 It is now my great honor to introduce a true friend of Iqviso, CPSC, acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Bob Adler. Bob has been acting chairman since October 2019 and has been a commissioner at the agency since 2009. His term ends in October of this year. Bob is no stranger to most of our attendees who have had the privilege of hearing him as both a keynote speaker and as a panelist talking business ethics in senior safety among other subjects during past Iqviso conferences. We appreciate the time Bob takes out of his schedule for Iqviso and for also allowing us to have Shelby Mathis as our ex official board member of our board. Further, we can't thank Bob and CPSC senior leaders enough for their continued participation in our CPSC morning, which was started initially by Iqviso founding member David Smeltzer. As a way to break down the barriers between regulators and the regulated entities. True to Dave's vision 28 years ago, CPSC continues to train, educate, and network at our conferences, whether in person or virtual as we are today. Acting chairman Adler, the speaker box is now yours. Good morning, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to appear before you today, even if we're doing it virtually. It's been a rough year on multiple fronts, but I'm hopeful that 2021 will be much happier and healthier for all of us. So at the outset, I'd like to recognize and thank a number of folks for putting together such a wonderful conference in the face of numerous pandemic challenges. And as always, I first note Mark Shum, who I think has been the executive director of Iqviso for five and a half years, and that's been five and a half years of superb leadership. So, Mark, thank you for all of your wonderful work. And Rick Rosati, Iqviso president. It's been a tough year and you've performed extremely well. So thank you for all of your good efforts. Andy Church, who's been the symposium planning chair and is the incoming president of Iqviso. Andy, I look forward to getting to know you. And I have to thank Erin Cole, who is Iqviso's meeting manager. She's helped get me through a lot of the technical challenges that I ineptly have created for myself. The problem is computers do what I tell them to, not what I want them to do. And that's been a huge challenge. So thank you, Erin. And I have to thank Shelby Mathis, who is CPSC's small business ombudsman. She is the liaison to Iqviso, and she's done just a magnificent job, as always. So Shelby, thanks. And I'd like to take a moment, just a quick moment, for a personal comment. And that has to do with David Schmelzer, who passed away very recently. Most folks who've been involved with Iqviso have known David over the years. He's been one of the staunchest and most dedicated supporters of Iqviso. And I think that's helped make this such a tremendously successful organization. I met David when I was at CPSC even before he came to the agency. And I do remember that first meeting in which I said, this is one of the sweetest, most dedicated, and smartest people that I had met. And it was a pleasure to know him. I also have to admit that I loved it when he regaled us about stories of his childhood in Brooklyn. And that was a tradition that, to my delight, I continued when I came back to CPSC. David and Alan Shaken, former employee at CPSC, and I used to get together at the Pines of Rome and gossip, but talk about the good old days. And of course, David always had a million Brooklyn stories. So I just want to pay tribute to him. And I want to urge folks to consider giving to the David Schmelzer scholarship fund to help folks attend and participate in Iqviso activities. I think that's a very worthwhile activity. OK, so today I'd like to provide an update on developments at CPSC for the past year and to discuss some of the challenges we face in the upcoming year. But first, a quick personal update. I think most of you know, but in case not, I still plan to retire at the end of my term in October. I will have been at the commission as a commissioner for 12 years. Now, there's a possibility that I might spill into my holdover year. But I'm actually looking forward to leaving the CPSC in good hands with a permanent chair and a full complement of commissioners. And it dawned on me. I've spent almost 50 years working at overseeing or writing about CPSC. And those have been great years. But I'm going to be 77 years old when my term expires. I realize that means I'm too young to be president. But I think I've put in enough fears. I think it's time to hang up my safety spurs and to move on. And my intention is to do some teaching and writing about topics that interest me, always product safety, but also ethics and negotiation. Some of you may recall, last year, under different circumstances, when I spoke to Iqva, so I used a metaphor. And that was caretaker because I'd just become the acting chair. I felt committed to maintaining the degree of continuity at the agency, given my status as acting chair. And so we awaited the arrival of a new chair and we awaited some direction from on high, neither of which occurred. So we didn't sit idly by. I think we worked and we achieved and I think we got a lot accomplished. So anyway, here we are 16 months later and we have a new administration. And I think it's fair to say they view product safety in different terms. So I'm going to modify the metaphor from caretaker to gardener. So what does that mean? Well, first and foremost, it means to me that CPSC must break free from the prison of incremental budgeting that has plagued us for decades. In fact, for all of our existence. Every gardener knows that nothing can flourish without rich soil. And goodness knows we've been planting in poor soil for our entire existence. So I have profound hope. And that is instead of having our OMB friends and our appropriators simply look at our existing budget, add a few dollars to it sometimes, which by the way doesn't always cover our increased costs from pay increases and inflation. It's my hope that they'll understand that we have a strong need for an exponential increase in funds in order for us to do our job well. And I'm going to make a few points of comparison to illustrate that. I think you've all read that CPSC has jurisdiction over 15,000 product categories. I've never counted them, but it's a massive amount of product categories. It may well be the broadest jurisdiction of any federal health and safety agency. It's just not clear, but it's a massive and broad jurisdiction. The one thing that's indisputable is that with our budget of $135 million, we are by far the smallest of any of the federal health and safety regulatory agencies. In other words, we're the poster child for start poor, stay poor. And I'm not sure to laugh or cry when I look at some of the other agencies in their budgets, consider our sister agency FDA. They have a budget that's 44 times what CPSC sees. And by the way, this was before COVID arrived. They claim on their website to be a bargain for the American public at an expenditure of about $10 a person. And mind you, they are a bargain, but if FDA is a bargain, then we're a steal since CPSC costs about 40 cents per person. And let me compare us to another sister agency with a budget closer to ours, NITSA. They still weigh in at about a billion dollars a year, which is roughly seven times larger than CPSC's budget. And I'm not going to get into gruesome detail, but if you look to see the number of annual deaths and injuries that they must address, CPSC's fatalities and injuries is larger. In fact, it's not only larger than NITSA, it's larger than OSHA or the Mind Safety and Health Administration, which I guess some people call MESHA, but it's a broader set of injuries and fatalities than almost any of the other federal health and safety agencies, all of which have bigger budgets than CPSC. And yes, I know FDA is dealing with 500,000 deaths, which is why I'm not comparing us to FDA in that respect. I'm not criticizing the funding of other agencies. I think that's money well spent. But what I want to say is there's no good reason for CPSC to be on such a starvation diet. So I finally got tired of searching for pennies under our cushions. So as one commissioner, one commissioner, I just sent a letter to the Office of Management and Budget asking for a budget to me that's more closely aligned with the demands of the 21st century. To me, that demands requires a budget of roughly $280 million with a one-time infrastructure adjustment cost of roughly $90 million. Wow. If that sounds aggressive because it's more than doubling our current budget, I'm going to ask you to consider this. Even if we were to get every penny that I think we need, we would still be the smallest health and safety regulatory agency in the federal government. In other words, I think it's long past time for Congress to properly prioritize product safety. The victims of product safety mishaps, far too many of whom are children, deserve a future in which the agency is funded appropriately to prevent more tragedies like theirs. So what would we do with the added resources? Oh my gosh, lots of things. But to begin with, we tackle the unfunded mandates. Let me repeat that. Unfunded mandates that were recently given to us in the Omnibus COVID Relief Act that's now in law. I call that COVID-1. These include projects like expanding our import resources, developing a standard for flame arresters for portable fuel containers, implementing an upholstered furniture standard, TB-117, and studies and reports on carbon monoxide detectors. In other words, a bunch of extra work, not an extra penny to do that work. I know everybody, or at least I assume everybody's following the new COVID Relief Act, the $1.9 trillion bill which I call COVID-2 that's pending before Congress. There is a provision in COVID-2 that if it passes would provide funding to cover the added responsibilities given to us in COVID-1. And boy, will I be grateful for that, but I need to emphasize that added funding comes with some limits on what we can do with the money and it still won't solve our ongoing perennial budget problems. And let me just point to our recently approved FY-21 operating plan. To me, that's as ambitious as anything I can recall in my years as a commissioner. It has lots of projects for mandatory standards. And let me just mention a few of these infant sleep products, crib mattresses, crib bumpers, clothing storage units also known as dressers, carbon monoxide hazards from portable gas generators and from furnaces, high power magnets, table saws, window coverings and that's not addressing the issues of chronic hazards from things like organohalage and flame retardants, possibly crumb rubber and maybe PFAS coming down the pike in the future. In other words, it's a massive and ambitious workload. And if we're