PHMSA Portal System

The Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration
(PHMSA), an Operating Administration within the Department of Transportation (DOT), is responsible for
protecting people and the environment by advancing the safe transportation of energy and other hazardous
materials essential to the daily lives of Americans. To do this, PHMSA establishes national policy, sets and
enforces standards, educates, and conducts research to prevent pipeline or hazardous material incidents. To
meet these goals, PHMSA must maintain effective communication in order to prepare the public and first
responders and reduce the impact if an incident does occur. The PHMSA Portal System (PPS) helps
PHMSA accomplishes this by automating the sharing of information while protecting privacy by
implementing strict safeguards that protect against unauthorized access to and unintentional loss of
information. PPS is used to manage access to various PHMSA systems and requires information about
authorized users and creates a record of their permissions and access history to provide appropriate levels of
access. This Privacy Impact Assessment was conducted because PPS collects personally identifiable
information (PII) from members of the public (e.g. State Partners and Pipeline Operators that PHMSA
regulates) in order to provide them with access to PHMSA IT systems.