Commerce develops Section 232 exclusion portal

System to go live later this year or early next year will replace the Regulations.gov filing process.    The Commerce Department has developed an online portal that will replace the use of the federal rulemaking portal for people submitting exclusion requests, objections to exclusion requests, rebuttals and surrebuttals in connection with Section 232 duties or quotas on steel and aluminum, Commerce announced Monday.
   Commerce plans to transition to the new portal “sometime in late 2018 to early 2019,” after the completion of testing and any final updates, the agency said.
   The Commerce Department on Dec. 6 and 7 will host public testing of the Commerce 232 portal.
   The new system will allow parties to more easily view all exclusion request, objection, rebuttal and surrebuttal documents in one web-based system and allow better collaboration between government agencies processing 232 exclusion requests, Commerce said.
   “As much as possible, the Department of Commerce seeks input from the public on the new Commerce 232 portal prior to it going live and believes allowing parties that will use the new portal to test it and provide feedback to the development team prior to implementation will be beneficial to both the department and the public users of the system,” Commerce said.
   When the portal is ready for implementation, Commerce will publish a rule making changes to the 232 exclusion process, Commerce said.
   Commerce recommends that parties selected to participate in the public testing day bring examples of past exclusions, objections to exclusions, rebuttals or surrebuttals they may have submitted or intend to submit in the near future to use in the testing environment, but such documents aren’t required to participate in the testing, Commerce said.
   The public testing will be limited to 36 people. There is no fee to participate in the public testing.