going to do that, we also have to pay attention to my favorite approach to solving safety problems, which is voluntary standards. And let me just mention some of the dozens of voluntary standards projects that we've got. Booster seats, child resistant packaging, carriages and strollers, infant bathtubs, battery fires, clothes dryer fires, flammable refrigerants, liquid laundry packets and on and on. And of course, depending on the progress of these voluntary standards or the lack thereof, any of those could turn into mandatory standards, proceedings and by the way, vice versa. Anyway, if we're going to address these priorities in a timely and effective manner, we're going to need additional resources for epidemiology, engineering, health sciences, human factors, law and elsewhere. In fact, everywhere. So I'm trying to be as transparent about what I consider the agency's budget plight as I can. I'm hopeful that it will resonate with our friends and stakeholders who've worked with us over the years and garnered their support. Anyway, let me continue building on my gardening metaphor. So if resources are the soil, the agency still needs careful tending. As I see it, that means we need at least two significant legislative changes that would make the agency function as it should. You're not going to be surprised to hear me say the first of these is to unshackle the agency from the information criticisms, excuse me, the information muzzle found in section 6B of the CPSA. I'm not going to repeat the many criticisms I have of 6B because I suspect most people in this audience have heard them before. But I do want to say that year after year after year, I've heard the concern that if 6B were abolished, we'd be left with an agency that would run rampant with misinformation about companies. That's the concern. Let me address that concern and I'm going to be very blunt. I'm not sure it's any more real than Bigfoot. Somehow every other agency in the federal government manages to function fairly and fully without restrictions similar to those in section 6B. And by the way, it's not the agency that suffers, it's the public that suffers from limits or watered-down releases of safety information. It's to protect the public. The other legislative change we need is what I would call pruning to continue the metaphor. We really need less cumbersome rulemaking of the sort that was added to our statute some 40 years ago and that has resulted in a massive slowdown in agency rulemaking. I remember the claims that were made. These procedures, these mandatory findings would produce better rules. Well, I think 40 years of history show that all they've done is produce fewer rules, not better rules, not rules with any observable improvements, just slower rules. And slower rule development means more injuries and more fatalities to the public. So anyway, that said, I wanna be clear. If we don't get the funding, if we don't get the change to our statutory requirements, obviously we're gonna work and move on. We're gonna do as many safety standards. We're gonna do as many port inspections, recalls, voluntary standards, collaboration, warning and educating the public. We're gonna do all of that as much as we can. In fact, we're gonna use every option we have to make consumers safer, which includes using our dedicated compliance enforcement team to their fullest extent. And I must say I'm delighted that with the reorganization of compliance enforcement, we are working much more effectively, efficiently and expeditiously. And let me drop a special note here. I'm proud to say that after what I thought was an unnecessary hiatus of several years, we begun seeking civil penalties again, which has culminated in two recent penalty settlements. And by the way, I'm proud not because we're in the business of racking up civil penalty counts or adding those as pelts on the wall. And this is where my esteemed colleague, Commissioner Biacco, correctly reminds me that we're not in the business of just piling up civil penalty settlements. We do it because if they're done thoughtfully, civil penalties are a necessary part of any property-run enforcement agency. And by the way, I feel the same way about unilateral press releases and administrative litigation. They're tools that have been given to us that were obligated to use when the need arises and that we will use. So is that all that's going on? No, there's more. Our communications team, of which I'm extremely proud, has been doing terrific work. They continue to deliver great advice and safety information in the form of education campaigns. They've done clear and urgent and well-drafted recall announcements and they continue with the social media memes that I still don't really get. But everyone assures me they not only have a cult following, but they're very effective. But that continues and I'm proud of them. Also, our research and standard-setting staff known to insiders as EXHR continue to test products, analyze data, draft regulatory proposals, and they managed to do so even during the dark and early days of the pandemic lockdown when we had to reduce staff access to our lab. And I just wanted to make one quick announcement because folks have been asking this of us a lot. National Consumer Protection Week is coming up in March. So one of the highlights of that for us is we're going to release a snapshot from NICE, National Electronic Injury Surveillance System that a lot of people have been requesting and that's going to compare injury data from March through September of 2020 to the same month's pre-pandemic to highlight what the effects of the pandemic are. I've sort of alluded to those, but this will be a much more detailed picture that will show in some areas where injuries and fatalities may have increased in other areas where they've decreased. And of course, because of COVID, we know there are many fewer visits to emergency rooms. At any rate, that will be published during National Consumer Protection Week. And we're going to continue mining that data to see whether we need to take additional steps to protect consumers during the pandemic crisis. So just to round out the metaphor, I hope we garden this agency the way Matt Damon grew potatoes on Mars in the movie, The Martian, which I love. We're going to take what little we have and we're going to use every tool at our disposal to get the job done. I'm going to digress for just a second to mention two additional priorities that are not directly safety related, but I think are absolutely key to an effective agency. The first is diversity. And I don't just mean that our little agency should look more like the American people we serve. We must do that. I mean that we have to take every opportunity to approach product safety from a variety of diverse viewpoints. For example, some important questions. How might certain hazards exist for some vulnerable populations more than others? How might real life barriers like socioeconomic status affect our safety messages and people's ability to respond to them? What methods can we use to reach marginalized and underserved communities? It's asking and answering these questions where the crucial work of diversity is done. And that's what we're committed to doing. In fact, for this year's mid-year priorities, and I must say under the gentle prodding of my colleague, Commissioner Kaye, I've directed staff to present ideas that continue to expand our longstanding commitment to diversity. So please stay tuned. The second key component to a properly functioning agency, and I think a key to our success, and this isn't going to surprise anybody who knows me, is civility. Here I want to second something I heard President Biden declare a few weeks ago when he swore in a thousand new appointees to the federal government. In a nutshell, he said that if he ever discovered staff treating others with disrespect, he'd fire them on the spot. Needless to say, I love that degree of accountability and I hope he stays true to it. I too believe that we should always operate with civility and treat each other with respect. And it's something I've always tried to do and I've always insisted that people who work around me do. These are qualities that are extremely important to me, and they should be to everyone who operates in the commission or with the commission. And now, because I've been there 50 years, I thought I would reflect a little bit and share a few observations I have about product safety. So I promise I won't dwell on all of them, but here are a couple. First, as recent news would suggest, I think we're returning to a period in which people recognize that regulations, despite their faults and failings, can dramatically improve the nation's safety, well-being and fairness. Granted, I'd never claim that all rulemaking's good, but I strongly object to the notion that it's always bad. Instead, I suggest society's constantly trying to balance two competing dynamics, markets that are imperfect, versus regulation that is imperfect. That's the real world picture of regulation. But here I want to inject a note of realism. Sorry, folks, anyone who believes that markets always produce optimal societal outcomes without the need for regulation lives in a dream world where dangerous products, fraudulent practices, abusive monopolies, and climate change always sort themselves out in the long run. They don't. And please forgive a frustrated observation I think I've made this before. I found that when folks that I consider to be free market ideologues encounter a regulation that by all accounts operates effectively, invariably they insist, well, it may work in practice, but it still doesn't work in theory. On the other hand, and let's be clear, even rules drawn with the best of intention and the greatest of skill rarely come without costs and occasional unintended consequences. And here's a sad example. Years ago, we discovered that our rule that was promoting reduced flammability for children's sleepwear led to the use of potentially toxic flame retardants which undercut any safety benefits from the rule. That's the occasional unintended consequence of product safety. So in short, markets are flawed human institutions despite occasional fantasies by some that they're divinely ordained. They're not. Similarly, regulations like all of us are human and fallible. And I did wanna say, as I've learned over the years, the work of regulators is hard, endless and anything but sexy. And for those who are content to toil behind the scenes and I include myself in that group, I wanna urge you to watch Bill Maher. He did a tribute to my former boss, Congressman Henry Waxman on HBO and it's on HBO January 30th and you can all look it up. It's funny, it's moving and it's spot on about the difference between being a workhorse and a show horse. So with those thoughts in mind, let me add that