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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 159 / Friday, August 20, 2021 / Proposed Rules
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update the EAS to support persistent display of alert information and/or persistent notification for emergencies that require immediate public protective actions to mitigate loss of life.
Updating the EAS to support persistent alerts would likely require extensive modifications to the EAS. To comply with such a requirement if adopted, EAS equipment manufacturers would likely be required to develop software and/or firmware changes to implement such functionality in deployed EAS
equipment and EAS equipment in production. Similar to FEMAs code change proposal recommendations, such changes would require EAS
Participants to acquire and install the software/firmware update to enable the functionality in their EAS devices, and devices currently deployed with EAS
capabilities that are not be capable of being updated to reflect such functionality will have to be replaced. It is also possible that such functionality will require modifications to non-EAS
equipment that receive and process the EAS device alert content output and convert it into a visual scroll. EAS
Participants would also bear the expenses to update or replace deployed devices to enable this proposed EAS
functionality.
To help the Commission more fully evaluate the cost of compliance if it were to adopt FEMAs proposals, in the FNPRM, the Commission requests comments on the cost implications to implement the proposed recommendations and asks whether there are more efficient and less burdensome alternatives that might achieve the same results. the Commission expects the information it receives in comments, including cost and benefit analyses, to help it identify and evaluate relevant matters for small entities, including compliance costs and other burdens that may result if the proposed recommendations in the FNPRM were adopted.
E. Steps Taken To Minimize the Significant Economic Impact on Small Entities, and Significant Alternatives Considered The RFA requires an agency to describe any significant, specifically small business alternatives that it has considered in reaching its proposed approach, which may include the following four alternatives among others: 1 the establishment of differing compliance or reporting requirements or timetables that take into account the resources available to small entities; 2 the clarification, consolidation, or simplification of compliance or reporting requirements
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under the rule for such small entities;
3 the use of performance, rather than design, standards; and 4 and exemption from coverage of the rule, or any part thereof, for such small entities.
In the FNPRM, the Commission took the steps and raised for consideration the alternatives discussed herein which could minimize any significant economic impact on small entities of FEMAs recommended EAS proposed rules changes. Regarding FEMAs recommended event code rule changes, the Commission asks for comments on whether the proposed FEMA changes should be adopted. Where FEMA has presented two options in a recommendation, the Commission asks whether the proposed options are appropriate, and if so, what is the preferred approach. The Commission also inquires about the implications for EAS and other equipment, for other EAS
and related Commission rules, and for technical and operation plans and protocols relating to EAS alerts. Further, the Commission inquires whether the proposed FEMA recommendations can be implemented for all EAS device models and at what costs, and whether the benefit of implementing the proposed changes exceed whatever costs might be incurred to implement them.
The FEMA recommendation to change the EAS originator code for Primary Entry Point System, from PEP, to NAT and to either modify the definition for the EAN event code from Emergency Action Notification National Only, to Emergency Alert, National, or replace the EAN event code with a new event code called NEM would require EAS equipment manufacturers to develop software updates to implement the new code in deployed EAS equipment and EAS
equipment in production. Such action also would require EAS Participants to acquire and install a software update to change the code in their EAS device.
The Commission believes a software update imposes minimal costs for small and other entities, and the costs of such an action can be done in the normal course of business. The Commission is aware that some EAS device models in deployment might not be capable of being updated to reflect the new codes, and those devices would have to be replaced. As a possible alternative to a code change for EAN, the Commission asks, for example, whether retaining the EAN and revising its definition would be less costly than replacing it with a new code such as NEM, or whether the revision of the EAN definition produce similar costs as a new code due
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to necessary technical and operational plan changes. The Commission also believes that should EAS event code changes be adopted, it may be possible to coordinate the implementation timeframe to allow a sufficient period of time for EAS Participants to complete the required installation in the normal course of the devices regularly scheduled maintenance and which would help minimize the cost of the software update.
The FEMA recommendation for the Commission to examine methods to update the EAS to support persistent display of alert information and/or persistent notification for emergencies that require immediate public protective actions to mitigate loss of life does not propose any particular methods or define the types of emergency events that would qualify and, therefore, the potential costs and burdens cannot be quantified. It is likely, however, that any action required to effectuate this recommendation would require extensive modifications to the EAS.
Therefore, as an initial matter, the Commission seeks to identify what EAS
event types would or would not qualify and what updates would be required to the EAS to accommodate the persistent display of alert information and/or persistent notification that FEMA
requests. Further, within its recommendation FEMA proposes that alert originators can cancel an alert, however, there is no mechanism in the EAS to cancel a legacy EAS alert, and the Commission therefore seeks comment on whether a proposed rule to effectuate alert cancellation would necessarily require changing the EAS
protocol or some other facet of the EAS
architecture which could increase the costs for small and other impacted entities. The Commission expects that implementing FEMAs persistent alert changes would require significant modifications to EAS devices, downstream processing equipment, cable equipment standards, and other equipment operated in the EAS
ecosystem, and asks for information on the technical feasibility of FEMAs request. In addition, the Commission seeks information on the costs that would be incurred and by whom, in implementing the proposed changes, on what, if any, ancillary costs would be associated with modifying downstream equipment, and whether the costs of implementing FEMAs proposal be would be outweighed by any benefit of keeping the alert available to the public.
In the alternative, the Commission asks commenters to consider whether there are less obtrusive means to achieve FEMAs proposal, such as
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