 July                                                         VPP Stakeholder Meeting     Day-After Report  

On July 17, 2017 in the DOL Frances Perkins Building Great Hall, Directorate of Cooperative and State Programs (DCSP) hosted a successful Stakeholder meeting on the recalibration of OSHA's Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP).  Prior to the event there were a more than a half-a-dozen write-ups from industry press highlighting interest in the Stakeholder meeting. These included Safety and Health Magazine, Safety Law Matters, and Industrial Safety and Hygiene News. A total of 145 attendees preregistered and 125 people attended. 
Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary Thomas Galassi welcomed the attendees, including members of the Voluntary Protection Programs Participant Association (VPPPA) Board, and recognized VPP's 35-year anniversary along with the newly framed VPP STAR Flag. This flag was flown on Space Shuttle STS 93 in July of 1999. 
A diverse group of attendees actively shared with OSHA ideas to help OSHA reshape VPP so that it continues to represent safety and health excellence, leverages partner resources, further recognizes the successes of long-term participants, and supports smart program growth.
Some common themes included comments relating to areas already being discussed by OSHA. These include reshaping processes or policies relating to:
   * Long-term participants with mature safety and health management systems who are committed to the VPP safety culture;
   * Increasing participation in the VPP Corporate Option; 
   * The use of Special Government Employees (SGEs) and their expertise to supplement safety and health efforts and to help reduce the burden on OSHA staff.
      
Additional recommendations included procedural changes for greater efficiency and to take advantage of existing structures:
   * Improving communication and better publicizing of VPP (both inside and outside DOL)
         o One attendee shared an elevator discussion with a DOL (ETA) staff member on the way to lunch.  The DOL staffer replied:  "What's VPP?"
         o From just the publicity around the Stakeholder meeting, DCSP received inquiries from companies requesting information on how to participate in VPP.
   * Shorten the time for New Approvals and Reapprovals
         o Alter/Simplify the Reapproval form/process
   * Increasing OSHA's use of technology to work smarter
         o Using technology to automate annual self-evaluation reports for sites and financial disclosure reports for SGEs.
            
Stakeholders also indicated that improvements to VPP should not come at the expense of enforcement.
DCSP is still pulling together detailed information from the transcript and planning has already begun for the follow-up stakeholder event that will take place immediately prior to the VPPPA National Conference the week of August 28, 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