I believe for the most part, safety rules have really been a great success story. And I said this a dick for so last year, but when I reflect on decades of product safety regulation, I think extraordinary progress has been made across the board and not just at CPSC. As I said, it a dick for so last year, the US population has increased dramatically in the last 50 years. But if you look at fatalities from consumer products, they've plummeted. And I think that's due in large part, not entirely, but in large part to safety rules. And I remind you, we've seen over an 80% reduction in childhood fatalities from poisoning. We've seen over a 90% reduction in crib fatalities. And my favorite standard, the refrigerator safety act, it still appears that we've seen 100% reduction in deaths from kids climbing into abandoned refrigerators, closing the doors and suffocating. So I do think safety rules have been very, very productive and helpful to our society. That doesn't mean there's any cause for dropping our guard or reducing our efforts to promote product safety. Frankly, as long as we have entrepreneurs who dream up new products or we have chemists who develop new concoctions, we're always gonna have emerging safety hazards and there's always gonna be a need for an agency like consumer product safety commission. But here I wanna remind us all of what I call the great safety paradox. Namely, the more successful we are in reducing deaths and injuries, the less anybody notices. Babies that don't suffocate in cribs or die from swallowing toxic prescription drugs never tell anyone that their lives were saved by a government regulation. And rarely do people recognize how profoundly safer they are than generations before. But we, and by the way, I include a lot of the folks in this audience at Iqviso who are friends and stakeholders. The work that we've done to produce and advance safety, we know what we've done. I'm extremely grateful to the CPSC staff and to all of our friends at Iqviso who've worked to advance product safety. And by the way, there's a flip and it's a dark side to this paradox. Sometimes you don't get necessary safety measures until tragedy strikes and just reflect on this over the years. 146 young women died in the Triangle Shirt Waste Fire in 1911 in New York. And it wasn't until these ghastly deaths that were observed by thousands and thousands of people that New York finally acted to promote fire safety and impose new building codes. And for those of us who remember Dalkon Shield IUDs in the mid-70s, these left thousands of women sterile or with lifetime pelvic damage. And it wasn't until that scandal that Congress finally moved to enact medical device amendments of 1976. And of course I wanna remind everybody that the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act wouldn't have been passed in 2008 had there not been a flood of toys with high lead levels imported into the country. In short, tragedies often lead to enhanced and overdue regulatory authority. And that's a hell of a way to promote safety. I keep saying there's got to be a better way. So it's my ongoing plea to the folks at Iqviso to work for safety reforms that don't stem from great national tragedies that are ghastly, that we all work to develop measured and effective safety measures that will protect the public. So in closing, I wanna assure you that I'm gonna be around for a while, not until October and perhaps beyond, but I'm gonna be doing my best to make CPSC the strongest, not so little agency that I can. But more importantly, you're gonna have CPSC's incredibly dedicated staff that's gonna continue to do what I consider superhuman efforts to protect all consumers. So I wanna thank you for listening to my remarks and I wanna urge everybody to stay healthy. So thank you very much. Thank you, Acting Chairman Adler. I would now like to introduce Mary Boyle, who is the Executive Director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Prior to her being Executive Director, Mary served in the Commission's Office of the General Counsel as the Deputy General Counsel. Mary, the floor is yours. Good morning, everyone. It's wonderful to be here today at the annual Iqviso meeting. First, I do wanna extend my thanks to Andy and Mark Shome and Rick Rosati for all of their efforts to make today possible. This is my third time addressing you in my capacity as Executive Director. And thinking about today's program, I reflected on my previous remarks and I think at least one thing is clear. My tenure in this role has been anything but routine. The first time I addressed the group, we had just emerged from the longest government shutdown in history. And last year at this time, I mentioned that the agency had been touched by world events because our staff had been evacuated from the embassy in Beijing due to the coronavirus. Little did I know what would soon follow. Like all of you in your work lives and in your personal lives, this has been a challenging time for CPSC, especially for staff who have experienced the devastating impact of COVID themselves and in their families. But through it all, I can report that CPSC staff has steadfastly kept its focus on fulfilling the CPSC mission and that we are operating full steam ahead. We are at the ports preventing violative products from entering our country. We are testing products at our world-class lab. We are developing rule makings and recalling products. We are conducting investigations nationwide and we are surveilling online platforms. We are holding webinars on important safety issues and communicating our message to wide audiences. The small business ombudsman is fielding your calls and questions and our consumer ombudsman is engaging with consumers in new and dynamic ways. In short, the CPSC is executing its mission robustly and vigorously. We may be doing some things differently, but we are doing them no less well and with no less of a sense of purpose or dedication. I am incredibly proud of the CPSC staff. In addition to the changes necessitated by the transition to remote work, last year also brought some other changes and new personnel whom I'd like to recognize today. As many of you know, Gib Mullen was affiliated with CPSC in one capacity or another for over two decades and he retired as general counsel in January. Luckily for us, Jen Salt, normal role is deputy director of compliance, graciously agreed to step into the acting general counsel position during this transition period. You will be hearing from Jen later as part of the Ask CPSC panel. In addition to the GC position, we also have a new head of the Congressional Affairs Office, Karli McGarvey, who has extensive experience working on Capitol Hill, joined the agency in January and she has hit the ground running. I'm also pleased to announce that we have made a number of changes at our laboratory to strengthen our staff there, including a new director for health sciences, Mary Kelleher. Mark Kumagai is now leading engineering sciences and Karli Paul has been named the new director of mechanical and combustion engineering. They are terrific additions to our leadership team and bring expertise and knowledge that is a crucial part of our science-based decision-making approach. So there has been a fair amount of change since I last addressed you. What has not changed, however, is our commitment to the agency mission and the execution of commission priorities. Those priorities are reflected in the agency's operating plan, which the commission approved in October. Acting Chair Adler touched on a number of the projects laid out in the plan and you will be hearing in depth about some of these issues from our leadership team who will be answering your questions during the Ask CPSC panel. But I would like to take a moment to highlight a few priorities. In the compliance area, priorities include a focus on increasing online surveillance and enforcement and strengthening the internet surveillance unit, improving the fast track program, expanding and strengthening the enforcement and litigation division to support substantial product hazard investigations, administrative litigation and civil penalty investigation and focusing on regulatory enforcement in toy labeling, PPPA, bicycle helmets, durable nursery products and ATV action plans. In the area of hazard reduction, priorities include improving the data quality of the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, a continued focus on protecting children. And to that end, we plan to complete proposed rules on furniture tip overs, hazardous magnet sets and window coverings and final rules on infant sleep products, crib bumpers and crib mattresses. We also are scheduled to complete an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking on fire and debris penetration hazards in off highway vehicles. And we're continuing work to improve our data analytic capabilities so that we can better identify emerging trends. And in the import world, staff is implementing the first stages of an e-commerce plan, including providing port staff dedicated exclusively to this issue. We are also implementing the recent statutory direction from Congress related to import surveillance and we're developing plans to execute an e-filing program authorized by a unanimous vote of the commission at the end of last year. As you can see, the agency agenda for the year is quite full and covers a wide range of issues. Staff is energized by this important work and is committed to keeping consumers safe despite the challenges we all continue to face as a result of the pandemic. And as focused on this year's operating plan as we are, we are already making plans for next year. And that starts with the agency's priorities hearing where the commission invites stakeholders to share views on the agency's agenda and priorities for fiscal year 22. The hearing will be held virtually on April 7th and I encourage all stakeholders to participate either through oral presentations or by submitting written comments. Comments are due to the commission by March 17th. Thank you again for giving me the opportunity to speak to you this morning. I'm so proud and fortunate to work with an amazing and dedicated group of CPSC staff and I know you will find the following panels informative and thought-provoking. And I look forward to seeing you all in person next year. