 from the review - SC&A's review of PROC-0097 

19 in 2007. And the procedure does not 

20 explicitly require worker outreach meetings 

21 for all sites - are being prepared. It refers 

22 to ORAU Plan 10, which has such a 
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1 specification.

2 So, basically the observation was 

3 that old procedures did require worker 

4 outreach meetings when a Site Profile was 

5 being developed.

6 And SC&A had an action item to 

7 provide the Work Group with examples where 

8 worker outreach meetings were not held during 

9 the preparation of the Site Profile.

10 That was done in June of 2011, and 

11 I think that was available for discussion at 

12 the last outreach meeting - Work Group 

13 meeting.

14 CHAIR BEACH: I don't think we 

15 discussed it, though. I don't recall that 

16 discussion on this.

17 MS. AYERS: June 16th - 

18 MR. JOHNSON: I believe the ORAU 

19 procedure that discussed their desire to have 

20 an outreach associated with a TBD or technical 

21 document had been cancelled well before 2007.

22 And, therefore, wasn't used as a 
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1 resource to follow through in development of 

2 needed TBDs out there.

3 MS. AYERS: So, you're saying this 

4 Plan 10 after it was obsolete, then that 

5 guidance wasn't binding anymore?

6 MR. JOHNSON: Right, right.

7 MS. AYERS: Do you know when that 

8 was?

9 MR. JOHNSON: I'd have to go back 

10 and look. I don't recall offhand. I can get 

11 that date for you.

12 MS. AYERS: Anyway, I guess the 

13 action item was to provide a written response 

14 for - oh, okay - a rationale for the lack of 

15 worker outreach meetings.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, it was a 

17 two-part issue. I mean, it sounds like the 

18 first part is what you just mentioned: what is 

19 the rationale for not hard-linking the worker 

20 outreach meetings to TBD development, you're 

21 saying.

22 Well, that was dropped as a 
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1 necessary prerequisite - 

2 MR. JOHNSON: Right.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: - back, actually, 

4 how long ago? It sounds like a long time ago.

5 MR. JOHNSON: Probably 2007.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: 2007, okay. And I 

7 think that sort of provides the rationale that 

8 Number 1 provides for.

9 Number 2 is maybe a more 

10 substantive issue, which is even without that 

11 hard-wiring, that prerequisite meeting, would 

12 any of the Site Profiles, you know, benefit 

13 from - the ones that, you know, the Work Group 

14 asked us just to come up with a list -- is 

15 there any rationale or any basis for figuring 

16 out where worker outreach meetings would be 

17 beneficial? Quite apart from whether it's 

18 required.

19 MR. JOHNSON: There were a list of 

20 sites that were identified by a memo from 

21 SC&A.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Is that the June 11th 
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- or June 16th 1 , 2011?

2 MR. FITZGERALD: June 16th of last 

3 year. And nothing more exotic than just 

4 simply looking which ones had meetings and 

5 which ones did not. Would there be any, you 

6 know, even without that requirement from 2007, 

7 would there be any, I guess, reason for 

8 wanting to reach out to those workers or not?

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I guess we 

10 haven't prepared a written response. I can 

11 talk about it in general. I mean, we can 

12 still provide a written response at the 

13 meeting sometime, but there are a number of 

14 things on here that are Atomic Weapons 

15 Employers that would have some period of 

16 operation, you know. Probably most of them 

17 were either - were shaping uranium metal in 

18 some fashion. That's what most of them did.

19 And from our viewpoint, in many 

20 cases, the people working with uranium weren't 

21 even told they were working with uranium.

22 And so, the kind of information 
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1 you can gather in that instance from worker 

2 outreach meeting, I mean, they're going to 

3 tell you about the conditions they faced in 

4 their workplace.

5 And if you're talking about the 

6 `50s, those were not very pleasant conditions, 

7 but they can - so, they can talk to you about

8 that, but the information you hear isn't 

9 necessarily specific to the uranium operation.

10 And so, I question whether you're 

11 going to get, you know, really a lot in some 

12 of those.

13 Now, not every AWE is that way, 

14 but a number of them kind of fall into that 

15 category. Medina and Clarksville, I don't 

16 really think there's a lot to be gained here. 

17 Since their SEC is for the entire operational 

18 period, I don't think there's a lot to be 

19 gained for a Site Profile from those.

20 Hematite, I'm a little surprised 

21 we haven't done anything. There's been a lot 

22 of work at Hematite. I don't know if we 
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1 haven't done any public - because that's 

2 United Nuclear. And that's in the midst of 

3 discussion.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, this is as 

5 of - 

6 MR. HINNEFELD: A year ago.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, not quite a 

8 year ago.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, it was a year 

10 ago.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, yes, it was 

12 a year ago. 14 months ago.

13 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: So, you know, 

15 maybe - 

16 MR. HINNEFELD: I think Metals and 

17 Controls is an SEC, if I'm not mistaken. I 

18 think we'll have to go back and look maybe one 

19 by one, and I apologize we don't have a 

20 written response yet, but there are a couple 

21 things at play here.

22 One is: I think for a number of 
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1 these sites it won't necessarily be terribly 

2 useful. And the second thing at play is that, 

3 again, it's a matter of resources and where do 

4 you apply your outreach resources.

5 We have a limited amount of money 

6 that we can make available for outreach. And 

7 so, where do you apply it? So, that question 

8 is going to come up, too, but we'll provide a 

9 more complete response.

10 I would just suspect that we don't 

11 really intend to go charging off and doing 

12 that. In fact, we've done Jessop Steel now. 

13 That's been done pretty recently. So, we've 

14 got one from there.

15 So, but I don't, you know, and we 

16 did that because we got an SEC Petition.

17 So, to me, it's going to be kind 

18 of a mixed bag of stuff. There might be some 

19 on here that maybe might warrant one. I don't 

20 know. I'll have to go back and find more 

21 data.

22 Some, I don't know that we're 
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1 going to just go off broad scale and just to 

2 check - make a checkmark on the list that, 

3 yes, we did one.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Right. No, I don't 

5 think that was our intention. That was not 

6 our intention at all.

7 Okay. So, the action is for NIOSH 

8 to review the list and then report or just - 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think one 

10 is - 

11 MR. HINNEFELD: We'll provide a 

12 written report.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: One is the updated 

14 list. It's 14 months old. So, there's 

15 probably some - 

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we may put 

17 this under the categories of, well, for these 

18 sites on the list, these meetings have 

19 occurred since.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: And for these 

22 sites, they have become SECs and so we don't 
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1 know the plot there. So, we'll put it in the 

2 category.

3 MR. KATZ: So, the comment itself 

4 needs a little bit of editing, because really 

5 the comment is, "is consideration given to 

6 doing a worker outreach for each site?" As 

7 opposed to: "why aren't you doing it for all 

8 sites?"

9 MR. FITZGERALD: The implication 

10 isn't to judge that somehow these should be 

11 done. It's to understand better - 

12 MR. KATZ: But it makes sense to 

13 give consideration of that for each site.

14 MS. AYERS: Just to recommend a 

15 review of the Site Profiles, to be reevaluated 

16 to determine whether it would benefit.

17 MR. KATZ: Yes, all right. So, you 

18 got that.

19 MS. AYERS: So, it's consistent.

20 MR. KATZ: Yes.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, that takes 

22 us through the matrix. And, J.J., next 
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1 question is how long before - I mean, very 

2 small, slight items need to be incorporated, I 

3 would say.

4 And so, I'm looking for a timeline 

5 of completing those, and then actually - 

6 because this is not in circulation, right? 

7 You're holding this?

8 MR. JOHNSON: I'm going to be gone 

9 starting this weekend for a week. I can work 

10 on it the following week and get it out 

11 Friday.

12 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, just 

13 through email and then - through email we can 

14 take a look at it and - 

15 MR. JOHNSON: Sure.

16 CHAIR BEACH: Because, yes, I'd 

17 hate to hold this up till the next Work Group 

18 meeting for the minor - 

19 MR. JOHNSON: If I can get back 

20 with you no later than Friday the week after 

21 next.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, the 8th.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, this Friday is 

2 - that would be the 15th - or the 14th. This 

3 Friday is the 31st. Next week is the week 

4 he's gone.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, I got you.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: The week after that 

7 being the 14th.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, perfect. So, 

9 the 14th and then just circulate it. If 

10 there's no comments, then I'm assuming you'd 

11 be free to put it out on the drive then.

12 MR. JOHNSON: It would go through 

13 our review system for signatures.

14 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, perfect. Any 

15 other comments, questions, concerns?

16 (No response.)

17 CHAIR BEACH: Excellent. Good 

18 work. Okay. So, our next item is the Worker 

19 Outreach Pilot.

20 And, Joe, are you ready for that?

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Well, this 

22 has a fair amount of history, which it's 
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1 probably worth just outlining a little bit 

2 where it came from.

3 The Work Group, and this is going 

4 back almost 18 months ago, defined four 

5 objectives in its charter. One of which 

6 addressed whether "DCAS" - and this is a quote 

7 from the paper - "is giving thorough 

8 consideration to information received from 

9 workers through worker outreach efforts, and 

10 adequately communicating the impact of 

11 substantive comments to those workers." 

12 That's a direct quote.

13 And I guess there was a lot of 

14 discussion surrounding how one would go about 

15 evaluating that question, the question of 

16 whether or not sufficient consideration and 

17 responsiveness was evident.

18 And what the Work Group proposed a 

19 bit over a year ago was that perhaps what 

20 would be useful is to have a pilot review, 

21 something that would test out an approach.

22 In this case, it was an evaluation 
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1 of the comments at Rocky Flats during the 

2 active engagement time during the Site Profile 

3 and SEC, which was roughly 2004 to 2007. 

4 Although, there were a few comments that went 

5 beyond that.

6 But the idea was to do a pilot 

7 study to identify the comments that originated 

8 with workers from different venues. Not just 

9 worker outreach, but also through Board 

10 meetings, Work Group meetings, through direct, 

11 you know, correspondence, emails, and really 

12 do a fairly wide-reaching review of what 

13 comments were generated by the workers and 

14 provided to NIOSH and to what extent - and 

15 this was, again, the parameters that the Work 

16 Group defined - to what extent a direct 

17 response was provided by NIOSH to these 

18 comments, you know, to what extent the actual 

19 comments themselves were reflected and 

20 considered in NIOSH's evaluation, and to what 

21 extent that was evident in any documents or 

22 reports that were being addressed during that 
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1 Site Profile/SEC time frame, and how the 

2 communication of that deliberation was 

3 communicated to the commoner.

4 So, the issue is three-fold. 

5 Identifying what the substantive worker 

6 comments were, the input process upstream, 

7 determining or considering how to address 

8 those comments in the proceedings, in the 

9 documentation that was important to those 

10 proceedings, the SEC and Site Profile process 

11 primarily, and to what extent did the 

12 organization get back to the worker providing, 

13 you know, acknowledgment, response, some sense 

14 of closure on those comments. So, that's kind 

15 of how we proceeded.

16 The pilot review itself sought to 

17 identify the substantive worker comments. 

18 Again, we used those as sources and we quickly 

19 got into a scale issue.

20 And I was involved with the Rocky 

21 Flats SEC review, and I guess maybe I 

22 purposely have forgotten how extensive that 
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1 was. But, nonetheless, once we waded into 

2 those waters, it was hard to wade back out. I 

3 mean, it was literally, you know, over 500 

4 comments.

5 And this doesn't really count, and 

6 we'll get into this a little later, this 

7 doesn't really count comments that by virtue 

8 of the way they came in whether it be by 

9 email, in some cases by interview notes - or 

10 interviews, there wasn't necessarily a record.

11 So, you know, if there wasn't a 

12 record, it wasn't included, because obviously 

13 we would need some objective source to review.

14 So, this is just that which was 

15 recorded. There was documentation, something 

16 for us to look at. And that was over 500 

17 comments.

18 The Work Group just again since 

19 it's been so long and we did this in the 

20 report up front, but the Work Group set these 

21 parameters. We would look at direct 

22 responses, not indirect responses. So, that 
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1 would be a very clear thing.

2 We would look at the feedback in 

3 interviews and limit that to validation 

4 reviews. In other words, as opposed to a 

5 direct comment where you would look for a 

6 direct response, for interviews, the measure 

7 of response was whether or not the 

8 organization got back to the interviewee to 

9 validate what they had given. And that's how 

10 it was framed by the Work Group.

11 The time frame for a response, and 

12 this actually figured in some of the 

13 discourse, I think, with NIOSH on this 

14 question of what is a response and, you know, 

15 whatnot.

16 A lot of the comments had to do 

17 with the, you know, as we just indicated, with 

18 the SEC process and the Evaluation Report and 

19 a lot of comments came in through that venue.

20 And I think in a number of cases, 

21 NIOSH pointed out that, you know, it became 

22 part of the deliberations and there was no, 
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1 you know, certainly no procedure or intent to 

2 respond to these as they were handled as 

3 input. And eventually they would be addressed 

4 in the ER.

5 However, the Work Group wanted us 

6 to truncate this at six months. Meaning that, 

7 you know, looking for some responsiveness to 

8 the comment during that six-month time frame. 

9 And the ER process, as we all know, went for 

10 several years.

11 So, we flagged that, but with the 

12 acknowledgment that certainly NIOSH made that 

13 point that, you know, it was part of this 

14 process, it was moving toward resolution, but 

15 clearly there wasn't a sort of a quick 

16 turnaround response to the individuals 

17 providing comments during that deliberation.

18 Likewise, even though in a couple 

19 cases, not very many cases, there was a sense 

20 that it was more or less a generic issue and 

21 was addressed by putting it on the website as 

22 a frequently asked question, the Work Group 
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1 asked us not to acknowledge that as a direct 

2 response, and we did not. And we were 

3 cautioned not to get into revisiting technical 

4 issues or trying to make technical judgments.

5 Our context, frankly, was almost 

6 actuarial, you know. We wanted to provide the 

7 Work Group, you know, the benefit of, you 

8 know, what the comments were in this sample, 

9 you know, what the, you know, what the measure 

10 of response had been without getting into any 

11 value judgments, but here's the response, what 

12 consideration could we find in technical 

13 deliberations or documents, and what could we 

14 find in the way of how these comments were, in 

15 fact, evaluated.

16 Really, reporting to the Work 

17 Group, but not getting into any value 

18 judgments good, bad or indifferent per se, 

19 but, I think, giving the Work Group the 

20 information it needs to decide, you know, is 

21 this meeting expectations, does it raise 

22 issues or implications.
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1 And I think this is important in 

2 the sense that it's easy, particularly given 

3 the statistical, rather sophisticated 

4 statistical sampling that we did, to forget 

5 that this is a very subjective process, you 

6 know. This is not scientific so much as it is 

7 looking at comments, making some subjective 

8 calls as to what the response may have been 

9 and to what extent they were considered.

10 And I think what's gained from 

11 this is not the numbers, and we try to de12 emphasize that, although, we wanted to provide 

13 some of those numbers in the report, but what 

14 is important to gain is insight, you know.

15 Understanding why a particular 

16 comment or set of comments was handled the way 

17 they were and what does that necessarily say 

18 about how judgments are made in terms of 

19 outreach and in terms of significance of 

20 comments and why some comments may get more of 

21 a response than others.

22 So, it's really the insight into 
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1 the thinking that goes on. And even though 

2 this is dated thinking, this goes back a 

3 while, I think there's some insights which are 

4 pertinent to the present and may very well 

5 have been captured already in the current 

6 approach.

