CSB’s 5-year strategic plan updates agency’s mission and vision

Washington – The Chemical Safety Board recently released its “blueprint for CSB priorities” – a five-year strategic plan outlining the methods the agency expects to use to keep the country safe from future chemical disasters.

CSB board members, staff and other stakeholders collaborated for the past 18 months to “change the focus of the agency’s mission and vision statements,” CSB Chair Vanessa Sutherland wrote in the introduction to the plan. CSB set three strategic goals, each with performance measurements to track progress:

• Prevent recurrence of significant chemical incidents through independent investigations.
• Advocate safety and achieve change through recommendations, outreach and education.
• Create and maintain an engaged, high-performing workforce.

“It is a living document that will provide flexibility in executing the mission as circumstances change,” Sutherland wrote, adding that her goals “are to promote a nimble agency focused on reaching broader audiences, to deliver innovative and persuasive safety products that help drive chemical safety improvements, and to become a premier Federal resource for chemical safety knowledge.”

The strategic plan begins next year and runs through 2021.

CSB is an independent federal agency that issues safety recommendations to facility managers, industry organizations, labor groups and regulatory agencies. At press time, CSB had deployed investigators to 148 chemical incidents and published 92 investigation reports, case studies, safety bulletins and hazard studies since beginning operations in 1998.