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mary. And now we will turn it over to our ex-official board member in CPSC Small Business, Ombudsman Shelby Mathis to moderate our next session, Dynamic Communications with the CPSC. Thank you for joining us, everybody. Welcome to the Dynamic Communications with the CPSC. This is gonna be a three-part session and the first up is Joe Marriac. Thank you, Shelby. Good morning, everybody. It's great to be here to be able to tell you a little bit about what's been going on in communications at the CPSC. Our fundamental goal is to get reliable information out there and have it be accessible to our stakeholders and in a timely way. We wanna make sure that our outreach and our messaging gets to the affected populations and in particular the vulnerable communities. We do this through about 300 press releases about recalls as well as 24 safety education campaigns. But let's take a look at last year just to see where we've been. And I have to say last year was arguably the best year ever for communications at CPSC. I wanna call out a huge thanks to our team, the communications team for the extraordinary effort that they made last year. I'm gonna throw out some numbers, but it's just to give you a flavor of what we're talking about. I'm gonna compare last year to the previous year. For example, social media is very important and our followers had been 10,000 the year before. Last year, 150,000. As far as engagements are concerned, and this is important, people reacting to our social media, previously it was one and a half million. Last year it was 12 million. On some of our bigger campaigns, like the holiday safety, we went from 300 million impressions to 512 impressions, 512 million impressions. And then we went from 6,000 engagements to 14,000 engagements. For the Super Bowl Anchorick campaign, we had gone from 6 million impressions to 475 million impressions. And we had gone from 700 engagements to 11,000 engagements. So you can see the effort that the team was making last year. And this is in spite of COVID, which caused us to change a lot of our plans. And we had to put a special campaign on for COVID, with special checklists, with a website, with satellite media tours. And this continues on now. Well, last year we were focused on some innovative ideas. And what we wanted to look into was some paid social media advertising, the use of listicles, as well as the multimedia news releases. We used influencers last year in a big way. And then we also wrapped up a survey on our Anchorick campaign to find out really what the audience is saying. Are they getting the message? Do they like the way they're getting it? And are they doing something about it? We used that to inform the new PSA that we created. And that new PSA was innovative in the sense that we just used nanny cam video, real life situations with parents. Another innovation that we had last year was with our pull safely video, which will be coming out this year. And that is we put animation for the first time into the video. So that's some of last year snapshot. What about this year? Well, our priorities are similar. Innovation is at the top of the list. For the satellite media tour we just did on Anchorick, we involved a parent who had had a near tragedy be part of those interviews, 35 interviews she participated in. We did Spanish this year for the first time. We hadn't done it last year. We did paid advertising again on social media for the first time on this campaign. And we went from 4,000 engagements last year to 422,000 engagements. The impressions last year to this year, it went from 3 million to 27 million. And here's a very interesting thing. We also used over the top approach to get the message out. What this means basically is on streaming platforms like Hulu, NBC, Peacock, Sling or YouTube TV. When you're watching a show and it was a commercial, our PSA on Anchorick was running as the commercial. Now, we didn't embed it because of the content of the program. We did it because an algorithm told us who we could go to that was going to be watching. In other words, parents with young kids at home. In addition to them seeing it, and we had 1.3 million people see the PSA, when those same people then went on to the web to browse, an ad would come up to tell them about the Anchorick website. So it was a terrific new innovative thing that we tried. As far as our recall emails go, they're a little wordy and they're a little difficult to read. And so we're gonna be doing a revamp on the template and the design of it basically so that people can read it, get it and do it. A key factor going into this year is going to be diversity. Now last year we tried to be diversified in the actors that we were using in our PSAs. This year we're expanding on that. For example, with our social media, we've already included LGBTQ individuals as well as disabled individuals in our graphics. In our poll safely, we've been focused on the culture and the community and the messaging and the statistics that we have specific to that community. So we're looking to really expand on that. Spanish, again, will be a big bump up this year. All the paid social media advertising that we do in all the campaigns, one third of that will be dedicated to Spanish. And we hope to look into some other interesting ideas yet in this year. For example, perhaps doing some advertising in public transportation in some pilot cities and pilot communities, where the dependence on public transportation in those vulnerable communities is immense. Now, we are also going to be working this year on our websites. The saferproducts.gov has already gotten a redesign and we're going to be doing a marketing effort on that later this year to get people to realize it and to use it. And finally, with the CPSC.gov website, I know there are things that need to be fixed on that. And we are doing a major redesign and re-haul, overhaul if you will, of the website this year. Why? To make it more user-friendly, to make it more searchable for the business education page, for example, to make it more organized and easier to browse and to make it also even more so mobile-friendly. Those are some of the activities we've got planned for this year. And I have to say with a great team, I think we're going to hit a lot of these right out of the park. Well, to help us get the message out there, the new consumer ombudsman is there to help us get these messages from OCM out to the public and to a larger network of the public. And so I yield back the balance of my time, as they say in Congress, and I recognize the kind gentleman from Maryland, Jonathan Mitchell. Thanks very much, Joe. It's always a pleasure to address it. So I know everybody here in the audience is interested in public health and safety. So it's like preaching to the choir. It's just a marvelous opportunity. I want to talk this morning about the benefits of having the consumer voice represented in your voluntary standards activities. So as the new consumer ombudsman, my job, my mission is actually to bring the consumer perspective to the agency and the agency's perspective to consumers. So I cannot tell you how valuable the consumer perspective is to making voluntary standards. Consumers bring real world experiences to the table. They have insights into the critical incidents that are driving the conversations that we have in voluntary standards development. The critical incidents, that's human factors jargon for the incident that's really changing the discussion and driving changes that make the world a better place. So consumers help experts understand foreseeable use and foreseeable misuse in a way that perhaps the experts might not be able to voice. And consumers also can explain how they expect their products to perform in everyday life. And those user expectations are dramatically helpful when you're planning interventions to prevent injuries. So those insights bring some clarity to the discussion and they bring some credibility too. And they say, well, how do they make it more credible? Well, actually next slide for me there, Shelby. Having a balanced committee with all the stakeholders represented is a requirement. The US standard strategy emphasizes openness and impartiality and it strives for getting everybody who's involved in using a standard in the business of talking about how to make the standard better. And of course, everybody knows ANSI's essential requirements call out balance as a very important principle. We want all stakeholder groups to be balanced and if we can't achieve perfect balance, we strive hard to reach it. Circulary 119 is an executive branch document which tells of the high regard the US government holds for balance of interest in the standards development process. Next slide. The trick of course is how do we get consumers involved because they're volunteers, it's hard to get volunteers. I recommend having an ongoing outreach campaign with your voluntary standards network. Make sure that people are always looking for someone who might be able to participate in that regard from the consumer groups. And you need to facilitate participation using electronic collaboration tools for easy communications. One of the interesting outcomes of having a pandemic is people are becoming more comfortable with collaboration spaces such as we're using right now. And that's going to be only just better for enhancing consumer participation in voluntary standards. It's just gonna be a will benefit. You need to quickly educate newcomers to the process in the jargon that is thrown around in a voluntary standards arena. And you need to have materials ready for them to learn about what's going on. And I can't emphasize how useful it is to have a couple of mentors ready in the wings to assign to a new consumer who's just learning the ropes. Mentors are incredibly helpful. And of course, monetary assistance is money well spent to get consumers to the table. And there are scholarships and grants available. Sometimes the consumers don't know they're there and that can be a drawback for them for participating. Next slide. So what can the consumer ombudsman at the CPSC do for you? So I'm available to help you find consumers with my ever-expanding network of consumers and consumer groups. And I can provide basic information about standards to them and explanations of what's going on in the process in plain language. I'm an educational psychologist so I can teach you anything. I'm also building a portfolio of training materials that you will find eventually on my webpage which is at CPSC.gov. And if you go to the top right corner of our homepage and pull down that hamburger menu, you will see basically all the main pages that we have for the CPSC.gov and consumer ombudsman is listed there next to Congressional Affairs. I can also be a dedicated point of contact for consumers you have following the standard, contact to the agency. Feel free to give my information to any consumers who are interested in participating in voluntary standards and I'll help any way that I can to help them to learn what they can do in that process and how they can help. And finally, I'll be engaging in my own outreach efforts to try and recruit consumers to the voluntary standards process and hopefully be able to enhance the balance that we have in the voluntary standards community