7 And, you know, again, we don't 

8 know as much about that, but - so, I want to 

9 make sure that, you know, we recognize that 

10 this is a very subjective process designed to 

11 give, I think, all of us the gist of a certain 

12 period of time, but with a lot of qualifiers 

13 about what the individual - this is sort of an 

14 appeal to look at the forest and not the 

15 trees. Meaning that we're not trying to say, 

16 yep, that one, Number 122, shows that 

17 something went amiss. It's more the 

18 collective, you know, of all this that makes 

19 the difference.

20 MEMBER MUNN: How's the program 

21 doing?

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, how's the 
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1 program doing, and is there any insights that 

2 would benefit both the Work Group and NIOSH. 

3 And that's kind of how we approached it.

4 Further, we did go through a, I 

5 think, a well-thought-out process of what 

6 would not be included. And there were a 

7 number of non-relevant comment categories and, 

8 you know, we talked about time frames.

9 And that's all in there. I'm not 

10 going to go over that, but I think there was a 

11 lot of work by the Work Group with NIOSH and 

12 with SC&A to sort of define this so it didn't 

13 get to be an undoable exercise.

14 The sampling plan is in there. We 

15 had worked on that. It was a way to make it 

16 manageable. We had 546 comments. The 

17 prospect of going through 546 would kind of 

18 make your head spin. 101 made my head spin.

19 So, this was a way to make it 

20 manageable. It was a random sampling process, 

21 but one that was designed to assure there was 

22 some representativeness in what we selected.
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1 And we did go out of our way to - 

2 because I think one concern was, what about 

3 certain categories of comments, that because 

4 they were small numbers, they might not get 

5 picked up in this sampling process.

6 We went back to the Work Group and 

7 said, you know, we need to make sure we don't 

8 lose those. And that's where we went from 75 

9 to 101 to make sure that wasn't lost.

10 In any case, and you do have some 

11 of the details in the summary, the other 

12 observation is again, I think the biggest bias 

13 in this, and I want to make sure that's sort 

14 of on the table, is what I said earlier, was 

15 that we can only look at, you know, it's sort 

16 of like if a tree fell in the middle of the 

17 woods and no one is there to hear it, would 

18 you know it's - you know, that kind of issue 

19 relative to looking at worker outreach.

20 If a comment wasn't addressed, 

21 wasn't documented, wasn't received and 

22 accounted for, we would not have seen it in 
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1 the first place.

2 What we're seeing is the comments 

3 that were in fact identified, addressed and 

4 seen as sufficiently important to be recorded 

5 in the process and they were retrievable.

6 So, in a way, that's the 

7 denominator we're working with. That 101 

8 sample is really that which had passed muster 

9 or went through the first process.

10 The ones we would not have seen 

11 which may actually bear some significance on 

12 the worker outreach side, there's no way of 

13 knowing. So, I just want to make sure it's 

14 clear.

15 We're looking at what showed up in 

16 the process, in the system that was deemed, 

17 you know, important enough to record, that was 

18 retrievable and met the criteria we're talking 

19 about. So, it's with that sample that we're 

20 providing some perspective.

21 So, if one gets away from the 

22 numbers, because, again, I think the numbers 
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1 are interesting, but I think it's the insights 

2 that matter more than they do, I think that's 

3 where the most can be gained from this kind of 

4 analysis.

5 And as I indicated before, we're 

6 talking about anywhere from eight years ago to 

7 maybe five years ago. So, we're talking about 

8 a time frame that is pretty far back. And we 

9 recognize that going into it, and that 

10 qualifies what we're saying.

11 And we recognize that things are 

12 different now, but I think the notion was to 

13 go ahead and look at a very active site, a lot 

14 of worker comments, and see what one can learn 

15 in the way of applying a pilot, a new way of 

16 doing a review. So, it was a test.

17 MEMBER MUNN: That time period was 

18 also probably the premier developmental period 

19 for this program, because it was past the 

20 newborn stage and was fully active, but not

21 yet fully developed, so that there was a great 

22 number of changes occurring during that period 
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1 in itself.

2 And the fact that those limits 

3 were what you had to work with still was very 

4 revealing, because it managed to capture a key 

5 period in the entire process that we've gone 

6 through during the decade that the Board has 

7 now operated.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. And I 

9 think, you know, given the intensity of worker 

10 involvement/engagement and the kinds of 

11 complexity of the issues, I think, you know, 

12 Rocky was a good test for this, even if we had 

13 to narrow it down in terms of numbers.

14 Okay. What we found, and that's 

15 laid out in the Executive Summary, but, you 

16 know, nothing too surprising. We found in 

17 general that NIOSH was responsive to direct 

18 questions or concerns, okay.

19 If there was a clear question or a 

20 concern that the worker raised in various 

21 media, it didn't matter, and it was couched as 

22 a concern or a question, generally we found a 
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1 substantive response. Maybe not right away, 

2 but we found a response and typically found 

3 some consideration somewhere.

4 There are exceptions. We pointed 

5 to those exceptions. But in general, that's 

6 what we found.

7 However, you know, there were two 

8 variables that affected that, you know. One 

9 was venue. And we found that certain venues 

10 lent themselves much better for that kind of a 

11 timely, more direct response.

12 And we've all been in those venues 

13 whether they're worker outreach meetings - 

14 clearly, you know, Vern and his crew and Mark, 

15 you are there, questions are raised. 

16 Typically you get back, and that's what we 

17 found, that the answers are fairly direct.

18 Board meetings, Work Group 

19 meetings, similarly, a question is raised, 

20 typically a response is provided.

21 When you get sort of away from 

22 those, you know, face-to-face type of things 
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1 whether they're more on the interview side or 

2 in letters, presentations, you know, maybe 

3 petitioner comments, whatever, it gets a 

4 little fuzzier in terms of the responsiveness, 

5 not necessarily consideration.

6 But instead of very specific 

7 questions or very specific concerns being 

8 raised, you might end up getting statements 

9 for the record, you know. Operational 

10 experience. I was working there and I, you 

11 know, experienced this and, you know, that's 

12 provided in a Work Group meeting, that might

13 be provided in a Board meeting.

14 For those, I think the sense was, 

15 you know, that's good input. That's 

16 information as part of the proceedings whether 

17 an SEC or Site Profile, but not really 

18 expressing an issue that suggested looking for 

19 a response.

20 So, you know, again, we've found a 

21 number of comments that were very detailed, 

22 very useful and full of technical information. 
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1 But because they were couched more as 

2 statements, maybe more as input or 

3 contributing information for the proceedings, 

4 they did not necessarily get a response in the 

5 same way that you would, maybe if the question 

6 came up in a worker outreach meeting or 

7 something like that.

8 So, you know, in the scope of what 

9 we were looking at, that counted as no direct 

10 response.

11 And not surprisingly, you know, I 

12 think NIOSH's position is, well, it didn't 

13 look like the commenter was expecting to hear 

14 a response, but wanted to be heard.

15 So, you know, when we went through 

16 the - you will see that on the - I had to come 

17 up with this just to keep my sanity. It's 

18 sort of a summary of each of the comments and 

19 the disposition rather than the 200-page 

20 version.

21 And we kind of earmarked - it's 

22 much better on screen because it's in color. 
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1 The black-and-white version is - but we 

2 earmarked certain of these issues for Work 

3 Group attention.

4 But anyway, we indicated "Work 

5 Group" on some of these, because some of those 

6 really suggested some interesting questions or 

7 issues that, you know, that by virtue of the 

8 NIOSH response, I think the Work Group would 

9 find useful to pursue a little further and 

10 have a discussion at this table, for example, 

11 today. And you'll see that in that summary 

12 where I do have "WG" on the right-hand column.

13 Not to say that there is a gap or 

14 a problem, but so much that it raises an 

15 interesting issue that may have relevance 

16 today, that some of these reasons for a lack 

17 of response or maybe a lack of consideration 

18 raised some interesting process questions that 

19 I think the Work Group could get into, but 

20 that's again more specific to the individual.

21 That's the trees versus the 

22 forest, and I just wanted to make sure that 
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1 you're aware of that.

2 In any case, you know, we went 

3 through and did provide a sense of level of 

4 response. And as I indicated, we found about 

5 half of the comments that were sampled had a 

6 direct response, you know, period. That there 

7 was a clear response.

8 Most of those were associated with 

9 the venues that you would expect to have a 

10 direct response. About a quarter lacked the 

11 direct response. But as I indicated earlier, 

12 the form of the comment was such, whether a 

13 statement or input, that certainly NIOSH's 

14 response to that was: no response really was 

15 expected.

16 And then there were - and this is 

17 in Table 4 of the report. There were some 

18 instances where there was no response and no 

19 consideration, which, you know, was a bit 

20 troublesome. And we highlighted some of that 

21 and really it came down to two or three 

22 subject areas that, you know, in one case it 
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1 was an indoor radon question, which I think 

2 that was actually three comments, but the 

3 subject was one issue.

4 And there was a rationale for not 

5 providing a response. It was felt that, you 

6 know, it wasn't a relevant issue for Rocky 

7 Flats. And that was the rationale for not 

8 addressing it. But again, we didn't find a 

9 clear response to the worker that kind of made 

10 it clear that was the position of the agency.

11 And I think that's one where in 

12 the last round of NIOSH review was pointed out 

13 that IG-003, which is a guideline, wouldn't 

14 have the agency necessarily addressing this 

15 kind of an issue, because it's a technically - 

16 what's the word? Technically enhanced natural 

17 radioactivity. It's not really an EEOICPA 

18 source term. It's a natural source term.

19 MEMBER MUNN: Or its background.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Now, that 

21 guide kind of postdated the comment. But 

22 nonetheless, you know, the issue there is 
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1 simply a response under those circumstances to 

2 clarify the agency's posture would certainly 

3 be warranted.

4 And it's not even clear, you know, 

5 what the implications of that comment might 

6 have been, because certainly indoor radon does 

7 figure, but this seemed to be a natural source 

8 of indoor radon. So, there wasn't any uranium 

9 in that building or radium-226 in that 

10 building.

11 And the other issue got into - and 

12 these were exceptional cases. I think we made 

13 it clear. I mean, this wasn't the overview, 

14 but certainly stood as exceptions to the other 

15 involved chemical sources.

16 And we've seen this in other sites 

17 where workers really don't distinguish being 

18 Part E, Part B. And Loretta's familiar with 

19 that. And what happens is, you know, we get 

20 chemical issues raised.

21 In this case, two of the comments 

22 dealt with chemical synergy questions which I 
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1 think was highlighted originally in the Act, 

2 but NIOSH indicates, and has indicated in the 

3 past, that it's an ongoing research topic.

4 But again, that didn't quite get 

5 communicated back to the worker who raised 

6 that.

7 And to clarify even further, these 

8 comments were raised as part of the ER - I'm 

9 sorry, the SEC review process in open public 

10 meetings that went on.

11 So, again, I think the argument 

12 is, you know, these were statements, these 

13 were inputs. And likewise, it wasn't really a 

14 Part B issue.

15 So, I think back, way back when 

16 there wasn't a real good feedback loop to the 

17 workers. So, we highlighted that that 

18 regardless of, you know, whether Part E or 

19 Part B, certainly closing the loop with the 

20 worker as far as the rationale would certainly 

21 be warranted just to, you know, not leave them 

22 in the dark.
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1 But those - that's the nature of 

2 the cases where we found, you know, not only 

3 no direct responses, but really no sense that 

4 it needed to be considered.

5 And I think, by and large, those 

6 were the exceptions of the 100 we sampled - 

7 the 101 we sampled.

8 There's some in the gray area, you 

9 know. The report says 94 percent. That only 

10 - 94 percent were considered. That highlights 

11 these three or four or five comments that I 

12 just mentioned, but there's numbers in the 

13 gray area.

14 If you look at Table 4 and do the 

15 arithmetic, you'll see that actually there's 

16 some that were partially considered or that 

17 would make it more like 88 percent.

18 But I went back sheet - form by 

19 form and there's some cases where there's 

20 evidence of consideration, but the 

21 consideration didn't address the worker's 

22 complete comment.
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1 And, you know, my comment on the 

2 whole thing, too, is: this does not imply 

3 cause and effect. Meaning that we did not try 

4 to evaluate whether the worker's comment 

5 actually, you know, induced the change in the 

6 deliberations, the response by the agency.

7 We just said we looked at the 

8 documents, and clearly that technical question 

9 or that issue was addressed at some point 

10 during the deliberations. And, therefore, you 

11 know, that issue was not lost.

12 Now, whether that issue was in 

13 fact as a result of the comment, there was no 

14 way to know that. So, we didn't get into 

15 trying to determine whether comments influence 

16 the end result. We just looked at the end 

17 result.

18 And we try to, in the report, and 

19 I don't want to get into that now unless 

20 there's any specific interest of doing so, but 

21 we did try to highlight these, you know, sort 

22 of these interesting pieces of information, 
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1 these insights I mentioned earlier and tied it 

2 to specific examples. We used the comment 

3 number.

4 So, as you go through in your 

5 report as you have read that, you can go back 

6 to those comments and say, you know, we have 

7 some issues of clarity going back and trying 

8 to, you know, in some cases would there be a 

9 need to clarify the technical issue, for 

10 example, to the worker because you're talking 

11 about something that you have a response, but 

12 it's on a complex issue. And maybe the Work 

13 Group might want to think about, you know, in 

14 some cases would NIOSH - would it be useful to 

15 not only have a response, but get into what 

16 does it mean for more of a layperson, not a 

17 health physicist? And that's certainly a 

18 question that could be considered.

19 And we looked at consistency and 

20 some other issues as well. So, there's 

21 specific examples in the report that ties to 

22 some of these things that we did find.
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1 Now, beyond some consideration of, 

2 you know, what - how these comments were 

3 dispositioned and what kind of response was 

4 provided, we also understand, again, this is a 

5 pilot study. We wanted to test out, you know, 

6 how the process worked.

7 And, you know, this wasn't an easy 

8 birth. And all of you were, you know, there 

9 in the beginning. It definitely was a hard 

10 thing to do.

11 And granted, it's not a technical 

12 review. It's much more of a subjective review 

13 of process.

14 So, we also went into some of 

15 these lessons in terms of how the review was 

16 conducted and what some of the difficulties 

17 may be.

18 I think Rocky is unique. I think 

19 it was the toughest site that one could have 

20 tested this process out on, okay.

21 I think the Work Group, in terms 

22 of considering a path forward, there's other 
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1 sites where just the number of comments 

2 involved and the complexity is going to be 

3 much different, not certainly up to that 

4 level.

5 And I think some of these - I 

6 won't call them logistical, but maybe they're 

7 logistical challenges, won't be nearly as much 

8 in terms of looking at the performance in a 

9 certain time period.

10 I think the study, even though it 

11 tackled a very difficult site and we went 

12 through a lot of process head-scratching with 

13 the Work Group, I think accomplished what it 

14 set out to do.

15 I mean, you know, what it set out 

16 to do was: can one identify, you know, these 

17 significant comments? Can one address the 

18 level of response to the worker? And can you 

19 establish what degree of separation in the 

20 deliberations and/or the documents of a 

21 particular site occurred to compare that with 

22 worker input, deliberations and documents, and 
. 

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1 is there a major gap?

2 And I think from that standpoint, 

3 I think this review was able to do that, 

4 despite some logistical challenges.

5 I think, you know, the - there's a 

6 lot of process lessons learned. There's 

7 things that we can do much easier and better. 

