Disruptions to Communications

In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) adopts final rules to provide direct, read-only access to Network Outage Reporting System (NORS) and Disaster Outage Reporting System (DIRS) filings to agencies of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, tribal nations, territories, and Federal Government that have official duties that make them directly responsible for emergency management and first responder support functions, including by: Allowing these agencies to share NORS and DIRS information with agency officials, first responders, and other individuals with a "need to know" who cannot directly access NORS and DIRS and yet play a vital role in preparing for, or responding to, events that threaten public safety; allowing participating agencies to publicly disclose aggregated and anonymized information derived from NORS or DIRS filings; conditioning a participating agency's direct access to NORS and DIRS filings on their agreement and ability to preserve the confidentiality of the filings and not disclose them absent a finding by the Commission allowing the disclosure; and establishing an application process that would grant eligible agencies access to NORS and DIRS after those agencies certify to certain requirements related to maintaining the confidentiality of the data and the security of the databases.