right now. So I look forward to working with everybody in the future and now I think that we can turn the presentation over to Phil Burmell, our fast-track program supervisor and Shelby Mathis, our small business ombudsman. Shelby and Phil, the floor's yours. Thank you so much, Jonathan. And a good moderator would have started this session by saying if you have questions, we're gonna take them at the end and you can submit them via the Iqviso app. So please do so. Welcome, I'm Shelby Mathis. I'm the small business ombudsman and joining me this morning is Phil. Hi, good morning, everybody. My name is Phil Burmell. I'm the supervisor of the fast-track recall team at CPSC. And for the third part of today's session, we're gonna talk about a bit of a preview of the fast-track portal update which we are working on at the CPSC this fiscal year. And before we get started, a quick disclaimer, this presentation was prepared by CPSC staff. It may not necessarily reflect the views of the commission. All right, so I'm hoping that this shows up somewhat well on your screen. Before we start talking about what the new system is going to contain, we thought we'd just start with a look at where we are and where we're going. On the left-hand side of your screen is the existing system. So if you are from that reports to the CPSC under section 15b for potentially hazardous product and you do so online, you're familiar with the system that shows up on the left-hand side of your screen. On the right-hand side of your screen is actually where we're going. And a few features that I'll highlight here just for our discussion is the new system should look more streamlined to you. There's a menu on the left-hand side of that screen that is gonna show you, hopefully you can see two green dots on the yellow dot. The yellow dot is actually where you are in the process and the gray dots are what's to come. So we're doing this so visually you're cued that you have a few more sections left before you can actually hit the submit button. Another benefit of the system on the right-hand side that we're working towards, is we're going to have hover over text which will show as a question mark. And there's a hazard description box that actually has a question mark and a pop-up that's showing to the far right. Those hover over text or question marks are meant to inform what we're actually looking for from you. So if you aren't sure when completing this, you can hover over the text and it'll give you a bit more of a visual cue. So stopping sale continue, go ahead. Sorry, I was just gonna say one thing that we've done is we've broken the existing system which asks for the initial report information and the for report information into two separate segments. And the first part is the initial report. We'll still be asking for all the information that's shown on your screen, those check marks. And the good news is you'll have an opportunity to review all the content that you're about to submit to us and provide additional comments to the CPSC before you submit. And this comes straight from our regulation that's cited on the screen. So now I'm gonna turn it over to Phil who's actually gonna talk about kind of the meat and potatoes more in depth part of the online filing portal. Thank you, Shelby. So stopping sale continues to be a main requirement to participate in the fast track program. The new business portal will have the functionality of a guardrail checkpoint at this step. If the firm has not yet stopped sale, the firm will be unable to proceed forward submitting their fast track report in the new business portal without this requirement being met. Also new to the remedy section, we have added another guardrail checkpoint for the timeframe that the remedy will be available to consumers as well as requiring technical documents related to a repair or replacement to be submitted, which will ultimately streamline the time to recall. Templates of social media posting and press releases will be located inside of the new portal and will automatically pre-populate with information based on the firm's report, eliminating repetitive data input for users. Finally, instead of a single upload button in the attachment page, the new business portal will intuitively ask for only certain documents that are required depending on the type of recall. This will greatly enhance the attachment paid functionality to more accurately fit the scope of the recall. Deep detailed templates will also be available on this page and upload buttons will be located directly next to each required documents, providing users a clear roadmap for submission. In summary, a submission in the new business portal is done in two steps. Initial report followed by additional information. The initial report process will be significantly simplified and will lessen the burden for firms to fulfill their initial reporting obligation. The improved business portal will also be mobile friendly, no longer requiring the use of a desktop computer. A PDF copy of your report will also be able to be easily downloaded at the end of the report submission as well. Finally, there will be auto-generated emails and reminders built into the system that will allow CPSC and the user to seamlessly communicate timeframe reminders and updates throughout the recall process. Back to you, Shelby. All right, so with that, we're gonna open it up to questions and we already have some questions, my fellow panelists. Okay, so I've got one for Joe Murdiak. It's about social media. Can you talk about the effectiveness of social media? Do you have ways to measure behavior changes beyond engagement on social media? That's a great question. Obviously the most important thing is to start to attract them to it and then to inform them and ideally with the engagement numbers that tells us they did something with it. They either retweeted it, they liked it, they forwarded it to someone else and so they interacted with the message. As far as them taking the message and then implementing that safety feature, that's the rub, that's the challenge we have right now and the best way to do that would be through either focus groups or through surveys. When we do surveys, it is a costly as well as a time-consuming period. For example, the survey for Anchor it took almost two years for us to get it cleared through OMB and get the thing moving but it's incredibly important information. So we're gonna be looking into how can we tap into that somehow through informal focus groups or some other mechanism to actually find out did people act on it? Now, I will say anecdotally, we do get people on social media who make a comment and then they say, for example, about recalls and signing up for them. One person signed up and then in his comment online, he said, and lo and behold, he said, I've got this very product here sitting in my house that I just read about. So that's when they tell us that they acted but we need to find out a way to talk to them to see if they actually follow through. All right, thank you, Joe. We've got another question and this is actually about the fast track portal and I will direct it to Phil. The question is, will the new portal allow free text entries for explanatory text, reservation of rights, et cetera? So yes, the new portal will allow for free text entries and what we've done here is focused on the specific questions where we feel that more explanation is necessary, is needed and we've allowed you those free text boxes. We're not limiting you to 180 characters like Twitter or anything. We will provide you enough space there to adequately explain the situation, the remedy, the hazard or things like that. We do have another question about the portal and it is, which I'll take, it's will the new portal be easily exportable such as to a PDF or will it be proprietary like Health Canada's? The answer is if you're asking about whether or not your submission will be exportable, it will absolutely be exportable. You'll have the option, we talked about at a high level, the system's gonna be broken into two parts, the initial report, those five pieces of information and you submit then and if you have the additional information you can also submit that then. At each step you will be able to download your submission before submitting it. You'll also, Phil talked about automated emails. You're also gonna get an automated email that will show you what has been submitted and it will have that PDF there. So with that, I think we are up on our time so I am gonna turn it back over to the nice folks at Iqviso. Thank you so much to my fellow panelists and to everybody for your great questions. In the panelist, next we will hear from Rob Kay, the Director of Compliance and Field Operations who will give an update from the Office of Compliance. Rob. Hi everybody, good morning. Thanks so much for having me. I think I'm up here, although I still see some of our prior panelists. There we go. It's great to be here to provide a compliance update. A few things I wanna touch on this morning and then I'll also be available for questions as part of the next panel. I wanna follow up a little bit on what Phil and Shelby just presented with respect to the work that's ongoing with the new FastTrack portal. I also wanna speak to the progress we've made in the restructuring and compliance that we introduced last year. Let folks know how that's going and also walk through a little bit for those who are less familiar with compliance, how we are set up and then finally also address some additional changes we've made to enhance our ability to address the continuing growth of e-commerce. So first of all, with respect to the FastTrack portal and I wanna start off just by thanking Shelby and Phil as well as Blake Rose who have been spearheading the development of the new portal. This is really a project that is aimed to bring FastTrack into the 21st century so to speak to put it on a technological platform and move away from what I think in some respects is really more of an ad hoc process right now. I'd ask everyone to keep your eyes out for a feedback session which I'm sure will be virtual that we're looking to set up this spring where we'll go into a little more detail of how the FastTrack portal is shaping up and welcome your feedback. One of the key attributes that we're aiming for here is really to make this a user-friendly system that folks will look at as being easy to use and beneficial for processing these cases as expeditiously as we can. A hallmark of the changes is to create greater standardization particularly with respect to how the information comes in making that less ad hoc. In the process we'll be establishing a standardized starting point for FastTrack cases when we have the core information that's needed to bring these cases to recall quickly and that's gonna enable us I think to be