[EAS] 'Amendment of the Emergency Alert System'

[Gary Timm]

SECCs and EAS Participants,
I finally had some time over the weekend to delve into this FCC Order from the Federal Register that Clay forwarded on the list last week, requiring SECCs to collect from EAS Participants descriptions of any multilingual EAS alerting being conducted, and the requirement that the SECC include a summary of that information in the State EAS Plan.

A) Except for some insignificant paragraph numbering changes, the adopted rules in the Federal Register are exactly the same as those included in the announcement of the Order in document FCC 16-32 released on March 30, 2016.

B) This current Federal Register document states that the new Part 11.21 introductory paragraph adding that State EAS Plans include information on actions taken by EAS Participants "to ensure timely access to EAS alert content by non-English speaking populations" is effective as of June 6, 2016, but states that the subsections (d) through (f) which order compliance with this information collection will not be in effect until FCC publishes in the Federal Register a notice that OMB has approved this information collection.

C) So in effect, the clock on data collection has not yet started, and neither EAS Participants nor SECCs need do anything at this point.  Once the FCC publishes the OMB approval notice in the Federal Register and announces an effective date, EAS Participants will then have 1 year to report their multilingual EAS implementation details to their SECC.  After this 1-year reporting period ends, the SECCs will have 6 months to include a summary of that information in the State EAS Plan, or an amendment thereto.

So the upshot - no one need react immediately to this current published Order.  Stay tuned for the publication of the OMB approval and FCC's effective date to start the 1-year and 1-year+6-months clocks rolling.

Gary Timm
WI SECC

From: Clay Freinwald <k7cr at blarg.net>

Fasten your seat-belt 

 
Amendment of the Emergency Alert System <http://www.federalregister.gov/a/2016-09059?utm_campaign=email%20a%20friend&utm_source=federalregister.gov&utm_medium=email> 

81 FR 27342 - A Rule by the Federal Communications Commission published on 05/06/2016

In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) revises its rules governing the Emergency Alert System (EAS) to incorporate new multilingual alerting reporting requirements into its State EAS Plan reporting requirements. The Commission takes this action in response to a Petition for Immediate Interim Relief (Petition) jointly filed by the Independent Spanish Broadcasters Association (ISBA), the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ, Inc., and the...

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