8 One of which, actually, is, you know, we 

9 spent an inordinate amount of time trying to 

10 establish, you know, what disposition in terms 

11 of documentation occurred within the agency.

12 And for a third party from the 

13 outside, that's a, you know, that requires a 

14 lot of effort, a lot of interaction with 

15 people like J.J. And it just seems like one 

16 lesson would be, I think, the agency is in a 

17 much better position to just simply, you know, 

18 document, you know, what the disposition was, 

19 what documents reflect, you know, that 

20 particular technical comment or issue.

21 And that part of it would be more 

22 efficiently done that way, but that's 
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1 something the Work Group can consider. It 

2 just seems like that was a large part of what 

3 turned out to be the effort.

4 We had a number of 

5 recommendations. And again, this sort of got 

6 into more of the process side. Let me see if 

7 I can tell you the page number here.

8 Are there any comments or any 

9 issues so far?

10 MEMBER MUNN: Well, I have to 

11 observe, however, that your comment about a 

12 difficult birth was not lost on us. It has 

13 been a personal concern of mine from the 

14 outset that this was almost too much of a 

15 challenge. Having to wrestle this sort of 

16 statistical information to the ground without 

17 any established or even possible digital 

18 transcription from which to work is a 

19 monumental task.

20 I expressed concerns over it from 

21 the outset, and continue to have concerns over 

22 it. I think you've done a yeoman's job just 
. 

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1 based on what we've seen here.

2 I'm interested in knowing how much 

3 time SC&A had to put in on this in order to do 

4 it. And that would give some reflection for 

5 us of what the agency time had to be - 

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

7 MEMBER MUNN: - in response to 

8 your efforts. Because there is, I think, 

9 incumbent upon this Work Group the 

10 responsibility of then assessing whether there 

11 is truly a path forward for this kind of 

12 thing, using the DOE term which I don't like.

13 But if this is the kind of 

14 activity that's going to be considered by the 

15 Work Group in the future, we definitely have 

16 the responsibility of weighing the value of 

17 the information we have, which is difficult to 

18 assess against the cost to the taxpayer and 

19 the program for what we've done.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and I - 

21 MEMBER MUNN: So, I wouldn't expect 

22 you to have that in your hip pocket.
. 

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1 MR. FITZGERALD: No.

2 MEMBER MUNN: But I would hope 

3 you'd have some concept of the time that SC&A 

4 has had to devote to it.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, there's two 

6 factors. Without getting into any of those 

7 specific details, and certainly that 

8 information is available. Two factors, which 

9 I think I touched on at least one of them.

10 Rocky Flats is probably the 

11 toughest site, from the standpoint of the 

12 scope of comment and worker involvement, to 

13 address in this context.

14 MEMBER MUNN: Well, yes and no. I 

15 can think of four others I can throw at you 

16 very quickly.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: That would be an 

18 interesting competition. I think Rocky in 

19 terms of comments, is right up there.

20 CHAIR BEACH: So, one of the 

21 toughest.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: One of the 
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1 toughest.

2 So, in terms of a pilot study, you 

3 know, if one were to do it over again and you 

4 knew the scope was over 500 comments and 

5 counting, certainly I would immediately say 

6 let's not gather up 500 comments off the bat, 

7 because that's an inordinate amount of effort.

8 So, that part of it, certainly the 

9 scope and scale from a pilot study standpoint 

10 is - was great.

11 The second thing is the one I 

12 mentioned a little earlier that by virtue of 

13 the independent nature of the review, I think 

14 the Work Group did want us to go ahead and 

15 solicit the information from NIOSH, you know, 

16 all the documentation and everything.

17 MEMBER MUNN: Oh, yes. It was 

18 necessary in order to do what you've been 

19 charged with.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: And, you know, 

21 having lived within the agency and outside the 

22 agency, trying to, you know, identify and 
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1 obtain all these various pieces of information 

2 whether they're memos, emails, interview 

3 documentation, all sorts of documents, 

4 essentially going into the files of the agency 

5 and trying to obtain this documentation to 

6 evaluate, and talking about the scale that 

7 we're talking about, sort of makes your head 

8 spin.

9 So, there's a number of scaling 

10 issues that I think were apparent to me on the 

11 process side and apparent to all of you, 

12 obviously, too, that led to the sampling 

13 regime and some of the other things.

14 Now, you know, this is the before 

15 and after. After all that, you get down to

16 the actual evaluation. You have documentation 

17 in front of you and you're doing, you know, 

18 you're actually asking the obvious questions 

19 about response and everything. I think it's a 

20 different story.

21 Then, you're talking about, you 

22 know, looking at the documents, deciding if 
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1 it's covered, maybe asking some follow-up 

2 questions of NIOSH and coming up with 

3 essentially the forms that you have.

4 I mean, and I actually did a 

5 number of those just not out of any desire for 

6 pain, but to really just understand it better. 

7 And it's not real hard. I mean, it's a 

8 question of judging responsiveness and what 

9 the basis of the responsiveness is and looking 

10 at relevant documents for consideration.

11 So, you know, certainly answering 

12 the questions once you do have the information 

13 in front of you, isn't that intense. But 

14 before that issue, it is.

15 MEMBER MUNN: It's a continual 

16 decision-making process.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: It's a judgment 

18 call.

19 MEMBER MUNN: It's a judgment call 

20 constantly.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: It's a judgment 

22 call.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: And that requires an 

2 enormous amount of expertise and a great deal 

3 of time and thought.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and I thought 

5 - 

6 MEMBER MUNN: You can't just say - 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: I think we're in 

8 violent agreement. I think, you know, 

9 certainly the Work Group needs to look at this 

10 - this is a pilot not only of the results 

11 themselves, but a pilot of the process.

12 So, that's one reason we included, 

13 you know, that experience in the report, 

14 because I think that experience is very 

15 relevant. And what you're adding is the 

16 resource issue, and all of that needs to be 

17 considered on the path forward.

18 MEMBER MUNN: That term again.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm sorry. Well, 

20 I did work at DOE.

21 MEMBER MUNN: I know. It comes 

22 out. I don't think you can hide it.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. So in any 

2 case, you know, that may factor into what else 

3 one looks at, you know.

4 It may be warranted that a site 

5 that has a lot less scope, a lot less 

6 complexity would make more sense if, in fact, 

7 the value was seen as being there.

8 So, that's the Work Group's 

9 province and that's where we'll leave it, but 

10 I did want to outline the recommendations 

11 which you obviously have in the report 

12 already, which, you know, would be for some 

13 consideration.

14 One thing as we were going through 

15 - and this is a dated snapshot, but it sort of 

16 elicited some questions. And actually, some 

17 of the discussions we've had today kind of 

18 actually underscored some of the same 

19 questions.

20 We felt that it would be very 

21 helpful for the Work Group to clarify with 

22 DCAS management what the, you know, what the 
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1 current expectations are. And I think PR-012 

2 goes a long way of defining that.

3 And to what extent the current 

4 practices and the procedures would mitigate 

5 the concerns, some of which were raised in the 

6 Rocky Flats study, you know, there was some - 

7 there was certainly a subtext in the responses 

8 from NIOSH that, yes, okay, this was six or 

9 seven or eight years ago. We are certainly 

10 doing better.

11 And, you know, if there were some 

12 shortcomings, and I think you raised this 

13 earlier, Wanda, you know, this was the very 

14 beginning of the worker outreach program, and 

15 a lot has been learned since. And that sort 

16 of has to be remembered.

17 So, one thing that would be very 

18 helpful, I think, for the Work Group is to 

19 clarify. Things presumably are better. How 

20 much better, given some of the issues that 

21 we've raised?

22 I mean, with these issues not 
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1 likely to be questions in the current regime 

2 and why is that so? How do you know, you 

3 know, things are better? I mean, it's kind of 

4 an obvious question.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Well, we may not know 

6 that unless we do another study of a more 

7 current site.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, no, I was 

9 just saying even beyond the Board, you know, I 

10 think - I'll just look at the number of NIOSH 

11 responses. They were more crisp, Brant's 

12 version, with an exclamation point.

13 But, you know, yes, NIOSH is and 

14 can do better. And my only question is at 

15 this point in time, how would you measure that 

16 or how would you know it's better? And can 

17 the Work Group understand how that is so, 

18 without doing evaluation - I think your point 

19 is well taken.

20 It's not a very good tool to have 

21 people like us look from the outside and try 

22 to make judgments as far as how things are 
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1 going.

2 I mean, really the best judgments 

3 are internal judgments. So, I'd like to know, 

4 you know, we can do better or we are doing 

5 better. How is that, you know, how would you 

6 know that and how is that actually - how does 

7 one determine that and what expectations are 

8 there? I mean, so that if it's better, then 

9 there must be some expectation so it defines 

10 what it should be. So, I think PR-O12 lays a 

11 lot of that out, but maybe there's more than 

12 that.

13 The second thing, which sort of is 

14 coupled with that is, you know, is there any 

15 way one internally evaluates or gauges how 

16 worker outreach is going?

17 And I'm sure contractually ATL is 

18 judged every year, but not even talking about 

19 that, but just generally how does, you know, 

20 DCAS management gauge worker outreach?

21 And, you know, certainly there's 

22 conventional ways of doing that that the Work 
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1 Group is aware of, you know. You can survey 

2 the customer, you know, see how the workers 

3 feel. You can set certain metrics and see how 

4 those metrics are achieved.

5 I recall just struggling with that 

6 when cost plus award fees were given out to 

7 all the contractors in DOE. And I had to look 

8 at all the safety portions of those cost plus 

9 award fees and put my two cents worth in.

10 And that was always the question, 

11 what's the performance metric for safety and

12 how do you know they've achieved it and how do 

13 you go in and gauge that?

14 Sort of like a personnel/staff 

15 thing too, the annual evaluations. You lay 

16 out expectations and then you have to 

17 determine where those expectations fit.

18 So, to some extent the self19 evaluation is sort of - we can't ever from the 

20 outside, I think, provide a very good 

21 analysis. We can provide a sampling, we can 

22 provide sort of a Gestalt judgment of here are 
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1 some of the things, but I said earlier it's 

2 more of an insight rather than - nothing 

3 approaching a report card, nothing approaching 

4 any kind of thing with rigor. That really 

5 comes from the inside.

6 So, that's kind of the question I 

7 would pose for the Work Group is, you know, is 

8 that done? 

9 And Number 3, I think, has been 

10 answered. I was kind of wondering whether it 

11 was an integrated tracking approach, because 

12 these comments seem to be coming from all 

13 these different venues.

14 And I think what we heard was, 

15 yes, I think there was every intention to move 

16 in that direction in some fashion.

17 The fourth item is outside of ATL, 

18 you know, I know the HPs have to, you know, 

19 shoulder a lot of the weight of worker 

20 response or worker comment response.

21 I mean, I think a comment may come 

22 through worker outreach or come through worker 
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1 interviews or whatever, but in a sense the 

2 staff across the Board all are engaged in the 

3 worker response.

4 I think one comment was, we were 

5 looking through these individual 101 comments 

6 and found, you know, sometimes Staff A 

7 responded this way, Staff B responded that 

8 way. And is there any kind of training, 

9 orientation, anything that would, you know, 

10 put the word out or impress upon not just ATL 

11 and the people that are on the front lines, 

12 but what worker outreach expectations mean for 

13 DCAS.

14 Number 5 is sort of going back to 

15 the feedback loop. And this is not feedback 

16 on a worker outreach meeting. This is more or 

17 less - I think there might be something like 

18 this. Maybe I don't - one thing we don't know 

19 about is, you know, outside of the ten-year 

20 review, maybe that was the venue, how do the 

21 workers feel about worker outreach?

22 And you already have served that 
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1 survey or that feedback, but that's sort of a 

2 natural question quite apart from what we 

3 think. What do the workers think?

4 And I wasn't clear on that, but I 

5 thought it was something the Work Group, you 

6 know, might find appealing.

7 MEMBER MUNN: Although, not being a 

8 true survey wonk, but knowing a lot about 

9 surveys, I have to observe that cases like 

10 this do not lend themselves to the kind of end 

11 customer survey that one normally gets, 

12 because the customer's view of how successful 

13 the program is depends entirely upon whether 

14 or not they received the kind of end result 

15 that they anticipated, not on how they were 

16 treated in between that time.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and I grant 

18 you that.

19 MEMBER MUNN: And as a result, I 

20 can't see that you could anticipate any 

21 meaningful result from a survey of that type, 

22 an internal survey of the people who handled 
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1 material.

2 And a review, you know, you've 

3 posed the proper questions, I think, here.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I was just 

5 going to say I think whether anyone does that, 

6 I suspect, you know, this has come up a long 

7 time ago and I agree. I think it's fraught 

8 with - 

9 MEMBER MUNN: Not meaningful 

10 results.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: - fraught with 

12 issues of, you know, if I don't get, you know, 

13 compensated, don't get this or that, you know, 

14 I'm not happy. So, therefore, that colors the 

15 process.

16 But even beyond that, just the 

17 question of that kind of feedback loop would 

18 be something that would be relevant, I think, 

19 to this whole thing.

20 MEMBER MUNN: Hmm. I don't know 

21 what it would get for you.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, actually, 
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1 part of it is informational. Is it done or 

2 has it been attempted, thought of, you know, 

3 that kind of thing is really part of it and 

4 not really suggesting anything specific.

5 Just sort of a question of 

6 feedback and how it's addressed or whether it 

7 be worth addressing, that kind of thing.

8 MR. McDOUGALL: If I may, I think 

9 Wanda is exactly right. If you ask 

10 stakeholders was the worker outreach 

11 effective, they're going to view it completely 

12 through the prism of: did I get what I wanted 

13 out of it, did I get that, you know, if I was 

14 making a specific argument, did they buy that 

15 argument completely?

16 So, you know, to just do some kind 

17 of an opinion survey, you know, like a 

18 customer service survey, I don't think that's 

19 going to be effective.

20 I think this probably, if you were 

21 going to continue to do this, might lend 

22 itself better to a more social-science-
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1 oriented process evaluation than to some kind 

2 of a statistical analysis.

3 I think it would be better, faster 

4 and cheaper to do it that way.

5 CHAIR BEACH: I think the survey 

6 was a suggestion, but it's open to, you know, 

7 different ideas of how to maybe answer that or 

8 measure it.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the ten-year 

10 review, I think - 

11 CHAIR BEACH: Is one way, yes.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: - was probably 

13 the most prominent thing that's happened that 

14 tried to ask those kinds of questions and seek 

15 input.

16 MEMBER MUNN: And I'll go back to 

17 my original concern when we first started this 

18 process, which is: and what are we going to 

19 get out of it?

20 If what we expect to get out of it 

21 is assurance inside this Work Group that the 

22 process that our agency has established is a 
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1 good one and it's working, then that's one 

2 point.

3 But if we expect to get some other 

4 kind of statistical data for it, then my 

5 question remains: to what end?

6 CHAIR BEACH: Well, it's an 

7 important question.

8 MEMBER MUNN: It's an important 

9 question for the Work Group, but that is - if 

10 we're going to recognize that this is 

11 specifically information for the Work Group - 

12 CHAIR BEACH: And the Board and the 

13 agency.

14 MEMBER MUNN: By definition, the 

15 Work Group is doing the work for the Board. 

16 But if we have other purposes for it, then we 

17 need to understand what our purposes are 

18 before we think in terms of other similar 

19 programs or moving onward.