more predictable about how long it will take to get these recalls out in the street and I think better equip us to help FastTrack live up to its name and get these cases out quickly. As Phil mentioned there's gonna be a number of bells and whistles that I think will streamline the process including the prepopulating of information and certain documents like the press release document and there will be added functionality to the extent that folks also register as business portal users. You won't have to be a business portal user to use the new FastTrack portal to get to put your information in to get email updates and feedback but there is some additional functionality that comes with being a business portal user. Certain information will automatically populate that you've previously put into the portal such as firm information. You'll get updates on the progress and the predicted date of release. You'll be able to see past submissions in the business portal so there's some synergy there and some reasons why I think it makes sense to consider being a business portal registrant but again you won't have to be a business portal registrant to use the portal. So again I think we're excited about rolling this out going into the build out as the year progresses and hopefully rolling this out in a way that as I say improves the usability and brings us into the 21st century with FastTrack. The second thing I wanted to talk about is as I said an update with respect to some of the changes in compliance that we implemented last year and I'll do that as I sort of walk folks through how we're set up especially for those of you that may not be familiar with how we are organized in compliance. You heard from Phil who is our FastTrack supervisor and works in the purple group there on the left of the slide our resource management division under Blake Rose's leadership. These are folks that support a wide variety of activities in compliance. Of course they manage the FastTrack program but they do a lot more than that. They do a lot of data analysis and reporting and furtherance of our mission. They monitor our performance metrics. They're also taking on the leading role now in our recall monitoring where we need to follow up on recalls after they've been issued and so a lot of important work takes place in CRM. The green boxes there in the middle are where we made a lot of our changes as part of the restructuring last year. That's our new enforcement and litigation group under the leadership of Mary Murphy who came to us from the general counsel's office. Howie Tarnoff who many of you know has been a mainstay in compliance for many years and is Mary's deputy as well as Leah Ippolito who also came to compliance from the general counsel's office, we've done a tremendous amount of hiring in compliance. I think we've hired over 15 people in general over the last year including nine new compliance attorneys. For those of you who have been engaged in hiring and onboarding over the past year in the COVID environment, I don't think I need to tell you how challenging that can be and I just couldn't be more pleased and proud of our staff in the way that they've executed in the hiring process and brought some terrific folks on board, really made them feel part of the team and gotten them onboarded and gotten to work already. And I think that the new division is really now just starting to get their stride. I think there's more hiring to come. We're not exactly, we're not fully staffed to where we expect to be but we are already seeing a lot of work getting done that frankly a few years back we just weren't as equipped to do and that really is a testament to the efforts among others of Mary, Howie and Leah. This new enforcement division I think in broad strokes has three primary responsibilities. One is to enhance our ability to handle complex investigations of substantial product hazards. Cases that often can have the most substantial impact on product safety in a more efficient way both for the benefit of consumers where action is necessary and also to the benefit of firms where we can make decisions not to proceed when appropriate in an expeditious manner. And I think we're already starting to see great work in that area. The second priority for enforcement and litigation which Chairman Adler touched on in his remarks is our civil penalty program. I'll start off along the same lines of what Bob was saying that this is a program that is premised on the idea that there's just an enormous volume enormous jurisdictional coverage of the products out there under our jurisdiction. And I think that's why the statute is set up the way it is that firms have a responsibility when they have the possibility of a substantial product hazard to report that so-called needle in the haystack of consumer products to us. And it's why the agency's motto for many years and something I've heard Bob say many times is when in doubt report. By doing that, you are in no way signing up for a recall. The statistics bear that out but what you are doing is eliminating the possibility that we will be coming back behind you and looking at whether your reporting was timely. And I do believe that that part of our work is a critical part of making sure that that core part of our overall safety structure which is so dependent on firms meeting that obligation is adhered to. And I do expect that that will remain a priority as we move forward. As Bob referenced, we have had a couple of significant announcements recently and I expect us to continue to devote resources to that part of our work. This group is also providing support to our regulatory division, which I'll talk about next. I think their partnership is working together really great. There are often legal issues that come up in their work and complexities that by working together we can make things happen in a more robust and efficient way. And under Jennifer Timmian's leadership working alongside her managers, Sean Keller and Carolyn Manley. This is the orange boxes I'm addressing now. These are the folks that are working with our port staff and getting domestic samples to make sure we're enforcing the specific regulatory performance requirements for those products that have those requirements under our jurisdiction. Like the rest of the organization, they are heightening their attention to e-commerce in light of the tremendous growth in online marketplaces from everything from toys to bike helmets to infant durable products. That will continue to be a focus of compliance in general and regulatory in particular as they work with our import team and with our field staff in examining both imported samples as well as domestically gathered samples to make sure that we are taking a hard look at products subject to our regulations. And so that's a good segue to talk a little bit about our field team. And under Bev Cohen's leadership and her deputies, Justin McDonough and Kevin Barton, these folks are supporting all aspects of compliance as operations as well as a lot of our standards work through EXHR by conducting in-depth investigations of consumer incidents, business inspections, backing up our port team at the ports. You can see there's a lot of boxes here. That's because these are folks who are stationed around the country, working out of their homes, able to geographically address product safety issues as needed. A couple of aspects of their work that I wanted to highlight today. In particular, some of the changes we've made with our internet surveillance unit, which you can see is now a team unto itself within the field under a single manager. Bob Hull is the manager now taking over that leadership post in light of the exponential growth in e-commerce and the important role ISU plays for us. We have consolidated them on one single team so that they can both implement and plan to help us meet the challenges of e-commerce. They do a number of things that are important to our e-commerce operation, ranging from surveilling possible violative and recall products online, collecting samples for technical analysis, preserving websites, identifying sellers when sometimes it is not clear on its face from an internet site who is selling a particular product as well as conducting analysis of online incidents to help us focus our enforcement activities. So I expect that group to continue to play a leading role in helping us address the challenges of e-commerce going forward. I also wanted to point out that our state and local programs office is located in the field under the leadership of Denise Beatty. They work closely with our office of communications to coordinate with state and local partners and particularly focus on making sure that our safety messaging is getting out to communities around the country, including underserved under vulnerable population communities, seniors, children, families, particularly in economically challenged areas that may not have ready access to the important safety messaging that the commission puts out with respect to, with respect to safety that we want consumers around the nation to have regardless of those circumstances. So a lot going on in compliance, very appreciative of the support of the commission of Mary Boyle and Duane Ray and the executive director's office to our changes and to some of the initiatives that are ongoing. And I'm very excited about the progress we've made and the continuing progress I think that we expect to make with some of the changes that we've implemented over the past year. And with that, I'll leave it to the folks back there whether to open it up for questions for me now or just move to the next panel and I'd be available to take questions then. Thanks Rob, and back by popular demand in our next and final CSPC session. A little tongue twister there. Our final session with the CPSC is Ask the CPSC which we moderated and introduced by Duane Ray who is a deputy executive director for operations at the CPSC. Duane, take it away. Thanks Andy, good morning everyone. It's good to be back at Iqviso even in a different view this time. This morning I'm honored to moderate this panel of CPSC leaders and we wanted to spend some time sharing a little bit about our priorities and activities for this year and then at the end of that session we'll open it up to questions through the app. I did notice there were some questions already on Rob so I'll tee those up for Rob while everyone's going through their talking points. But I'd like to start off with Duane Boniface. Duane is our assistant executive director for hazard identification reduction, Duane. Good morning and thank you for the opportunity here. As head of the office of hazard identification reduction EXHR, I've got the advantage of not only a great team but also a fairly clear target as much of our work is laid out in the commission's annual operating