[Federal Register Volume 85, Number 39 (Thursday, February 27, 2020)]
[Notices]
[Pages 11449-11450]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2020-03917]


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DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

[Docket No. NHTSA-2019-0122]


Notice of Request for Comments: Drug-Impaired Driving Criminal 
Justice Evaluation Tool

AGENCY: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 
Department of Transportation (DOT).

ACTION: Request for comment.

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SUMMARY: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is 
engaged in numerous activities to reduce drug-impaired driving, 
including conducting research and developing tools, resources, and 
promising practices to assist States and local communities. To aid in 
evaluating efforts to address drug-impaired driving, NHTSA has 
developed the Drug-Impaired Driving Criminal Justice Evaluation Tool. 
The tool is designed to assist with identifying program strengths and 
opportunities for improvements. After asking two organizations to test 
the model to explore weaknesses and identify areas for refinement, 
NHTSA now wishes to learn from other practitioners about any 
improvements and refinements that could add value to the tool. This 
notice requests comment on the completeness and usability of the tool.

DATES: Comments are due by April 27, 2020. See the SUPPLEMENTARY 
INFORMATION section on ``Public Participation,'' below, for more 
information about written comments.

ADDRESSES: You may submit comments identified by the DOT docket above 
using any of the following methods:
    Electronic Submissions: Go to https://www.regulations.gov. Follow 
the online instructions for submitting comments.
    Mail: Docket Management Facility, U.S. Department of 
Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building Ground Floor, 
Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001.
    Hand Delivery: West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New 
Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET, Monday 
through Friday, except Federal holidays.
    Fax: 1-202-493-2251
    Instructions: For detailed instructions on submitting comments, see 
the Public Participation heading of the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION 
section of this document. Note that all comments received will be 
posted without change to https://www.regulations.gov, including any 
personal information provided.
    Privacy Act: Except for Confidential Information, as discussed 
below, all comments received into the docket will be made public in 
their entirety. The comments will be searchable by the name of the 
individual submitting the comment (or signing the comment, if submitted 
on behalf of an association, business, labor union, etc.). You should 
not include information in your comment that you do not want to be made 
public. You may review the DOT's complete Privacy Act Statement at 
https://www.transportation.gov/privacy.
    Docket: For access to the docket to read background documents or 
comments received, go to https://www.regulations.gov or to the street 
address listed above. Follow the online instructions for accessing the 
docket.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Please contact Jennifer Davidson at 
[email protected] or (202) 366-2163.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Drug-Impaired Driving Criminal Justice 
Evaluation Tool is designed to allow State, local, territorial, and 
tribal governments to assess and strengthen their drug-impaired driving 
programs. The tool consists of questions divided into ten sections 
representative of critical criminal justice and programmatic elements. 
The categories include law enforcement, prosecution, judiciary, 
community supervision, toxicology, treatment, emergency medical 
services, data, legislation, and program and communications. The Excel 
file, which can be downloaded from NHTSA's website at https://www.nhtsa.gov/DUIDtool, allows individual sections to be sent to the 
appropriate organizational representative for completion.
    The Drug-Impaired Driving Criminal Justice Evaluation Tool allows 
users to assess their existing programs to reduce drug-impaired driving 
through a systematic review of activities, policies, and procedures 
being implemented. The completed tool is intended purely for the use of 
State, local, territorial or tribal governments for self-assessment and 
will not be collected by NHTSA. The tool can help jurisdictions 
identify gaps in their drug-impaired driving programs, inform 
strategies to strengthen the programs, and help track progress over 
time against baseline results. The tool includes links to best 
practices and resources for strengthening drug-impaired driving 
programs.
    The Drug-Impaired Driving Criminal Justice Evaluation Tool is 
designed to be completed in consultation with representatives most 
familiar with the relevant program areas, either individually or via 
group discussion (e.g., with the State DWI Task Force). The tool can be 
completed in its entirety for a comprehensive program evaluation of the 
criminal justice system's ability to respond to drug-impaired driving, 
or where appropriate to assess one component of the criminal justice 
system.
    The evaluation is based on the Capability Maturity Model, used by 
other Federal agencies, to develop and refine an organization's 
software or program development process. The model utilizes a five-step 
hierarchy of program growth and maturity. The Capability Maturity Model 
can serve as a benchmark and be repeated to show progress over time. 
After answering the questions for each subsection of the tool, raters 
note their program strength level for each component using a defined 0-
5 point scale. Scores are tabulated on the final ``Scoring'' sheet to 
provide an overall view of program performance for each component and 
to compare against baseline results for repeat evaluations. Planning 
sections are included for each issue area following ratings to document 
program strengths, opportunities, and goals for improvement.
    NHTSA conducted a limited test of the evaluation tool to obtain 
feedback on how to enhance and improve its value. Since making 
refinements recommended during testing, NHTSA is interested in learning 
more about potential end-users' impressions of the tool.

[[Page 11450]]

    We believe the questions below may help guide commenters in 
developing their submissions.
    1. Is the information provided adequate to understand how to use 
the tool?
    2. Is the format easy to use?
    3. Are there other resources that should be included?
    4. Will this tool be beneficial to State, local, territorial and 
tribal drug-impaired driving criminal justice programs?
    5. What changes are needed to make the tool more beneficial?

Public Participation:

How do I prepare and submit comments?

    Your comments must be written and in English. To ensure that your 
comments are filed correctly in the docket, please include the docket 
number of this document in your comments.
    Please submit one copy (two copies if submitting by mail or hand 
delivery) of your comments, including any attachments, to the docket 
following the instructions given above under ADDRESSES. Please note, if 
you are submitting comments electronically as a PDF (Adobe) file, we 
ask that the documents submitted be scanned using an Optical Character 
Recognition (OCR) process, thus allowing the agency to search and copy 
certain portions of your submissions.

How do I submit confidential business information?

    Any submissions containing Confidential Information must be 
delivered to NHTSA in the following manner:
     Submitted in a sealed envelope marked ``confidential 
treatment requested'';
     Accompanied by an index listing the document(s) or 
information that the submitter would like the Departments to withhold. 
The index should include information such as numbers used to identify 
the relevant document(s) or information, document title and 
description, and relevant page numbers and/or section numbers within a 
document; and
     Submitted with a statement explaining the submitter's 
grounds for objecting to disclosure of the information to the public.
    NHTSA also requests that submitters of Confidential Information 
include a non-confidential version (either redacted or summarized) of 
those confidential submissions in the public docket. In the event that 
the submitter cannot provide a non-confidential version of its 
submission, NHTSA requests that the submitter post a notice in the 
docket stating that it has provided NHTSA with Confidential 
Information. Should a submitter fail to docket either a non-
confidential version of its submission or to post a notice that 
Confidential Information has been provided, we will note the receipt of 
the submission on the docket, with the submitter's organization or name 
(to the degree permitted by law) and the date of submission.

Will the Agency consider late comments?

    NHTSA will consider all comments received before the close of 
business on the comment closing date indicated above under DATES. To 
the extent possible, the agency will also consider comments received 
after that date.

How can I read the comments submitted by other people?

    You may read the comments received at the address given above under 
COMMENTS. The hours of the docket are indicated above in the same 
location. You may also see the comments on the internet, identified by 
the docket number at the heading of this notice, at https://www.regulations.gov.

    Authority: 23 U.S.C. 403(b).

    Issued in Washington, DC.
Nanda Narayanan Srinivasan,
Associate Administrator, Research and Program Development.
[FR Doc. 2020-03917 Filed 2-26-20; 8:45 am]
 BILLING CODE 4910-59-P