In 2008, as readers know, the CPSC was granted extensive new regulatory authorities and mandates to on consumer product safety issues through the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA).   So what’s next? The Commission recently completed a strategic planning process intended to help align resources with agency priorities to meet what it sees as the key challenges moving into the next decade.

The CPSC is for only a short time longer accepting comments on a new draft of its 2011–2016 strategic plan.  As globalization and technological advances expand the range of products on the market, the risks and opportunities associated with these advancements make the challenge of overseeing and regulating the thousands of product types all the more complex, says CPSC. Some risks include the growth of global supply chains that assemble products across a vast web of interconnected geographies, the difficulty of identifying product hazards among hundreds of thousands of containers entering US ports, and the new ways in which the public receives product information through the Internet and other media sources.

The revised plan details CPSC efforts to set consumer product safety priorities, efficiently identify and respond to product hazards, improve public outreach efforts, and raise awareness of potential product risks. The plan grew out of interviews and focus groups with 76 internal and external stakeholders to obtain feedback on the CPSC’s performance and how the agency can improve in the future (these individuals and groups included a cross-section of diverse stakeholders: consumer organizations, industry associations, the CPSC headquarters staff, the CPSC field staff, other federal agencies, and states’ attorneys general).

One goal of the plan is to find ways the CPSC can reduce the number of unsafe imported products entering the U.S. marketplace, such as by strengthening its bilateral and multilateral relationships with foreign regulators and manufacturers. The draft also states that CPSC wants to improve its response time for removing hazardous products from the market.

A third major aspect of the plan relies on the new public product safety database, which is scheduled for launch in March 2011.  The database will allow consumers and others to submit reports of alleged harm in a Web-based, publicly search-able format to the CPSC. The database is to be designed with the needs of multiple types of users in mind. Creation of the database is being guided by a series of public hearings, focus groups, and joint workshops with CPSC staff to determine how manufacturers, retailers, and consumer advocates expect to use the database and how they think it should work. The new system is supposed to make it simple for consumers, industry representatives, health officials, and any other member of the public to report safety incidents and view publicly reported incident information that the CPSC has amassed on a particular consumer product safety concern.

We reported earlier this year on the notice of proposed rulemaking that would establish a publicly available consumer product safety information database. As we have noted at MassTortDefense, CPSC still needs to develop a rigorous and timely process for addressing false and inaccurate reports– those that will scare consumers, harm business, and generate no additional safety gains. The commission needs to employ means to prevent the submission of fraudulent reports of harm while not discouraging the submission of valid reports. CPSC also needs to think about specific disclaimers it should make with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in the public database, and not put any governmental imprimatur on voluntary data that has not been verified. A sufficient time period should also be allocated for manufacturers to evaluate and respond to any proposed report.