plan. I'll highlight a few pieces here. Some of this is gonna overlap what the acting chair and the executive director covered this morning but I'll touch through some of those in any manner. In the area of data, as Mary Boyle noted earlier we're working on an action plan for the nice sample modernization. Nice is really a cornerstone for us for our data-driven approach enabling nationally representative statistical estimates of consumer product injuries. So we're excited about moving forward with that. Last year we published data tables from the Clearinghouse online for download. In the coming weeks we're going to be introducing a courierable online portable portal that'll allow people to access those data more directly in interface with them. In the area of analytics, a lot of great work going on working to strengthen or expand our analytic capabilities included with that we've added Dr. Tony Kasekert to the EXHR team as our chief data analytics officer and we're working to expand our artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities there. Voluntary standards as was noted earlier it's a core activity for EXHR and vital for CPSC allowing us to expand our talent numerically by engaging with key stakeholders, manufacturers, retailers, consumers and other stakeholders in developing voluntary standards and advancing safety in 78 different areas this year. One recent addition to this area that I wanted to highlight is in the area of artificial intelligence. Here we've added Nevin Taylor to the EXHR team as our chief technologist focusing on artificial intelligence and machine learning and consumer products and we're hosting a forum on that actually next week, March 2nd, details are posted on the federal register and on our website. In the area of mandatory standards the acting chair and Mary Boyle covered some of those but the number of important rule making projects this year including infant sleep products, crib bumpers, furniture tip over magnets and window coverings. Product test and evaluation as Rob noted earlier we do an awful lot of work in support of the Office of Compliance and in support of GEM and the Office of Import Surveillance providing a strong technical basis for dealing with unsafe products in a marketplace. And in the area of technical support we're working with our partners in OCM to strengthen information education campaigns leveraging the research and analysis that we've done an example where we have done so we've helped target COVID safety messages on emerging hazard patterns and trends starting in September, summer 2020. So just a brief highlight of things we've got going in fiscal year 21. Thank you, Dwayne. At this point in time I'd like Jim Jiholsky to give an update. Jim is the director of Office of Import Surveillance. Thank you, Jim. Thanks, Dwayne. And thank you, everyone, to Ed Aikfusow for having me again this year. I wanted to talk about three, highlight three priorities that our office is working on right now. Both Mary and Bob mentioned the recent port surveillance legislation that was signed into law at the end of 2020. We are actively working on very, all the aspects of that legislation. In part the legislation calls for CPSC to maximize our presence at the ports during the pandemic. And we are doing that by getting our import staff back at the ports and by increasing our examination of incoming cargo. We are also working very closely with our colleagues in the field investigations division of the Office of Compliance to expand coverage at ports where CPSC does not normally have staff co-located with CBP. So this is really looking to expand our reach in terms of identifying high-risk shipments and being able to do in-person exams. So we really appreciate the work with Rob and his team to be able to get our domestic field investigators out to the ports. We are also focused on drafting a report to Congress, which is due to be submitted at the end of June. The report's gonna cover a lot of ground and we will include a long-term vision for CPSC's import surveillance program, including how the agency will address the risks associated with e-commerce. Some of you may remember that at last year's Iqusso event, I highlighted the research that our office had been doing and the planning that we had been doing around e-commerce. So we really do feel that we are well positioned to put a plan to address de minimis e-commerce shipments in place pretty quickly. Another priority, Mary also mentioned the recently commission approved e-filing project. For those of you who are not familiar with e-filing, it's a program that will allow CPSC to electronically collect certain data associated with certificates of compliance. At the time the entry is filed with CVP. So this data, we really look to enhance our import risk targeting to be able to identify those companies and shipments that present a greater risk so that we can stop them at the ports. E-filing is a concept we developed and piloted several years ago and then conducted a follow-up certificate of compliance study. Background documents and all the work that we've done on e-filing are available on our website and would encourage you to take a look at that as part of the new initiative that we'll be working on. And the e-filing project we do look at is being a multi-year project. We will be developing a detailed project plan and of course we'll be engaging with you the trade and soliciting input throughout the process. And the third area that I'd like to address briefly is our ongoing deployment and development of functionality in our RAM system that will facilitate communication with customs and border protection in the trade. This includes two main items, electronic messaging that we have put in place with CBP and with customs brokers that allows us to more officially coordinate hold requests and exams at the ports. And then we have some upcoming functionality that's in development now that will allow us to electronically transmit import-related forms and requests for information to the trade. So we're excited about both of those and we do think that they will help us become more efficient and effective. So those are, that's a brief overview of some of our big priorities for this year. And I hope everyone stays safe and healthy and I'll turn it back over to Dwayne. Thanks, Jim. Now I'd like to introduce Jim Sultan who is our acting general counsel for any opening comments. Morning, everyone. As you heard earlier from Mary Boyle, I am currently serving in the acting general counsel position. Gitmon recently retired. And just some of the sort of priorities for us are ensuring a smooth transition during this time. Also making sure to provide the necessary legal support for some of the priorities that you heard discussed earlier today. And then also me personally just given my role and compliance as the deputy to ensure and to foster continued collaboration between OGC and compliance in particular, but of course with all the other parts of the agency. And just for some very broad breaststrokes, what does OGC do? At a very high level, we provide legal support for rule makings. We provide legal support for matters that are referred to DOJ. Also defensive litigation, including challenges to rule makings. And also we provide agency wide legal support on general law, FOIA, jurisdictional statutory and regulatory determinations. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, Jen. Rob, I know you introduced yourself on the last slide. If there's anything else you wanted to add before we give the questions, I'm happy to say anything. Thanks, Dwayne. No, I think I'm ready to hear the questions. Okay, well, great. Well, first one's T-Daw for you. Will you make the CPSC compliance organizational chart available in the Iqviso material as CPSC always used to do? It's very useful. Yeah, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't. We want people to understand where the folks they're dealing with fit into the organization. And I think, assuming we've done that in the past and it doesn't present any information sharing issues, which I don't think it does, be happy to do that. And this one's a little variant on that, Rob. The CPSC used to publish a directory of various staff in their areas of responsibility. This helps get information. Why stop? How can we find such information? You know, I'm happy to look into that. One of the things that we did when we did the reorganization or the restructuring was in our new enforcement and litigation division, in particular, folks are a little less product specific in terms of the nature of the work that they're doing. The substantial product hazard standard is a broad one and we found people can work very effectively across a range of product. We are still more product specific in terms of our organization in the regulatory section and happy to look into how we can make those folks as specialties available, if that would be helpful to folks. Okay, I'm gonna try to pick one for Dwayne Boniface just to give Rob a break for a minute. Let me make sure, why is staff not able to answer questions on experimental testing and results during active rulemaking would be helpful during standard development? Yes, good question. We often share results as they become available. A key part of that though is sort of when does that work complete? And so as we're in a rulemaking process for some of these areas, we're continuing to analyze the results and so the research doesn't really finish until we're putting the results of that effort forward typically in a briefing package of the commission. I'll get a few more here. This one I believe is on proposed legislation, COVID legislation. This one might be a Jen question, please comment on and we may not be able to answer all of this. The provisions in the COVID legislation, what these products are and how they are distinct from FDA or EPA, FIFRA regulated products. It's not clear from this question if this is about, if this is what are COVID products. So I think there's a little bit more that's missing from the actual question. But to the extent that there's a question about what is a definition mean? I believe there's some definitions in this legislation to refer to. So I'm sorry, I can't do a better job here but there may be some interpretation that will happen even with or without definitions. All right, we're back to Rob again. Will fast tracks still involve weeks or months of iterative non substantive exchanges that only serve to delay recalls? Boy, that's not a very friendly question, Dwayne. I can say it friendly or will fast track be faster? Clearly, despite the fact that sometimes people think that government tries to work to a bureaucratic reputation that really is couldn't be further from the truth. And the whole portal project is geared towards trying to streamline and standardize and use