FY 2024 U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board Management Challenges

December 06, 2023
Report Number: 24-N-0010

We identified four top management challenges for the CSB for fiscal year 2024:

1. Management Challenge (initially identified in fiscal year 2019): Operating effectively without a full board.
   The CSB’s governing board has only three confirmed members, one more than when we highlighted this challenge in fiscal year 2023. The Clean Air Act Amendments of1990 authorized the creation of the CSB and established a board of five members, including a chairperson. That board is responsible for major budgeting decisions, strategic planning and direction, general oversight of the CSB, and approval of investigation reports and studies. The lack of a full board has inhibited the CSB’s mission to conduct investigations to protect people and the environment. A full board ensures that the CSB can function in the event of the loss of one or two board members.
2. Management Challenge (initially identified in fiscal year 2023): Minimizing mission-critical staff vacancies and attrition rates.
   The CSB is working to increase hiring, but vacancies and attrition rates remain a concern. As of the end of September 2023, the CSB’s staffing level was short of fiscal year-end projections by ten full-time equivalents, or about 20 percent. Mission-criticalpositions have remained vacant for more than one year. Despite some improvements, we remain concerned that staffing problems affect the CSB’s ability to carry out day-to-day operations in a timely manner, including deployment to new incidents, completion of investigations, and issuance of reports.
3. Management Challenge (initially identified in fiscal year 2023):Improving cybersecurity.
   The CSB has demonstrated a strong commitment to its cybersecurity program and to addressing the Office of Inspector General’s cybersecurity recommendations to ensure the reliability, availability, and accuracy of CSB data. However, the CSBs hould ensure that it has formalized and documented policies, procedures, and strategies for its information security program and that they are consistently implemented. The risk that vulnerabilities may be exploited is elevated at the CSB’s latest assessed information security level. The CSB’s continued improvement to its cybersecurity posture and increased maturity level is necessary to fully address prior Office of Inspector General recommendations.
4. Management Challenge (new): Promoting ethical conduct.
   In July 2023, the U.S. Office of Government Ethics recommended that the CSB takesteps to improve its ethics program. The CSB is reviewing this recommendation andplans to fully respond by January 2024. A robust ethics program, combined withtraining, can assist employees in recognizing potential ethics concerns.

Report Materials

• Full Report (pdf) (897.25 KB)
• At a Glance (pdf) (261.9 KB)