20 CHAIR BEACH: Right. And that 

21 would be interesting to get NIOSH's input.

22 MEMBER MUNN: It will.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: So, you've got one 

2 more, Joe?

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, no. Just to 

4 respond, I think, you know, going back to the 

5 origins of this, you know, the objective, the 

6 Objective 3, you know, how can one gauge 

7 whether consideration is being given to 

8 information received from workers through the 

9 worker outreach efforts and adequately 

10 communicated and considered.

11 And this was one avenue that the 

12 Work Group wanted to test as to whether one 

13 could answer the question how well were things 

14 going.

15 And, you know, there's other ways 

16 to do it, but this was the one that I think 

17 was the desired test.

18 So, and that's where we're at. I 

19 mean, the test is done and these are the kinds 

20 of results. I think it's not, you know, again 

21 I think I emphasized earlier it's not a 

22 statistical review. I mean, it's easy to see 
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1 it that way, but it isn't.

2 I think where that sense may come 

3 from is that to narrow the scope, you know, we 

4 had to come up with some kind of sampling 

5 regime. And that had to be representative of 

6 the different categories that were being 

7 considered of comments.

8 You didn't want to lose whole 

9 categories, so we did apply a random sampling 

10 regime to that to narrow it down.

11 But beyond that, again, you're 

12 really taking a group of comments and using 

13 the guidelines that the Work Group has 

14 provided, judging the degree of response, 

15 degree of response and degree to which the 

16 substance of those comments were considered in 

17 the review process and reflected in documents, 

18 and that's it, you know.

19 When you get right down to the 

20 core of what was done, that's it. It's not a 

21 statistical analysis, it's very much an 

22 overview, you know. The forest, not the 
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1 trees.

2 And that's one thing I want to 

3 emphasize. We wanted to be rigorous so that 

4 this wasn't sort of a, you know, an off-the5 top-of-the-head type of thing.

6 But on the other hand, didn't want 

7 to lose the reality that in a sense this is an 

8 overview based on a collection of comments 

9 that were large enough that this was 

10 representative.

11 And the results speak for 

12 themselves that I was, to some extent, 

13 surprised that even as far back as 2004-2005 

14 for direct questions and direct concerns, one 

15 can find in most almost all cases, a 

16 substantive response and due consideration.

17 And that's something this Work 

18 Group, I don't think, really had a handle on 

19 and there wasn't any clear idea that that was 

20 the case.

21 I think that's pretty significant 

22 to be able to at least come away with that 
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1 kind of result.

2 Now, you know, we did point out 

3 that it's not pure. There's a number of, you 

4 know, notable glitches, but not ones that you 

5 wouldn't expect in that early time frame.

6 So, you know, I think that's a 

7 pretty bracing result that the Work Group 

8 wanted to have, and has it.

9 Now, the question of getting there 

10 efficiently, I think, is a valid one. And 

11 that's one that I think the Work Group has to 

12 look at.

13 But I think what's, you know, 

14 after lunch we can, you know, bore into this, 

15 but that's at the Work Group's, you know, your 

16 discretion.

17 MEMBER MUNN: We'll leave that to 

18 Madam Chair.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: I was not going to 

20 lead you on that one. It's up to you, but I 

21 think the real question is, you know, is this 

22 a tool that the Work Group would find useful 
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1 to bring up to date since this is such a dated 

2 review: six, seven, eight years ago.

3 But not one to replace, I think, 

4 what the organization has to accomplish within 

5 DCAS, which is the one that matters most and 

6 which is, how do you know it's going well, how 

7 does DCAS know it's going well, and how do you 

8 gauge the expectations and whether or not 

9 those expectations are being met.

10 And I think, you know, anything we 

11 do is just a sampling no matter what. It's an 

12 assurance which I think is what the Board is 

13 here for, but it's not going to replace, you 

14 know, the kind of management, commitment and 

15 attention that would take place within the 

16 organization.

17 So, this is just again keeping 

18 things in perspective. It's a rough sample, 

19 something that gives you more assurance, but 

20 it's not going to be so precise as to replace 

21 what NIOSH management would need to do in any 

22 case.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: All right. Everybody 

2 ready for lunch?

3 MEMBER MUNN: Oh, yes.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, let's take 

5 an hour. Back at 1:30.

6 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

7 matter went off the record at 12:26 p.m. and 

8 resumed at 1:33 p.m.)

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 
. 

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1 A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N 

2 1:33 p.m.

3 MR. KATZ: We are back. This is 

4 the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

5 Health, Worker Outreach Work Group. We're 

6 back after a lunch break.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, we just 

8 finished up SC&A's report on the Rocky Flats 

9 pilot study. And I think at this time let's 

10 go ahead before we get into any Work Group 

11 discussion, let's go ahead and I'd like to 

12 turn it over to NIOSH to kind of give us 

13 feedback, forward steps, kind of what you guys 

14 are feeling or thinking there.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Well, this 

16 is Stu. I think the recommendations here are 

17 pretty thoughtful and pretty well positioned.

18 I kind of have this general 

19 feeling that, well, gee, we're doing better at 

20 worker outreach and responsiveness than we 

21 used to be, but, you know, how do I really 

22 know that, is a good question. So, what can 
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1 we do along those lines?

2 I'm not particularly ready to 

3 speak with any specificity here today, but I 

4 do think these are some worthwhile 

5 recommendations on whether we can really show 

6 a concrete action going forward.

7 And each one of them I'm not real 

8 sure, but I think it's a pretty good set of 

9 things that we need to be thinking about as we 

10 go forward.

11 There are ways, and I know there 

12 will be - there is a built-in bias when you 

13 poll people about their satisfaction with the 

14 program, because a lot of it depends on the 

15 outcome of their claim if they're a claimant, 

16 but there are ways to do things like gather 

17 information about their perceptions perhaps in 

18 a slightly different way like focus groups and 

19 things like that.

20 And NIOSH has organizations that 

21 run - routinely run focus groups for various 

22 issues. We might be able to enlist some help 
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1 and do some things like that.

2 But it certainly is, I think, a 

3 worthwhile set of recommendations and it 

4 speaks to the obligation of the management of 

5 the organization to have some way to get the 

6 picture of how they're doing in this arena.

7 So, other than that, other than 

8 saying I think the recommendations are done 

9 pretty well, I don't know that I have much 

10 else to offer.

11 CHAIR BEACH: I guess I would like 

12 to ask, do you see value in this?

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, sure. The 

14 thing about this is it provides an outsider's 

15 perspective. An outside organization has come 

16 and taken what evidence they could find and 

17 provided this assessment, which is like - I 

18 don't have a similar internal assessment that 

19 I can hand you. So, it's certainly valuable 

20 from that, because it provides some feedback 

21 that we've not gone out and, you know, we've 

22 not tried to do an assessment on our own and 
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1 haven't really tried to structure one. So, I 

2 think it's really valuable from that 

3 standpoint.

4 Having been at one place, I guess 

5 the debate would be, is it valuable to go 

6 forward with something else, with another 

7 sample or another pilot or another, you know, 

8 other investigation, or is there more value in 

9 fleshing out some of these recommendations 

10 about how could this work?

11 I mean, give us a shot first on 

12 what we feel like might be possible and going 

13 through that in order to have sort of a more 

14 real-time, continuous monitoring of how we're 

15 doing as opposed to some sort of snapshot.

16 I mean, that's kind of my first 

17 impression. So, I guess I'll just leave it at 

18 that.

19 Certainly the Work Group can 

20 evaluate how they want to evaluate, but I 

21 think the recommendations about what we should 

22 be doing in terms of our becoming smarter 
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1 about how we're doing, you know, making it 

2 part of our routine operations to know how 

3 we're doing, I think that's a worthwhile set 

4 of recommendations.

5 CHAIR BEACH: And I don't want to 

6 lose any momentum either. So, that's another, 

7 you know, aspect of what I was thinking about.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: That implies that 

9 we have some in any aspect of what we're 

10 trying to do.

11 CHAIR BEACH: Well, we're here, 

12 we're talking about this. So, there's a 

13 little bit of momentum there, yes.

14 I mean, it's been a year since we 

15 met and, you know, we've made progress. 

16 Hopefully the procedure will be put in place, 

17 but it's been languishing for years. So, some 

18 of that, you know, we need to keep the 

19 momentum going forward.

20 Work Group Members?

21 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, surprise. Wanda 

22 has something to say.
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1 I'm very pleased with the results 

2 of this review for several reasons. The 

3 perception here has always been that DCAS and 

4 all of the NIOSH people work very hard at 

5 attempting to see that worker outreach is a 

6 part of their culture.

7 Joe speaks to, is there a culture 

8 of commitment, and I think that the culture of 

9 continual improvement to their approach to 

10 worker outreach is obvious to a person who 

11 works with them all the time. That's already 

12 there.

13 And in answer to the Number 4 

14 question, yes, it is obvious that most of the 

15 staff members that we interact with as a Board 

16 are oriented to effective outreach and they 

17 think that way and work that way, but it's 

18 very nice to have SC&A say, yes, that does 

19 appear to be going on.

20 One of the things that would be 

21 really helpful - Stu has just said that 

22 there's no internal self-evaluation process 
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1 that's going on now.

2 It seems that it would be very 

3 helpful if there were some thought given to 

4 the possibility of whether that's a meaningful 

5 thing and - 

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, that's why 

7 we'll be going back. I mean, I think these 

8 recommendations, they seem, like I said, 

9 thoughtful and helpful. And I think I also 

10 said I'm not so sure I'll be able to show a 

11 concrete action on every one of them.

12 MEMBER MUNN: No. Some of them are 

13 already answered. In my view, they're done. 

14 But the internal evaluation process is one 

15 that just, without thinking it all the way 

16 through, doesn't sound as though it would be a 

17 major undertaking to establish at least some 

18 sort of a minor oversight of just once you 

19 think about it, there probably is something 

20 that is less strenuous than what we certainly 

21 have seen necessary that fits.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, just some 
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1 thinking and - 

2 MEMBER MUNN: Just some thought 

3 whereas how that might be done without any 

4 real rigor, but I don't believe anyone can 

5 anticipate a major statistical breakthrough in 

6 things of this sort, but an overview would be 

7 very - seems like it might be helpful from an 

8 agency viewpoint.

9 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, Phil. Any 

10 thoughts, comments?

11 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I think this 

12 whole process where NIOSH has been a constant 

13 evolution of things, because I look back at it 

14 before all the regulations were even finalized 

15 thinking about some of the meetings we had 

16 back then and the way they've done worker 

17 outreach and things have progressed over the 

18 years.

19 So, I think they're - without 

20 being a formal program in the sense of review, 

21 I think they have taken what they learned out 

22 in the field and have been applying that.
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1 So, but you go back, and I think 

2 it would be hard to use a lot of that data 

3 from the early days to really judge as far as 

4 numbers or put a, you know, put a grade to it, 

5 you might say.

6 So, I think they've actually done 

7 a lot of outreach over the years, you know, 

8 and it has been a learning process for 

9 everybody.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Loretta, I know 

11 you're just brand new to this and just stepped 

12 in at kind of the final hour.

13 Any comments or questions?

14 MEMBER VALERIO: Yes and no. I am 

15 still learning a lot. I think that NIOSH and 

16 ATL have done a lot of outreach. It's been 

17 very interesting reading through the Rocky 

18 Flats pilot program.

19 I just - my only concern is that 

20 the concerns that they addressed in this 

21 review were older concerns and I'm just 

22 wondering how many of those concerns still 
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1 exist, you know, more recently.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, and we knew that 

3 going in that we were taking a look back. And 

4 part of the forward process will be, you know, 

5 given time to digest this, is maybe choosing 

6 another site that's more current, engaging, 

7 but we'll decide that as a Work Group if we're 

8 going to go that route.

9 MEMBER VALERIO: Would it be at all 

10 possible maybe to do a follow-up review on 

11 Rocky Flats?

12 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, honestly I would 

13 say that we would probably go with something a 

14 little smaller, a little less cumbersome, to 

15 be real honest with you, at this time. That's 

16 just my sense.

17 Other Work Group Members can weigh 

18 in, but I think we'd like to maybe take a 

19 chunk of something that's much smaller next. 

20 Something way more current.

21 MEMBER VALERIO: Okay.

22 CHAIR BEACH: So, the other thing 
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1 that I - Vern pointed out that early on we had 

2 invited ATL to kind of share with the Work 

3 Group who they are and what they do. And 

4 they've been with us of course this entire 

5 process.

6 So, not to go back and have you 

7 rehash what you do and everything, I guess I'm 

8 just looking for comments from ATL on how you 

9 think the process is going and evolved and - 

10 MR. McDOUGALL: And I mentioned 

11 that some time ago Mike had talked to us about 

12 basically kind of explaining our process. And 

13 I haven't really had a lot of time to prepare 

14 something - 

15 CHAIR BEACH: I don't expect you to

16 be prepared.

17 MR. McDOUGALL: - but I do want to 

18 bring you up to date a little bit. And I 

19 think that Stu, not just because he pays my 

20 bills, but Stu deserves a lot of credit for 

21 really what has happened in the last year, I 

22 think.
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1 And that has - and when you speak 

2 about the culture of worker outreach, I think 

3 that has really materially changed the way 

4 that specifically SEC Petition Evaluations are 

5 done.

6 About December-January, somewhere 

7 around the beginning of the year - 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Something like

9 that. I don't remember when.

10 MR. McDOUGALL: Okay. Basically, 

11 NIOSH built in - DCAS built into the 

12 evaluation process getting us involved really 

13 in their first meetings.

14 So, we had a heads up. We could 

15 start thinking about worker outreach when it 

16 started to look like a petition was going to 

17 be qualified, okay.

18 And one of the things that has 

19 always been kind of a constraint on worker 

20 outreach and petition evaluation is the time 

21 frame, but that gave us an opportunity to 

22 start thinking sooner, to start planning.
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1 And once the petition was 

2 qualified, to really kind of jump into action, 

3 work with the health physicists and arrange 

4 for outreach that was timely and fit and got 

5 them information that they could digest within 

6 the time frame.

7 And I think that - and I think 

8 that is really reflected in the behavior of a 

9 number of the health physicists that have been 

10 leading some of these evaluations. That they 

11 actually are looking for - they are looking to 

12 workers for information to flesh out what they 

13 see as the holes.

14 And, actually, that's the process 

15 that they're going through. When we do one of 

16 these SEC focus group meetings now, the health 

17 physicists basically establish the agenda.

18 They identify, basically, the 

19 issues where they want to hear from workers. 

20 And they kind of bullet-point it out and come 

21 to the meetings with that and work through 

22 those issues with the former workers.
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1 And I really think it has made a 

2 significant difference both in the - I think 

3 both in the atmosphere and in some of the 

4 tangible results that you're seeing in these 

5 Evaluation Reports.

6 But someday I'd like to - someday, 

7 but not today, I probably would like to share 

8 with you just what some of the skill sets are 

9 that are involved in doing some of this 

10 outreach.

11 And I think Joslyn is a good 

12 example where Mark used some of his - he 

13 called upon some of his old union organizing 

14 skills to - because you're really talking 

15 about a lot of varied patient telephone work 

16 and not in the case of Joslyn did we have home 

17 visits, but sometimes it gets down to that 

18 way.

19 You're explaining a totally new 

20 concept especially with these AWE sites. 

21 Unlike workers at DOE sites, a lot of these 

22 former workers at AWE sites barely know what 
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1 radiation is and, as you said earlier, much 

2 less what EEOICPA is.

