On November 29 and 30, 2011, FERC hosted a technical conference
to explore the progress made on addressing concerns raised at the
February 8, 2011 Reliability Technical Conference. The first day of
the conference focused on the effectiveness of NERC's
prioritization tool and addressed issues relating to the NERC
compliance and enforcement process. With regard to FERC's
directives, the panelists stated that they need greater clarity,
more relaxed time frames, and a streamlined system that encourages
input from industry members. FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff asked
the panelists for suggestions on how FERC can accelerate the
development of robust standards that minimize the risk of outages.
In response, the panelists suggested that FERC Staff participate on
taskforces, offer written input while reliability standards are
being developed, focus audits on issues FERC finds most important,
and focus directives on high-level, instead of specific,
issues.