technology to avoid those kinds of pitfalls. I can't promise, especially as we start rolling that there won't be bumps in the road for us to work past but clearly the goal is to make things as unified streamlined and absent of those kinds of things as we can. Tim, Jehoz came looking for one for you but I don't know when I was asking him yet, sorry. This one I think is really kind of a rob one. Again, same CPSC is shifting its policy on scope of information submitted pursuant to section 15. Please explain CPSC's policy and how it is within agency authority. I'm not sure I fully understand the question. I don't think we intend as part of the fast track portal to in any way change policy with respect to disclosure, absent legislative change or a significant policy change which I would expect would be communicated. I think the information will still be treated in the same way, albeit submitted electronically. Do you think that got it the question or? Yeah, it's hard without actually having a little bit more detail on there. Let's see, this one, given CPSC's trouble history of protecting confidential information, should it be more judicious and demand for things like consumer PII medical info? I think that's along the same lines of section 15 questions for you, Rob. Well, I think it's fair to say and it's accurate to say that CPSC is an agency that in part because of section 6B takes its responsibilities with respect to information, protection when appropriate, very, very seriously. To the extent that there have been any issues, I know that there's been extensive efforts to address them and I think that it remains a priority for us to do all of our activities lawfully in accordance with the law. There is information that we require in compliance and which our regulations and the statute make clear firms are obligated to provide, including consumer information such that we can properly investigate incidents and we do expect firms to provide that information while at the same time, we hold ourselves to the standards of protecting information required by our statute. Okay. Looks like we've got another one on... Well, this one, maybe... How does continuing uncertainty and commission slots affect staff morale and effectiveness? Is anybody on the panel wanna take that one on? Rob, you've been doing all the talking. Happy to open it up to anybody else on the group. Yeah, I can jump in. I think that certainly as Mary Boyle noted in her remarks, we've had a tremendous amount of churn over the last year as staff have dealt with both personal and CPSC impacts of the coronavirus epidemic. Certainly the gaps of the commission add to that. We have one for Jim. Jim Jiholsky, does your team have the ability to search for more than lead in tracking label violations? What other kind of violations are they looking for? Yeah, thanks for the question. Yeah, we do. We're looking for basically our approaches. Anything that we can identify at the ports where we can make a screening determination that there's a potential violation, then that's in play for our investigators to look at. So lead is a big one. We have an XRF device that is really a great screening tool for us to be able to detect lead. We have an FTIR device that we use for phthalates. We are also looking and screening for ASTM F963 violations. We are looking for other types of regulated violations, lighters, bike helmets, 15J rolls as well, the 415J rolls. So it's a wide breadth of things that we're looking for. In the end, our philosophy though, is if we are screening a product, we're looking for a significant violation, but we determine as part of that examination that a product has not been certified or does not have a tracking label, we do feel an obligation to move forward and document that and refer that over to the Office of Compliance for evaluation. So I think we do not see the high levels of lead PPM violations that we had seen early on after CPSIA, but we do still detect those violations and take action on them. Great, thanks Jim. I'm gonna keep you there while your mic's hot. Are there any specific parts of the country or types of import activities where you guys are planning to step up? Yeah, I think the recent port surveillance legislation makes it clear that Congress wants us to focus on de minimis e-commerce shipments. So I see as resources become available that we will be expanding to places where e-commerce arrives. So that's gonna be your large express carrier hubs. Those are gonna be other large airports where high volumes of e-commerce arrive, plus international mail facilities as well. So those staffing up in those locations is gonna be part of our plans. In addition to, again, as resources become available, continuing to increase staffing at what we call sort of traditional ports of entry where your containerized cargo is coming into the country. These would be seaports, truck crossings, some airports as well. We will be looking to expand in those locations as well. So really an overall plan to grow the import surveillance division office. Great, thanks, Jim. This one's for Dwayne. What can we expect at the upcoming AI forum next week? Great question and appreciate the interest. We've really got an exciting slate of topics and speakers for that. I think there are many on this webinar that are participating. We've got NIST coming in to talk about policies and guidelines that they've been working on. We've got some academic presentations from Penn State, Harvard, and the University of Nevada talking about artificial intelligence, its use in the application of standards. European Commission doing the same. We've got consumer groups coming in to help talk. And then we've got groups such as Underwriters Laboratories, Bureau of Aritas, and others coming in to talk about the sort of the nuts and bolts. How do we deal with this new technology? How does it impact our testing work? How should it impact our standards development and so forth? Really an exciting day laid out. I do hope that as many people attend that scan. Okay, this question's for Jim. Does a report to Congress include recommendations from CPSC as to how e-commerce only platforms will be brought into the same obligations as brick and mortar? No, I think that's gonna be outside the scope of what Congress is asking us to do as part of the report. There are several aspects of what we need to respond to in the report. That is not one of them. It's mainly going to be looking back at kind of what the agency did during COVID, especially when we did not have staff at the ports for a period of time. And a big focus on what our future plans are to address de minimis. But I don't believe that that is gonna be one aspect that we will be dealing with in the report. Okay, Rob, this one is an enforcement question. What are the enforcement plans for COVID related products, the new non-medical mass standard and products like paint sprayers being repurposed as disinfectant? Yeah, I don't think I can answer the question with respect to any specific product, but what I can say is that our regulatory work is always focused on a risk-based manner, wanting to look at products that present heightened risk, and certainly to the extent COVID has introduced new products or has led to some products to be much more widely consumed. That's something that we wanna look at and that I expect we will look at as we continue to move through this COVID period. Okay, well, kind of on that theme, Dwayne, with the recent publication of ASTM F-3502 barrier face mask, the CPSC for C enacting this voluntary standards mandatory. Certainly it's something we'll look at. I would note that that ASTM standard does incorporate some of CPSC's regulations on the flammability piece, 16, 10, and six in particular. So there's already some regulatory overlap there, but we'll take a look at that. Much of that standard is focused on issues outside of our jurisdiction though. Okay, Rob, this is another compliance question. Why does CPSC refuse to share PSAs with companies when sharing promote quicker resolution and due process? I think that's a great question. There are reasons related to potential administrative litigation that we don't share the PSA. That does not mean that we were trying to hide the ball in any way with respect to our technical conclusions. We frequently will provide written summaries of what's in PSAs and have often made technical staff available to firms to ask questions about our conclusions. It is not our intention because I agree with the premise of the question that when there's an information sharing going on where everybody is aware of the common platform of facts and each side's assessment of those facts, I think that does hasten decision-making on both sides and it is our intention to do that with the hope that we can reach resolution in cases that have evolved to that point. We've got a few more minutes here. Seems like Rob, you're very popular on this question list. So let me try this one. Can a manufacturer report via email on 15b if portal information is not available? Otherwise, it may cause a reporting delay. I'm not sure exactly what it means by portal information being unavailable with respect to the initial reporting component of the portal. We're aiming to do that in a way that would facilitate a report even when limited information is available. I think that that's something that we've had focus on and would welcome further comment at our feedback session with respect to that. I do think it's important that we don't do anything that would make it harder for firms to submit initial reports when they think they may have identified a safety problem. That's definitely not the intention of the new portal. Yeah, and I guess I kind of read it a little bit as if the portal is having problems, can you email it still as kind of like a backup? And I don't think we discourage that, but I think we're trying to encourage the use of the portal so that it is, you know, and through that system and getting the information together to act on. What we all know from our experiences over the last year, the technology never fails. So you can always count on the technological submission, but I'm sure that in the event that that's not available, we'll have some alternative means. But again, we are trying to bring us into a 21st century technologically based system. Great. Well, I think we are at the end of our time. I appreciate my fellow panelists here and presenting and asking these good questions. And I think at this point, we're done from our CPSC day presentations and thank everyone for engaging. Thank you to all the CPSC participants. We certainly appreciate the time and effort you took to be here and participate with all the product safety stakeholders. If you have an additional questions, please send to sbo at cpsc.gov and they will be directed to the appropriate office.