3 So, you have to kind of imagine 

4 Mark's task in trying to explain to a 90-year5 old why it's important to get information.

6 CHAIR BEACH: Right, exactly. 

7 Thanks. I noted that as an agenda item for 

8 the next meeting to give you some time to do 

9 that. And not to get too far off subject, 

10 Stu, can we get some kind of a timeline?

11 I know you're not ready to respond 

12 to these items, these recommendations today. 

13 But like I said, I want to keep the momentum 

14 up and I'm hoping to plan the next Work Group 

15 meeting within the next three to four months 

16 if that's doable.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: A timeline on - 

18 CHAIR BEACH: On - 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: - when we might be 

20 able to - 

21 CHAIR BEACH: Address the 

22 recommendations and - that were put forth in 
. 

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1 this pilot.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, if you 

3 schedule another Work Group in three months, 

4 we should be able to say something by then. 

5 And in advance, might be able to provide 

6 something in advance of the meeting so people 

7 can read it before that and then discuss.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Because I 

9 would like to talk about choosing another 

10 pilot or another study group, but I don't want 

11 to do that until you have the time, obviously, 

12 to go through this and - 

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, recognize that 

14 we're almost shot until the end of September, 

15 because of - 

16 CHAIR BEACH: Correct, yes.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: - preparations for 

18 the Board meeting and the Board meeting.

19 CHAIR BEACH: And I wouldn't even 

20 propose - 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

22 CHAIR BEACH: - to do anything 
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1 that soon.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: So, I'm thinking 

3 after that we can maybe, you know, or maybe 

4 some of us during the interim can start 

5 thinking about some of these things.

6 But before we really will be able 

7 to, it's probably going to be the end of 

8 September before we can really focus on really 

9 trying to do something with it.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: But if you have 

12 another Work Group meeting in about three 

13 months, I would hope that we would be able to 

14 at least be able to say some things along 

15 these lines.

16 CHAIR BEACH: How much time would 

17 you need to do like an in-depth - 

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Oh, gee. I don't 

19 know. Until I kind of - until I got some time 

20 to think about it and talk about it with some 

21 people, I don't even know what in-depth will 

22 be.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: You know, what's 

3 in-depth really amount to?

4 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: So, I would think 

6 that I'm just going to have to stick with what 

7 I said. We'll be able to say something about 

8 some of these things probably - 

9 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: - before three 

11 months are up.

12 CHAIR BEACH: And then beyond that, 

13 kind of more of a - 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Beyond that, you 

15 know, once we've gotten into it a little bit, 

16 you know, we can maybe go from there into more 

17 details after that. I don't know.

18 Doing the first part may give us 

19 an idea of what's involved in doing the second 

20 step and really digging into the ones we're 

21 going to do then.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. And I guess 
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1 I'm going to ask the Work Group, do you see 

2 any value of going through these comments step 

3 by step as a group around the table and kind 

4 of looking at especially the ones that Joe 

5 pointed out, or what's your thoughts on that?

6 I mean, I've read the responses 

7 and most of the comments as much as I could 

8 possibly keep straight, but Joe pointed out, 

9 you know, a half a dozen or a dozen, or would 

10 you rather wait for NIOSH to come back with 

11 some answers to the recommendations?

12 What do you guys think?

13 MEMBER MUNN: I'm not at all sure 

14 what we would take away or add to the process. 

15 But by looking at these individual cases, 

16 unless there is some specific topic that's of 

17 more than general interest to one of the Work 

18 Group Members - 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Maybe I can 

20 clarify a little bit.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, thank you.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: You know, I 
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1 highlighted these not necessarily because they 

2 were a burning issue that had to be resolved, 

3 but more of a - in terms of the NIOSH 

4 response, I thought it would be of interest to 

5 the Work Group just to be aware and to focus 

6 in on that particular item.

7 For example, I think the first one 

8 here is you have this little colorful guide as 

9 Number 19, conflict of interest. I think, you 

10 know, we - that was a comment that was raised. 

11 And of course it's not a technical comment, 

12 but, you know, certainly one that was a pretty 

13 major issue at Rocky Flats, for obvious 

14 reasons, and there really was no direct 

15 response.

16 And I think the NIOSH response was 

17 - well, there was a, you know, conflict of 

18 interest policy that was not in place at the 

19 time. That came a little later. But 

20 certainly it was incumbent on the Board to 

21 identify any situations where there was a COI22 based omission, because we're part of the - 
. 

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1 the Board is part of the proceedings.

2 So, if one felt there was a COI 

3 issue, certainly it's incumbent upon the Board 

4 to raise its hand and point out the COI issue, 

5 you know. In other words, the ownership of 

6 that kind of concern is not just NIOSH's.

7 I thought that was a perspective I 

8 wasn't quite clear on in my experience. And I 

9 just wanted to make sure that you had a chance 

10 to be aware of and, not to solve it so much, 

11 as just be aware that that was one where this 

12 issue came up and that was the response.

13 MEMBER MUNN: This is water so far 

14 under the bridge.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, everything 

16 is under the bridge.

17 MEMBER MUNN: But this one is - 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

19 MEMBER MUNN: - a particularly 

20 burning issue that is so far under the bridge 

21 that it's difficult to see how revisiting it 

22 and looking at it would be applicable to 
. 

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1 current practices.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think the 

3 question is sort of shared responsibility when 

4 one is in these SEC forums on issues whether 

5 it's COI or other issues. It's not just 

6 NIOSH.

7 MEMBER MUNN: No, it isn't.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: And certainly the 

9 Board has a responsibility to, you know, if 

10 you're a part of that discourse, to raise 

11 these questions as they arise.

12 And I thought that was an 

13 interesting perspective that I wanted to flag 

14 at least saying that in terms of the response 

15 to that particular comment/issue, why there 

16 wasn't a direct response from NIOSH.

17 The comment was that, well, we are 

18 going back over and certainly if we felt there 

19 was a COI issue at the time, the Board 

20 certainly was in a position to raise it as 

21 well.

22 MEMBER MUNN: Well, having read 
. 

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1 some of the specific cases that you had given 

2 us there, I think, I mean, I can't imagine 

3 that we could add any more to it than you've 

4 already incorporated in the material you gave 

5 us.

6 Having read that, I thought, yes, 

7 I remember that. Yes, that's - boy, things 

8 are different now. 

9 But if, you know, it's the Chair's 

10 prerogative.

11 CHAIR BEACH: No, that's why I 

12 asked the Work Group if they felt there was 

13 any value in going through any of these. And 

14 I highlighted the ones that Joe pointed out. 

15 So - 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: It's not action.

17 CHAIR BEACH: No, it's not action. 

18 It's just discussion.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: It's awareness or 

20 attention that, you know, there may be an 

21 implication that goes beyond sort of the rote 

22 which is sort of response, no response, you 
. 

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1 know.

2 These were kind of responses that 

3 carried with them a little bit more 

4 information or implication than some of the 

5 more rote, R-O-T-E, ones.

6 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. But I look at 

7 things like internal dose and I think, yes, we 

8 know. And worker protection and monitoring, 

9 yes.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

11 MEMBER MUNN: I guess I don't know 

12 - 

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, that's the 

14 question.

15 MEMBER MUNN: - aside from your - 

16 what you've already done.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

18 MEMBER MUNN: Which, by the way, 

19 thank you for including the individual sheets 

20 on these things, because it was - I found it 

21 instructive to read through the individual 

22 cases that you provided for us. That was most 
. 

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1 informative. Thank you.

2 MR. KATZ: I think, Joe, I mean, if 

3 there are some of these that you think will be 

4 stimulating for DCAS in terms of considering 

5 how they do outreach in the future, how they 

6 work on these matters, evaluation or actually 

7 doing outreach, I mean, call it out. This is 

8 a good opportunity to - 

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, you know, I 

10 think we have. And, actually, these were kind 

11 of called out in the report.

12 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: And the items 

14 point to the examples, these very examples.

15 MR. KATZ: Yes.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: And, you know, 

17 anything from back in the ancient days when 

18 something came up that, say, was a chemical 

19 issue or maybe was a DOL question, it seemed 

20 like, you know, not us, was more or less the 

21 stance. And I don't think that would be 

22 nearly the case now.
. 

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1 I've been at enough Board meetings 

2 where the DOL rep is usually there. But if 

3 the DOL rep isn't there, I think there's great 

4 pains taken to say that we're going to make 

5 sure it gets to DOL. Back in 2004, it was 

6 obviously not the case.

7 So I, you know, I don't think - 

8 and I think this is what you're saying, too, 

9 Wanda. These aren't issues for resolution, 

10 but just sort of flagging those that are 

11 indicators of something that might have been a 

12 practice, might have been a lesson that 

13 probably more than likely is resolved now, but 

14 one that certainly between NIOSH and the Board 

15 you would want to see resolved by now.

16 So, without knowing the actual 

17 practice, I wanted to flag the things that, 

18 you know, if there wasn't an improvement, 

19 there wasn't something that would mitigate 

20 against something like that happening. In 

21 this case, COI, of course COI has gone eons 

22 from where it was in 2004.
. 

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1 But these are places where it 

2 didn't go probably as well as we would want 

3 them to go now. It is something that if you 

4 want to cross the T, you would want to say, 

5 yes, any of these instances would not be 

6 likely now because; one, we would pass things 

7 to DOL; two, we have a very, very tight COI 

8 policy on all regards; three, you know, 

9 chemical synergy, clearly that's under 

10 research, but we will certainly provide 

11 perhaps a clearer response to the worker so 

12 that that would be obvious that that's 

13 something that's not being brushed under the 

14 rug, but is being addressed actively, you 

15 know, so forth and so on.

16 So, the rest of it is kind of cut 

17 and dry. The rest of it is there was a 

18 response and it was considered. There was a 

19 response, but maybe the documents, you know, 

20 to me those are not particularly helpful. 

21 There's no insights other than the fact that 

22 we establish what the status was.
. 

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1 So, these others are a little 

2 different. These are things that you would 

3 want to be aware of and figure out, you know, 

4 yes, that must be different now, you know, 

5 that kind of thing.

6 CHAIR BEACH: On the other end of 

7 that, some of these - in fact, a number of 

8 them have the comment that NIOSH will attempt 

9 to improve at providing responses to the 

10 commenters.

11 That in itself is great, but I 

12 guess based on your responses, how? How is 

13 that going to happen in reporting that out? 

14 And not every case will have a how, but I 

15 think those, to me, are as important as some 

16 of the other ones Joe was just referring to 

17 also.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: And I would say, 

19 you know, if there's not a lot of value in 

20 going through and dissecting these individual 

21 cases, then maybe it would be appropriate to 

22 give, you know, DCAS some breathing room to 
. 

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1 collect their thoughts and just, you know, in 

2 terms of the Work Group, provide some 

3 perspective of the question that seems to be 

4 on the table. Are things better, and how do 

5 you know?

6 And I think that would be 

7 something that would be helpful to read in 

8 terms of a response.

9 A lot of work went into this thing 

10 and I think a thoughtful response to some of 

11 these points might be useful to the Work 

12 Group. That might be a better way to do it.

13 I was going to say today would be 

14 helpful if either the Work Group or NIOSH 

15 would benefit from any clarification where 

16 we're coming from.

17 You've read the report. Is there 

18 anything that, you know, perhaps is unclear, 

19 sticks in your craw, is not obvious? You 

20 know, that kind of thing, I think, would be 

21 helpful for us to do if you want.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Did you have 
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1 something, Mark?

2 MR. LEWIS: Can I say something?

3 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

4 MR. LEWIS: Now, what you mentioned 

5 a while ago, the synergistic effect, what 

6 would be an appropriate response? What would 

7 be one, because we're not, you know, we're 

8 doing these things. I'm not going to tell the 

9 guys to go lobby their congressman or 

10 something, because it's not in the Act.

11 Although, that's what - my gut 

12 feeling, I know the response, what I would 

13 say, but it's not addressed at this time.

14 I would tell them that I'm not 

15 supposed to tell them to go talk to their 

16 congressman or lobby, because I'm on the dime 

17 anyway.

18 So, what would be if someone asked 

19 me about the effects of radiation and 

20 chemicals together, what would be the 

21 response? That NIOSH get back with them or 

22 something? What do I say?
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, a response 

2 was provided, I think, to those three 

3 comments.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: NIOSH's response to 

5 a question like that is that the science is 

6 not well enough developed to make a 

7 quantitative judgment about what - and so, 

8 there's nothing to do with that.

9 The chemical exposure is it's 

10 booted from Part B anyway.

11 MR. LEWIS: Subtitle E, yes.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: So, it's a Subtitle 

13 E thing, and the Department of Labor chooses 

14 how it tends to go about, you know, dealing 

15 with that question, which is essentially what 

16 I said. Well, the science isn't well enough 

17 developed to deal with that question.

18 MR. LEWIS: That's what we've been 

19 doing anyway. But I just, you know, I don't 

20 think a lot of - that doesn't get it with 

21 people, you know.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: I have no problem 
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1 with the issue. It's just that the comment, 

2 you know, our direction was, you know, does 

3 the worker get any satisfaction in terms of 

4 the direct response?

5 And in this case even though there 

6 is an explanation, that response wasn't - no 

7 response was provided.

8 MR. LEWIS: Okay.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: And, again, going 

10 back that far in the past, you know, it was - 

11 MR. LEWIS: It was just something 

12 that was like rolling around in my brain and 

13 the only good question was the one I didn't 

14 ask.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. There 

16 wasn't a good answer. So, no answer was 

17 given.

18 I think today you would provide 

19 that answer that we, you know, that Stu just 

20 did. And that - I think that would satisfy 

21 it. There isn't anything else you can say.

22 So, you know, without putting too 
. 

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1 much on it, that was kind of the - that was 

2 the only finding there that was sort of left 

3 unspoken.

4 MR. LEWIS: All right.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Anything else 

6 on this?

7 MEMBER MUNN: One other thing.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Joe's going to give 

10 us a scoping value of - 

11 MR. KATZ: I'll get back to you. I 

12 have that.

13 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, good.

14 MR. KATZ: That's not a big deal to 

15 get to you. I mean, you actually all have it, 

16 because you get the reports that I get.

17 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

18 MR. KATZ: All I would be telling 

19 you is what the totals are.

20 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

21 MR. KATZ: And they're actually in 

22 the latest - well, they should be in the 
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1 latest reports. You may have an easier time 

2 finding it if we need it, but - 

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, the progress 

4 report.

5 MR. KATZ: Yes. The progress 

6 report is giving the budgets for this item.

7 CHAIR BEACH: All right.

8 (Simultaneous speaking.)

9 MS. AYERS: I think when that topic 

10 came up earlier, the thought that came in my 

11 mind was the total expenditure resources might 

12 not be as illuminating as some sort of 

13 breakdown of the process points.

14 Because as you mentioned in your 

15 review of room for improvement of the process 

16 itself, there were definitely areas that 

17 consumed an enormous amount of resources. The 

18 first two stages in particular tried to 

19 capture all the comments, trying to identify 

20 what documents we wanted to specifically 

21 request from NIOSH.

22 And then we really did - didn't 
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1 necessarily anticipate from the beginning that 

2 we would go back to the agency who has better 

3 access to memories of how these things were 

4 addressed.

5 And so, we were literally, you 

6 know, trying to dig up any evidence we could 

7 find in any sort of broad range of documents 

8 trying to look for is there an answer, you 

9 know, is there evidence that this was dealt 

10 with or considered.

11 And so, those two pieces, I would 

12 say, probably consumed the bulk of the 

13 resources that were expended. And they might 

14 not necessarily be done that way the second 

15 time around.

16 MR. KATZ: I mean, I can pull the 

17 figures, but why don't I get with Lynn and she 

18 may be able to just sort of frame that figure 

19 in terms of just roughly the proportions of 

20 the resources that went to the different 

21 elements of the effort.

22 MEMBER MUNN: Even a rough 
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1 assessment would be helpful, I think.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Can we just send that 

3 around in email?

4 MR. KATZ: Yes. Oh, absolutely.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Perfect.

6 MR. KATZ: No problem.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Could you 

8 check and see if Chris is on the line? 

9 Because the next agenda item is the ten-year 

10 review and I think she's a big part of that.

11 MS. ELLISON: Yes, I am on the 

12 line.

13 CHAIR BEACH: Hi, Chris. Thank 

14 you.

15 MS. ELLISON: Not a problem.

16 So, what I had planned to do is I 

17 have the list of the action items for the 

18 quality of service. So, I was just going to 

19 run down through them, if that's okay.

20 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Could you just 

21 do a quick background just so everybody 

22 understands what it is and maybe where it came 
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1 from?

2 MS. ELLISON: This is part of the 

3 results from the ten-year review and what was 

4 done. The report on the quality of service, 

5 it was reviewed. And out of that, the quality 

6 of service review piece, there are four issues 

7 that relate to levels of service. And with 

8 each one of them, there is one action item.

9 The first issue is related to the 

10 using of customer-supplied information. And 

11 the action item says that DCAS will review 

12 current communication vehicles and where 

13 appropriate, will make improvements in such 

14 vehicles.

15 One of the things we have started 

16 working on in looking into this, there's a 

17 wide array and variety of ways that we can 

18 receive comments on the various sites and the 

19 technical documents and such.

20 And I've been working a little bit 

21 with our technical team. And we've looked at 

22 all of the different avenues anywhere from a 
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1 CATI interview we could get information about 

2 a site, it could come through via email, phone 

3 call, worker outreach meetings, Advisory Board 

4 meetings. So, there's a wide array of places 

5 that information can come in to us.

6 And they're looking into currently 

7 formatting and sketching out some sort of 

8 database-type program where we can track all 

9 of this. And hopefully in the future then 

10 once a comment comes in and it gets entered 

11 into the system, be able to assign it to an 

12 individual. But unfortunately, this is only 

13 at the beginning stages for that action item.

14 Would you like me to continue the 

15 next action item, or do you want to discuss 

16 any of that?

17 CHAIR BEACH: Are you talking about 

18 within the first action item one, or going to 

19 the next one under - 

20 MS. ELLISON: That was the first 

21 issue.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.
. 

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1 MS. ELLISON: Customer-supplied 

2 information.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Comments, questions. 

4 And realize nothing was prepared other than 

5 just asking Chris to kind of gauge where 

6 they're at and what the future looks like.

7 (No response.)

8 CHAIR BEACH: All right. Go ahead, 

9 Chris. There's nothing.

10 MS. ELLISON: Excellent. The 

11 second issue was related to the 

12 understandability and quality of information. 

13 And the action that we were asked to take on 

14 that was DCAS will continue ongoing efforts to 

15 evaluate and improve the understandability and 

16 quality of DCAS communication vehicles.

17 There has been a lot going on in 

18 this arena, and a lot of it starting prior to 

19 this ten-year review.

20 The things that occurred, one 

21 thing was the requirement for accessibility. 

22 And so, one of the things we've been tackling 
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1 is that all of our documents that we put out 

2 on the web, the PDFs are in a 508-compliant 

3 format.

4 This means that if someone has a 

5 screen reader, they can accurately use the 

6 screen reader to read those documents.

7 That's one of the things that is 

8 required government-wide that we've had to 

9 adhere to. And, therefore, at this time we 

10 are not allowed to post anything to the 

11 website that is not 508-compliant.

12 And I will commend SC&A, you know, 

13 once that came across, they now send me 

14 everything - all the PDFs are 508-compliant. 

15 So, I have no problems there and it's been 

16 very easy getting things on the web and not 

17 having to tackle that issue.

18 And the other thing that has 

19 occurred under the quality and understanding 

20 of our information is there's a Plain Language 

21 Act that was recently passed.

22 And that requires your information 
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1 to be at a level where the general public can 

2 understand it. And that's kind of rolled into 

3 this action item also.

4 And what we have currently done in 

5 that effort, we've reviewed all of the - what 

6 we call process letters, the acknowledgment 

7 letter, the CATI letter and those things, and 

8 made appropriate changes and reviewed them to 

9 make sure that they're understandable and made 

10 any updates.

11 The two - the one letter, that 

12 process letter that had quite a bit of change 

13 done to it is the CATI letter.

14 And then, also, some of our SEC 

15 letters we changed quite extensively there 

16 also.

17 And I don't know if everyone saw 

18 the email yesterday I had sent, because Josie 

19 had asked for some examples. And I had sent a 

20 couple examples.

21 I believe I sent the previous CATI 

22 letter, and then the new, revised one. And 
. 

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1 then I had also sent a copy of a revised SEC 

2 letter. It was when we sent out the 

3 Evaluation Report.

4 And that one, the former letter 

5 pretty much said we've completed the 

6 evaluation, here's the Evaluation Report, the 

7 next thing that will happen is the Board will 

8 discuss it, and very little information.

9 Our new, revised letter tells 

10 them, you know, we state the Class, we make 

11 some statements that are found in the 

12 Evaluation Report as to the key points that 

13 are found in it. And then we kind of break 

14 down and point out separately the next steps, 

15 what the Advisory Board will do with this 

16 Evaluation Report, what will happen after 

17 that.

18 So, then hopefully the petitioner 

19 knows this is where my petition is at and 

20 here's some of the future things to expect. 

21 And that's kind of what we've done with all of 

22 the SEC letters that we not only are giving 
. 

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1 them the information, but we're telling them 

2 what's the next steps, what can I expect next.

3 So, I think that's hopefully 

4 helping increase their understandability of 

5 especially the SEC petitioning process.

6 Other things that we've done to 

7 help with the understandability of the 

8 information, is ease of the information. I 

9 don't know if anyone has noticed, and I think 

10 that we sent emails out about it, but we 

11 revised the Advisory Board page on the 

12 website.

13 And I don't know if anyone prior 

14 to us revising it had tried to print the page, 

15 but the page if you printed the previous 

16 Advisory Board page, it was probably about 80 

17 pages long.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

19 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, you couldn't 

20 stop it no matter what you tried to do.

21 MS. ELLISON: There was a lot of 

22 information on that one page. And so, what we 
. 

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1 did was we broke that out and put things on 

2 their own pages just to help people be able to 

3 find it. And then if they needed to print 

4 something, not to have to print so many pages.

5 And the other thing that was 

6 helpful to us was prior to that, we listed 

7 Advisory Board meetings and notices on the 

8 Advisory Board page, plus, then, on a public 

9 meeting page.

10 Well, that was all collapsed into 

11 one page. So, you know, we try to, if at all 

12 possible, not double-post things to make it 

13 easier on us so we can remember where we need 

14 to post stuff and not forget to post it in 

15 certain places. So, hopefully that's helped 

16 also the public, but then it also has helped 

17 us.

18 The other major thing that's kind 

19 of going on with the website is reformatted - 

20 started reformatting the SEC petition 

21 sections.

22 And I think - I don't know if 
. 

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1 anyone has looked at this. Some of the pages 

2 that are currently completed are the newer 

3 petitions, Winchester, the Hanford page has 

4 been updated, Nuclear Metals, Ventron. I 

5 think we even did the GSI, Electro Met. But 

6 it breaks down - there are tables now with 

7 each petition.

8 And I think the new format helps 

9 considerably when there are multiple petitions 

10 from one site. Because instead of having a 

11 bulleted list and all the petitions listed 

12 under one little piece in that bulleted list, 

13 you now have a table that goes through all the 

14 various steps, the SEC petitioning process, 

15 and it's only for that petition. There is a 

16 separate table for each petition.

17 So, I encourage you if you haven't 

18 looked at some of those SEC pages, to give 

19 them a - look at them and just see how they've 

20 changed with that table in there, but I think 

21 it makes the SEC information a little bit 

22 clearer. And that seems to be a lot of 
. 

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1 everyone's emphasis of what they want to know 

2 about.

3 I think that's a lot of what's 

4 been going on with the understandability of 

5 the communication pieces.

6 So, are there any questions on 

7 that?

8 CHAIR BEACH: Well, it sounds like 

9 you've made a lot of progress and I wasn't 

10 able to copy all that down.

11 So, if you have that in a written 

12 form, I would really like to have that sent 

13 out as an email just so I can kind of keep 

14 track of all the different things you just 

15 mentioned.

16 MS. ELLISON: Well, one thing I'm 

17 working on is also trying to put together some 

18 summary reports or final reports on some of 

19 these action items.

20 CHAIR BEACH: Right. Great.

21 MS. ELLISON: It would be in the - 

22 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.
. 

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1 MS. ELLISON: Anything else on that 

2 issue?

3 MEMBER MUNN: Chris, this is Wanda. 

4 You've certainly done a great job with the 

5 webpage. Everything that I've looked at has 

6 been very nice indeed.

7 I am really sorry that you took 

8 the Board's picture off. I wish you had Photo

9 shopped our new Members in and left it there.

10 But other than that, it's looking 

11 very good.

12 MS. ELLISON: Well, I think you all 

13 need to update your picture. There are some 

14 new additions to the Board.

15 MEMBER MUNN: We would like to do 

16 that, but who's going to bring their camera?

17 MR. KATZ: We brought it actually 

18 the last time I was in attendance with you.

19 MS. AYERS: Sounds like individual 

20 pictures.

21 MEMBER MUNN: Going to have to 

22 Photoshop them in. That's all there is to it.
. 

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1 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. 

2 Josie, this is Arjun Makhijani.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Hi, Arjun. Nice to 

4 hear from you.

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, with this 

6 comment on what Chris just said, you know, 

7 besides the petitioners and so on, I use that 

8 page quite a lot because I review SEC 

9 petitions. And I've found the changes to be 

10 generally very helpful.

11 Specifically, I found, you know, 

12 all the old versions of the TBDs to be on the 

13 same page as the SEC. And now I'm reviewing 

14 Nevada Test Site to go over the Special 

15 Exposure Cohort stuff, like from the point of 

16 view of locating the Site Profile issues.

17 And I found that having all the 

18 old versions of the Site Profiles on the same 

19 - in the same place to be really, really 

20 useful.

21 It saved a lot of time and 

22 resources and I didn't have to go hunting 
. 

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1 everywhere for them, you know. They are in my 

2 computer and various places, because this goes 

3 back many, many years.

4 So, I just wanted to thank NIOSH 

5 for having made these changes. It made my 

6 life much easier.

7 MS. ELLISON: Well, good. Thank 

8 you very much. Anything else before I 

9 continue?

10 (No response.)

11 MS. ELLISON: Well, nothing said, 

12 then I will continue.

13 The third issue regarding the 

14 quality of service is related to the access of 

15 information. And the action item states that 

16 the DFO and staff will continue efforts to see 

17 that Board and Work Group work products are 

18 posted on the website as soon as practical.

19 And just as a policy, we do, once 

20 we receive information, make every attempt 

21 that we can to post information within a 24-

22 hour period. And we really need to, just as 
. 

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1 an FYI, we have until about two o'clock.

2 And it seems like anything after 

3 two o'clock is hard to get posted on that day. 

4 So, it usually falls to the next day.

5 But we have been working and as 

6 you all probably know, there's been a lot more 

7 information posted regarding the Work Group 

8 meetings in addition to the agendas there, the 

9 discussion papers and everything.

10 I don't recall when it was 

11 started, you know, as you know now posting the 

12 draft White Papers and the discussion papers. 

13 And so, there's been a large influx of 

14 information that we are posting to the website

15 regarding the Work Groups and the Advisory 

16 Board.

17 And the other addition that is 

18 fairly new that we have started doing is 

19 posting the presentations for the full Board 

20 meetings. And there might be some out there 

21 for the Work Group meetings.

22 I don't really recall right 
. 

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1 offhand. I'm sorry, but I know definitely for 

2 the full Board meetings we have been posting 

3 the presentations.

4 And, also, there are - there's a 

5 huge list of documents that, prior to us 

6 posting the older, you know, prior to us 

7 posting a lot of this Work Group information 

8 that wasn't up there before, we are trying to 

9 backfill and post all of those older documents 

10 that weren't out there. So, work is 

11 continuing on that.

12 And I do want to thank Ted. 

13 Because when you send your emails telling us, 

14 oh, this needs to go with - this document 

15 needs to go with this Work Group meeting, that 

16 does help just so we can ensure that we 

17 associate the proper discussion papers with 

18 the proper - the appropriate meeting.

19 And that's pretty much all I have 

20 on that item.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Any comments, 

22 questions?
. 

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1 (No response.)

2 CHAIR BEACH: Hearing none, Chris, 

3 you can go ahead and take us through the last 

4 one.

5 MS. ELLISON: The last one relates 

6 to the perceived burden on claimants and 

7 petitioners.

8 The action item states that DCAS 

9 will consider its current communication 

10 strategies as they might present perceived 

11 burdens to claimants and petitioners 

12 particularly in light of the real burdens felt 

13 by those individuals through their 

14 interactions with DOL.

15 I spoke a little bit about the 

16 changes that we've made to the SEC letters, 

17 which, you know, hopefully that will help.

18 We also have Josh Kinman, our SEC 

19 petitioner, and I know he's quite involved and 

20 talks a lot with the petitioners.

21 And the other big thing I kind of 

22 skimmed over when we were talking about the 
. 

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1 understandability of our information, the 

2 other big change that occurred was with the 

3 CATI and primarily just the CATI letter and 

4 the cover sheet to the questions.

5 And in dealing with the perceived 

6 burden on individuals, one of the things I was 

7 concerned about and wondering and that has 

8 changed is that we're changing a little bit 

9 how we perceive and convey this information to 

10 the claimants.

11 We are no longer in the letter, 

12 and hopefully they're trying on the phone, to 

13 not call it an interview, you know.

14 If I say to you, I want to 

15 interview you, you think one thing. You think 

16 reporter and you have a different stress level 

17 than if you say, I'd like to talk to you about 

18 your work history.

19 So, the one big change that was 

20 made in the letter is that we don't say that 

21 we're interviewing them. We say that we'd 

22 like to talk to them, you know, we'd like to 
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1 discuss their work history with them.

2 And we've tried to point out very 

3 clearly that this is voluntary, that we don't 

4 expect them to know all the answers, we don't 

5 expect them to go looking for the information.

6 This is just a conversation to 

7 gather some information, to pick their brain, 

8 you know, that sort of thing.

9 And I did send a copy of the old 

10 CATI letter yesterday in my email and then the 

11 new format with the new information.

12 And a lot of that information 

13 that's in the letter, we reinforced it then 

14 again on the cover sheet that goes with the 

15 questions.

16 So, you know, it will be 

17 interesting after this has been implemented 

18 for a year or so to see if it's helped and, 

19 you know, if it's relieved some of that 

20 perceived burden, that perceived stress over 

21 this CATI.

22 And I think that's pretty much all 
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1 that I have.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Thank you, Chris.

3 Anybody have any questions, 

4 comments?

5 (No response.)

6 CHAIR BEACH: Chris, you've done a 

7 really - an excellent job in kind of telling 

8 us kind of where you're at and what you're 

9 doing.

10 I guess I'm wondering what your 

11 next steps are and then I know you said you 

12 sent out the example of the CATI, which I did 

13 not get this morning, but I will have it 

14 obviously on my computer.

15 MS. ELLISON: And let me, Josie, 

16 while you're talking about that, I sent it to 

17 everyone's CDC account.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, yes. And I 

19 have not looked at CDC yet today with as busy 

20 as we have been, but what's next for you, 

21 Chris? I know you're busy.

22 MS. ELLISON: One of the things I'm 
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1 working on and trying to wrap up with a lot of 

2 these action items is putting together some 

3 final - a final report for each action item, 

4 obviously, except for the one that's open with 

5 the customer-supplied information, you know.

6 Because a lot of this stuff, you 

7 know, we've made great strides, but it's an 

8 ongoing thing that it's something continual 

9 that we always - we're always reviewing the 

10 web pages, we're always reviewing the 

11 communication pieces to make sure that, one, 

12 they say the most current thing that they 

13 should be saying and that there is, you know, 

14 not a better way to say it.

15 So, you know, we are always 

16 considering that and that is an ongoing piece 

17 of our work.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Right. And I think 

19 for us, we're going to have to look at some of 

20 the products and kind of just do a review and 

21 a report-out on some of the things you've done 

22 and the improvements you've made.
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1 So, those are some of the things 

2 we're going to have to look to for this Work 

3 Group.

4 MS. ELLISON: Essentially, what 

5 will happen is when the - I've put together 

6 the reports. I'm sure they will be sent to 

7 you all for comments.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Any other 

9 comments, questions?

10 (No response.)

11 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, and if you could 

12 just send me the list of all the stuff, Chris, 

13 that would be helpful for me when I prepare 

14 just to report out at the next Board meeting, 

15 I'm sure, just to kind of give some examples.

16 MS. ELLISON: Sure, I can do that.

17 CHAIR BEACH: That would be 

18 excellent. Thank you.

19 Anybody else?

20 (No response.)

21 CHAIR BEACH: All right. Thanks, 

22 Chris.
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1 So, our next item is worker - just 

2 anybody have any comments online? Earlier we 

3 didn't have anybody on the line and are there 

4 any workers, worker representatives or 

5 advocates on the line that would like to make 

6 comments at this time?

7 (No response.)

8 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, since we 

9 are fairly far ahead, I would suggest that we 

10 take an afternoon break for ten minutes and 

11 maybe look at - think about individually next 

12 steps and forward. And then we'll come back 

13 and discuss that.

14 Does that work?

15 MR. KATZ: Sounds good.

16 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

17 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

18 matter went off the record at 2:28 p.m. and 

19 resumed at 2:41 p.m.)

20 MR. KATZ: All right. We're back 

21 from our break. Josie.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, once again 
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1 I wanted to give the workers or worker 

2 advocates a chance to comment if they wish to 

3 do so. And we'll give you a couple extra 

4 minutes if you're on mute, to get off mute and 

5 address the Working Group.

6 Anybody out there?

7 (No response.)

8 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, the next 

9 part of the agenda, Step 5, was next steps for 

10 worker outreach.

11 And Joe, SC&A, sent around a memo, 

12 I think most everybody got it, on August 21st 

13 improving efficiency of an internal 

14 documentation process.

15 And Joe's going to go ahead and 

16 talk about that memo for the procedure and 

17 just some of his ideas.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I'm going to 

19 ask Lynn to weigh in as well. But process20 wise, you know, looking at the interview 

21 process and we've had some years to go through 

22 this, it became more and more apparent 
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1 particularly, you know, when Kathy was doing 

2 that job being the - sort of the omnibus go-to 

3 person for coordinating interviews and doing 

4 documentation and everything else, it sort of 

5 ran pretty smoothly just because it was all 

6 integrated that way.

7 But ever since we've been doing 

8 this, it became clear that there was an extra 

9 loop that had become more apparent where we 

10 had to, by virtue of collecting the workers' 

11 validation of their interviews and if they 

12 made any changes, we were compelled and needed 

13 to go back through DOE for classification 

14 review.

15 That doesn't sound like much, but 

16 for some sites the cycle time for a loop 

17 through the classification process, it 

18 literally could cost you four, five or six 

19 months. So, it's not trivial.

20 And so, that came up and we talked 

21 about, is there a process way that we could 

22 make this more efficient, avoid unnecessary 
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1 loops through DOE. And it certainly would be 

2 a savings for them, because, again, every 

3 classification review is pretty resource4 intensive.

5 And what we presented in this one6 pager was essentially, yes, there's a definite 

7 issue that affects timeliness and efficiency 

8 and the quality of information.

9 The quality issue comes in because 

10 if you have a six-month delay in terms of 

11 being able to access notes that can be used in 

12 a review, you very well might not get very 

13 good use of it.

14 And on the other hand, the person 

15 who actually did the interview, maybe so much 

16 time elapsed that it's hard to put two and two 

17 together and make heads of it.

18 So, there's a real downside to a 

19 significant lag time involved. And that's 

20 what we've experienced in a couple cases where 

21 we had to send interview notes back to the 

22 interviewee.
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1 And if the interviewee makes any 

2 changes, we're obliged to cycle that back 

3 through the classification office to make sure 

4 that none of those changes have any 

5 implications from a security standpoint, which 

6 we can't make that call.

7 So, anyway, what's proposed here, 

8 you know, it's not anything very complex or 

9 profound. We just came up with a process that 

10 says we can do this in real-time in terms of, 

11 onsite, making sure that interviewees have the 

12 opportunity to see our notes to actually 

13 discuss how we have reported their interview, 

14 and to try to take out a loop where we have to 

15 go back to them and offer them a chance to 

16 make changes and have that as another cycle in 

17 the process.

18 And the reason we're certainly 

19 going through this and outlining this in some 

20 detail to you, this is in PROC-10. This is in 

21 our procedure. It mirrors, I think, something 

22 similar that's in the NIOSH procedure.
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1 And before we actually propose 

2 some changes to the Board's PROC-10 procedure, 

3 we wanted to at least identify the issue, talk 

4 about the fact that it's driven by question 

5 sufficiency and timeliness and see if the Work 

6 Group and the Board would agree with moving 

7 forward and proposing some wording changes. 

8 Wouldn't be major. In fact, we've been 

9 playing with it a little bit and it's just 

10 some minor tweaking of some of the provisions 

11 in that.

12 If the Work Group would support 

13 that, we would then propose some language 

14 change in that. We want to do it in 

15 coordination with NIOSH.

16 The interviewee doesn't make a 

17 distinction much in who is interviewing them. 

18 So, clearly we would want NIOSH and ORAU and 

19 ATL to take a look at what we're proposing.

20 And it's outlined in this, but, 

21 you know, you can certainly also provide the 

22 provisions, the PROC-10 language and see if 
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1 that is going to be a problem or pose some 

2 issues that we're not aware of that you may be 

3 more aware of.

4 You certainly do more interviews, 

5 I think, than we do. But nonetheless, so it's 

6 a coherent process that the interviewee is not 

7 going to see a different approach to how 

8 that's conducted or not.

9 So, this is really kind of a 

10 broad, you know, here's what we are thinking 

11 and here's why. And we don't need, obviously, 

12 an answer today.

13 But what I would suggest to the 

14 Work Group is that we've given you the one15 pager which kind of lays it out. If the Work 

16 Group wants, we can also provide - 

17 (Telephone interruption.)

18 MR. FITZGERALD: So, anyway, what I 

19 was going to suggest is that you sort of have 

20 the one-pager. We can certainly talk about 

21 this more, I'm not sure how much time - but 

22 it's really just a process efficiency issue 
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1 and this is where it comes from, but it does 

2 require us to revise PROC-10.

3 And that PROC-10 mirrors NIOSH's 

4 PROC-10. So, we want to do this rather 

5 carefully and deliberately and get feedback 

6 from all parties.

7 So, if you want, I don't know if 

8 people are ready to talk about this or not, 

9 but, you know, you certainly have the one10 pager. We can provide a sort of a straw man 

11 markup of our PROC-10, the Advisory Board 

12 PROC-10. And this doesn't have to be resolved 

13 today, but maybe get feedback from the Board, 

14 Work Group and from NIOSH as to whether 

15 there's any issues or objections to, you know, 

16 maybe pursuing this further.

17 I wouldn't raise this, because 

18 process issues sometimes are bedeviling, but 

19 we are experiencing some real delays on the 

20 classification loop. And I think it was for 

21 Pinellas that literally cost us five or six 

22 months on that one loop of just simply taking 
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1 the interview notes and cycling it back 

2 through DOE.

3 CHAIR BEACH: There's several 

4 examples of that.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and it's not 

6 trivial.

7 MS. AYERS: DOE didn't have it that 

8 long. But by the time the notes got back and 

9 if the individuals who went don't have 

10 particularly informative notes, then by the 

11 time the notes come back to them, the 

12 interviewers can't reconstruct what was said.

13 I don't know. I'm sure DCAS has a 

14 lot of experience with - between focus groups 

15 and interviews, how do you make sure that you 

16 can capture the substance?

17 MR. HINNEFELD: I think in general 

18 we're supportive of what you're describing 

19 here for non-classified interviews. That's 

20 what we're talking about.

21 In particular, because we're 

22 asking, you know, I think the process is to 
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1 send like some questions in advance, having 

2 people answer those questions in advance.

3 As long as we're comfortably in a 

4 non-classified arena, you know, I think this 

5 is going to be working fine.

6 If we're in at a Nuclear Safety,

7 NNSA site where we don't think we're in a 

8 classified area and we ask a set of questions, 

9 that doesn't prevent the responder from 

10 filling out, you know, writing something 

11 that's classified in response in their 

12 preparation in their house where they 

13 shouldn't be writing those things down.

14 So, I think we need to be a little 

15 cautious about pursuing this at an NNSA site 

16 even if we don't think we're going to be 

17 getting into classified areas, because we're 

18 not really qualified to judge in all cases.

19 And so, we have to be a little 

20 careful about that, but that leaves quite a 

21 number of sites where this process could be 

22 used, we think, at first blush. Now, we've 
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1 only had it a little bit. We've taken a look 

2 at it.

3 And then the other, this is best 

4 suited for like a one-on-one interview 

5 situation as opposed to preparation for a 

6 focus group.

7 The reason being that when you 

8 start asking the same information for a group 

9 of people, then you very quickly run into, you 

10 know, information-gathering review approval 

11 items from OMB.

12 And so, as long as we're talking 

13 about I'm going to go interview Joe Smith 

14 about Weldon Springs or something like that, 

15 then it seems like this would probably work.

16 And we agree with you that the 

17 review cycle can be really long at the sites. 

18 Headquarters is usually pretty quick, but 

19 headquarters only reviews a few places.

20 If you're at an active site, the 

21 review occurs at the site and some of them are 

22 not very prompt. We agree with that.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and the key 

2 difference is do the validation with the 

3 interviewee in real-time at the site. And 

4 then take that through declassification.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: That can be done 

6 either way, you know. Whether or not you send 

7 the advance questions, you can verify your 

8 notes and the accuracy of your notes with the 

9 interviewee regardless.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: In fact, if you're 

12 doing the interview in a classified area, you 

13 can still do that, you know. Have I captured 

14 the essence of what you wanted to say 

15 correctly?

16 You should still be able to do 

17 that there, because you're going to leave your 

18 notes. And then the ADC at that site is going 

19 to let you know what you can have from your 

20 notes.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think 

22 what's been going on is that we've done the 
. 

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1 interview and have brought the notes back 

2 through declassification, and then sent them 

3 unclassified for validation to the 

4 interviewee.

5 And if the interviewee makes any 

6 changes, it has to go back through. And we're 

7 saying, well, if you can make those changes in 

8 real-time at the site, that the declassifier 

9 sees it once and you're done, then you don't 

10 have to send it back to the interviewee.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: I think the 

12 verification at the location, at the interview 

13 site, I think that can absolutely work. I 

14 think that should be able to absolutely work 

15 in every case.

16 I think the advance questionnaire 

17 is going to be - 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: In a perfect 

19 world, the other process would work, too.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: But we're finding 

22 it's just that that loop that we're - that 
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1 actually we have in our procedures is 

2 inefficient and it's costing a lot of time and 

3 delay.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: So, we're going to 

6 propose a change, minor change, but a change 

7 to the PROC-10 that says that we'll, you know, 

8 unless it is an exceptional case, do the 

9 validation with the notes and not send them 

10 back after they're declassified back to the 

11 interviewee.

12 So, that's kind of in a nutshell, 

13 but - 

14 MEMBER MUNN: And it makes sense.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I don't think 

16 it's very major. And what we'll do is if the 

17 Work Group wants, we can make that, you know, 

18 what the change would be. It's really minor. 

19 A sentence or a word change in the - but we 

20 didn't want to do it and be out of step with 

21 NIOSH's PROC-10.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we would make 
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1 a similar one. Yes, we would make that 

2 similar.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: We'll take the 

4 action to forward - well, you have the one5 pager, but forward what would be a markup of 

6 sorts of what would change in PROC-10 if we 

7 were to do this. And it will be very minor, 

8 but just to make sure the Work Group has it.

9 CHAIR BEACH: That's good. Okay.

10 MEMBER MUNN: Logical thing to do.

11 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, that sounds 

12 good.

13 So, I've got two items left, 

14 tasking and then ideas for the next meeting.

15 Let's go ahead and go through the 

16 tasking, just to make sure everybody is on the 

17 same page.

18 The first one I have is to issue 

19 PR-012. We've agreed on the changes, they're 

20 minor, and I guess I would think that NIOSH 

21 can go ahead and issue that procedure. I don't 

22 know how everybody else feels, instead of 
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1 waiting for us to review those small changes 

2 that we talked about today.

3 MS. AYERS: Didn't we plan to send 

4 it to you in a couple weeks?

5 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, we talked about 

6 sending it to us in a couple of weeks.

7 MR. JOHNSON: Right.

8 CHAIR BEACH: So, would you prefer 

9 to have us look at it and then hear back from 

10 everybody and then issue it?

11 MR. JOHNSON: Yes, I think that 

12 would be good. I would not want to miss a 

13 small part and then have to recycle it back 

14 through again.

15 CHAIR BEACH: Then I guess my 

16 request would be for the Work Group Members to 

17 review it and try to make timely changes or, 

18 you know, if you have anything, to get that 

19 back to J.J., because this procedure has been 

20 sitting on the shelf a while.

21 MR. JOHNSON: What I'll do is I'll 

22 make the changes. I'll have a cover sheet 
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1 indicating the page changed and what was 

2 changed. And then that way you can easily 

3 review, see, review, see, review.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, go through 

5 and update everything to a new review and, 

6 yes, that would be great.

7 MR. JOHNSON: Right.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Compared to what we 

9 have now.

10 MR. JOHNSON: And so, everything 

11 that's in it right now, all the bold print 

12 will go away.

13 CHAIR BEACH: All black, okay.

14 MR. JOHNSON: And then everything 

15 new will be bold print.

16 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, nice. That 

17 sounds great and efficient. Okay. So, that's 

18 the first one and that of course is on NIOSH.

19 The other one is to respond to the 

20 pilot study. And we talked about the 

21 recommendations, but also the findings that 

22 were listed on Page 14.
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1 And I know, Stu, you said you'd 

2 give us kind of an outline, because it would 

3 be a little too cumbersome to do in four 

4 months, but at least give us an idea of a 

5 response on the findings and the 

6 recommendations and the path forward from 

7 there.

8 The next one I have is the 

9 progress report or plan on - if you remember 

10 from Issue F4 in the matrix, the tracking 

11 system - and I realize you need to talk to 

12 Chris about that. And I don't really have a 

13 good sense of what you're going to do there as 

14 far as a path forward or a task.

15 Okay. I just put open NIOSH 

16 action. So, I guess an outline on that as 

17 well, of where that's going to be or what your 

18 plans are for that timeline.

19 The other two I have for SC&A, we 

20 didn't talk about this, but SC&A to update the 

21 matrix that we just went over today, and then 

22 the draft of PROC-10 and forward that out.
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1 Any other tasks other than I know 

2 J.J. has tasks that I didn't mention. He's 

3 aware of those for the slight changes in the 

4 procedure.

5 Anybody have anything else that I 

6 didn't note?

7 (No response.)

8 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, future 

9 meetings. We talked about maybe meeting in 

10 three to four months. Some of the things I 

11 wrote down for next steps, this is just stuff 

12 we've talked about and some of it's my vision 

13 open for discussions, of course.

14 So, ATL to give us a briefing what 

15 they do. So, we'll give them time to kind of 

16 go over that, and, not necessarily in this 

17 order, NIOSH to report out on the responses 

18 for Rocky. And then, again, an update of the 

19 ten-year review.

20 And then, the next one we haven't 

21 talked about, but the implementation plan that 

22 we wrote a couple of years ago and over the 
. 

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1 last couple of years.

2 I kind of want to spend some time 

3 as a Work Group going over this plan and the 

4 mission statement and making sure it's what we 

5 want, where we want to be and steps forward 

6 and changing what we need to change.

7 And I realize it was very labor8 intense to write this, but I think we need to 

9 revisit it and make sure that it still does 

10 what we want this Work Group - or does what we 

11 want it to do, I guess, for lack of better 

12 words.

13 And then I think we should look at 

14 what - I mean, we've looked at three. We need 

15 to pick another work site, but I also want to 

16 go back to the other issues and see what we're 

17 going to do and how we're going to move 

18 forward on some of these plans as well.

19 And then Joe did come up with a 

20 list of sites. So, I'll have him email that 

21 out to everybody so that you can be thinking 

22 of that for the next Work Group meeting to 
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1 decide if we're going to choose another site 

2 after we work out some of the logistics of 

3 that.

4 Comments for future - those are 

5 just some of my ideas.

6 MEMBER MUNN: That ought to keep us 

7 busy for a day.

8 CHAIR BEACH: You think?

9 MEMBER MUNN: I think.

10 MS. AYERS: I guess there was 

11 another action that you gave us to report on 

12 the resource investment in - 

13 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, yes. I thought 

14 you and Ted were going to work on that.

15 MS. AYERS: Right.

16 MR. KATZ: Yes, but that will be - 

17 we'll just respond via email soon.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Perfect.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: There was one other 

20 action for us, too, and that was to provide 

21 our reaction to the list of sites that have 

22 Site Profiles, but have not had an outreach 
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1 meeting.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Very good. Thank 

3 you. Yes, that was in the matrix.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Thank you.

6 MS. AYERS: There was some stuff 

7 you asked Chris to do, too, regarding her 

8 information.

9 CHAIR BEACH: Yes. I don't believe 

10 Chris is on the phone, but I know she'll take 

11 care of that.

12 So, Joe worked out different sites 

13 to think about. And since I have it in front 

14 of me, I'll just go over them.

15 The sites he chose are more - are 

16 up to date. How many copies do you have of 

17 this?

18 MR. FITZGERALD: I was just 

19 checking. I think I might, but - 

20 CHAIR BEACH: It might be easier if 

21 it's in front of you to look. Anyway, he 

22 chose four sites. Much smaller number of 
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1 claims.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: This borrows from, 

3 I think, some of the discussions we had today 

4 that, you know, one, Rocky was dated looking 

5 at a snapshot that's six, seven, eight years 

6 old.

7 Two, it's a big site. Scale is 

8 very, very large and would seem to be more 

9 manageable to go for something with a lot less 

10 scale, but still offer the attributes of 

11 having worker involvement, having a reasonable 

12 number of claims and timeframe-wise, having 

13 the status of SES actions either complete or 

14 near completion.

15 So, what - this is pending some of 

16 the analysis that we've talked about relative 

17 to the experience on the pilot study.

18 So, this is just looking ahead for 

19 the next Work Group session. Let me see how 

20 many copies I have.

21 But these are relatively small 

22 sites. They're more current sites if we look 
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1 at the dates. They do have a modicum of 

2 claims, not, you know, there's certainly 

3 enough claims that there's enough activity 

4 going on.

5 And the SEC activity is such 

6 where, you know, anything we would do would 

7 not necessarily get in the way, I don't think.

8 And this is the reason I sort of 

9 throw this out as candidates, because, you 

10 know, you may have a different perspective. 

11 There may be things going on or issues going 

12 on that may mitigate against one of these 

13 being an actual candidate for a future look, 

14 but all of them have the same characteristic 

15 of being relatively - I wouldn't call them 

16 tiny. They're not AWEs, but they're smaller. 

17 They are more current. And the Board has 

18 recently acted on them in some fashion so that 

19 they're either done or close to being done.

20 But, again, there may be some 

21 other implications that I may not be aware of, 

22 but I wanted to at least give you something to 
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1 chew on as far as possibilities.

2 MR. KATZ: One thing I would 

3 suggest be a factor and which DCAS can provide 

4 input on is it would be good to choose one 

5 where there's been substantial input from 

6 workers, since that what we're looking at 

7 here.

8 We wouldn't want one where the 

9 workers were relatively silent.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. And that 

12 would be something that may be based on your 

13 OTS - I didn't go through and try to catalog 

14 the level of comment activity.

15 But, you know, I think that's a 

16 good suggestion, if you can advise the Work 

17 Group if - these are four possibilities, which 

18 one seems to have the highest level of worker 

19 comment activity, or if none of them do.

20 MEMBER MUNN: There's a lot from 

21 Santa Susana.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: I've been involved 
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1 at least in the periphery, and I think Weldon, 

2 Santa Susana, I believe Chapman, too, have had 

3 a level of activity. But, you know, whether 

4 that activity is fairly high or not, I think 

5 that would help to hear that from NIOSH.

6 CHAIR BEACH: Well, and I thought 

7 Weldon Spring might be a good candidate, too, 

8 but that - will you take that on as an action, 

9 NIOSH, to look at that and review the list and 

10 see if there are - 

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. We'll see what 

12 we can find out in terms of what we can gather 

13 - 

14 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: - of worker 

16 comments in these various areas.

17 MR KATZ: The other thought I have 

18 in looking at these and thinking particularly 

19 like Weldon Spring, which is still in the 

20 works.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Pending, yes.

22 MR. KATZ: Not only I think for 
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1 SC&A's evaluative purposes would you want the 

2 SEC to be put to bed so that you can look at 

3 what filing was done by DCAS with respect to 

4 the SEC Evaluation since those get amended, 

5 but you'd also want related TBD matters to be 

6 put to bed, too, ideally, so that you can see 

7 that, again, that - 

8 CHAIR BEACH: That might be a tall 

9 order.

10 MR. KATZ: - that there were 

11 considerations. Yes, I know that raises other 

12 hurdles for some sites, for sure.

13 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Santa Susana is not 

15 entirely complete.

16 CHAIR BEACH: No. We haven't had a 

17 meeting.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: There are years 

19 still under consideration. Been under 

20 consideration for a while.

21 MEMBER POSTON: That's why we 

22 haven't had a meeting yet.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: There are going to 

3 be - I don't remember the schedule now, but I 

4 think something is going to be - 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it's sort of 

6 a sorting process of looking at, you know, 

7 active, I mean, you know, the Fernald’s and 

8 the Hanford’s, you know, sort of staying away 

9 from that, looking at, you know, larger sites 

10 that are dated. Ones that go back as far as 

11 Rocky, like Pantex and Fernald. And then 

12 looking at the smaller sites, not AWEs, that 

13 have some activity that's more current than 

14 Rocky.

15 It doesn't seem to make much sense 

16 to go back and do something four or five years 

17 old. So, it's interesting. You do end up 

18 with a relatively short list of what would be 

19 candidate sites, but I may have missed one or 

20 two.

21 MR. KATZ: But the one thing I 

22 would suggest in relation to what you just 
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1 raised is even if you were to, for example, 

2 Fernald. Sure, it goes back a long way. But 

3 you could just parcel out recent years, 

4 because there's been a lot of activity on 

5 Fernald over recent years.

6 And so, I mean, you could take a 

7 three-year snapshot and then you're getting a 

8 current picture of how things are being 

9 handled.

10 I'd just say Fernald, because 

11 there has been a lot of interaction on 

12 Fernald. That's just one example.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think this 

14 is kind of why I wanted to stir the pot a 

15 little bit.

16 I mean, I think there's agreement 

17 that it should be bite-size and I think that's 

18 a perfectly good way to make it bite-size.

19 CHAIR BEACH: A snapshot, yes.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: A snapshot and 

21 also not necessarily complicate an active SEC.

22 I think that was one of the 
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1 reasons that Rocky was a candidate, but I 

2 don't know, you know, if you applied these 

3 different criteria, what tends to fall out.

4 I think maybe if you did two or 

5 three years, Fernald would be back on the 

6 list. Maybe another site or two would be as 

7 well.

8 So, anyway, it doesn't have to be 

9 solved today, but I think maybe NIOSH's input 

10 and any Work Group Member feedback or 

11 commentary would be helpful for the next 

12 meeting.

13 MR. KATZ: So, another one to think 

14 about, like Fernald, if you're going to take a 

15 reasonable chunk of years as opposed to the 

16 whole thing, LANL might even be put to bed and 

17 a lot of interaction there.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. So, that's 

19 definitely a good suggestion. So, different 

20 ways to go, but certainly the key criteria is 

21 relatively current and bite-sized. Those two, 

22 and then go from there.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, I guess I 

2 want to open it up before we look at our 

3 calendars. You might be getting your 

4 calendars out for the next meeting.

5 Work Group Member thoughts, 

6 direction, path forward, anything that comes 

7 to mind for how we're doing, the Work Group?

8 Now, I'm not talking about 

9 calendars yet. I'm just talking about the 

10 agenda, the tasking, the next Work Group 

11 meeting. Any thoughts?

12 Looking at the mission statement 

13 and our steps, anything that we need to look 

14 at?

15 MEMBER MUNN: Lot of work.

16 MEMBER VALERIO: Three months out 

17 would put us at the December Board meeting, 

18 wouldn't it?

19 CHAIR BEACH: No, I'm looking at 

20 November, yes. Okay. So, I guess we're at 

21 our calendars now.

22 MR. KATZ: Well, the Work Group 
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1 itself probably giving some consideration to 

2 the products that Chris has turned over in 

3 response to the ten-year review so that you 

4 can discuss - 

5 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, for next meeting?

6 MR KATZ: Yes, for next meeting.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, I mentioned 

8 that, yes.

9 MR. KATZ: Discuss your view of how 

10 those products meet the needs.

11 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, I put that on 

12 the list.

13 MR. KATZ: Yes.

14 CHAIR BEACH: So, thank you, yes. 

15 That's a good plan.

16 So, I was looking at November as a 

17 time frame. And it's enough time, maybe 

18 towards the end of November, and it's still a 

19 couple weeks before the December Board 

20 meeting.

21 So, maybe, you know, the week of 

22 the 12th. How's that look for people? And, 
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1 NIOSH, of course, that gives you a deadline 

2 for - 

3 MEMBER MUNN: That's possible.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Or the week of the 

5 19th.

6 MEMBER MUNN: As an FYI, Procedures 

7 meets on Thursday the 1st.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, I knew that.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: And the week of 

10 the 19th is Thanksgiving.

11 CHAIR BEACH: The week of the 19th 

12 is Thanksgiving week.

13 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, so you want to 

14 try to stay away from that, I think.

15 CHAIR BEACH: Well, I don't want to 

16 - I was thinking the week of the 1st or 2nd, 

17 but then I want to give NIOSH as much time as 

18 possible to - 

19 MEMBER MUNN: Well, that gives them 

20 - 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: How about the end 

22 of that week of the 12th, maybe like Wednesday 
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1 or Thursday?

2 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, no, that's fine. 

3 That whole week.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: 14th or 15th.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Or the 16th even.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Or the 16th.

7 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, that's - 

8 MR. KATZ: The 14th I've got a 

9 conflict.

10 CHAIR BEACH: How about the 15th, 

11 16th?

12 MR. KATZ: And the 15th and 16th, 

13 the only catch is that 15th and 16th have been 

14 blocked off. OGC is not available then, but I 

15 don't - Michael, are you on the line? Michael 

16 Rafky?

17 MR. RAFKY: I'm here, Ted.

18 MR. KATZ: Ah. So, I think I have 

19 from you folks that you're not available the 

20 14th. I think OGC has some sort of function.

21 MR. RAFKY: I'm sorry, this is 

22 September you're talking about?
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1 MR. KATZ: This is November. 

2 November 14th and 15th OGC has some sort of - 

3 MR. RAFKY: That's when we have our 

4 branch annual meetings.

5 MR. KATZ: Right.

6 MR. RAFKY: It's generally sort of 

7 a command performance for us.

8 MR. KATZ: Right. So, we generally 

9 like to have them available to monitor the 

10 call.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Earlier that week, or 

12 are Fridays just completely out of everybody's 

13 --

14 CHAIR BEACH: Not mine. Fridays 

15 are good.

16 MR. KATZ: Well, that Friday's not 

17 great.

18 CHAIR BEACH: That Friday's not 

19 great. The 9th?

20 MR. KATZ: The 16th is not good. 

21 The 9th is fine for me.

22 MEMBER MUNN: And the 2nd? What 
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1 about the 2nd?

2 CHAIR BEACH: 2nd is fine with me.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: That's getting 

4 earlier.

5 CHAIR BEACH: That's getting 

6 earlier for NIOSH.

7 MR. KATZ: Yes, the 2nd's not great 

8 for me either.

9 CHAIR BEACH: The 2nd's not great? 

10 How about like the 20th? I know that's the 

11 holiday week - oh, never mind. Let's stay 

12 away from that week.

13 MR. KATZ: What's wrong with - how 

14 about the 8th?

15 CHAIR BEACH: The 8th is fine with 

16 me.

17 MR. KATZ: The 2nd is Election Day, 

18 but - 

19 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, I'm fine on the 

20 8th.

21 MR. KATZ: By then everybody will 

22 be over the trauma, whatever it is.
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1 (Laughter.)

2 CHAIR BEACH: And the Board call's 

3 on the 5th.

4 MR. KATZ: Is the 8th good for 

5 others?

6 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: The 8th looks like 

8 it will work for us.

9 MR. KATZ: Okay.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So, everybody 

11 has their homework. Thank you, and I would 

12 say this meeting is adjourned.

13 MR. KATZ: Yes, thank you, 

14 everyone. Good meeting, very productive. 

15 Have a good day.

16 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

17 matter was adjourned at 3:15 p.m.)

18 

19 

20 

21 

22