U.S. Department of Homeland Security 
Washington, DC 20472 


Grant Programs Directorate Information Bulletin 
No. 314 
May 1, 2009 


TO: 
All State Administrative Agency Heads 

All State Administrative Agency Points of Contact 

All State Homeland Security Directors 

FROM: 
W. Ross Ashley, III 

Assistant Administrator 

Grant Programs Directorate 

Federal Emergency Management Agency 

William F. Flynn 
Director 
Protective Security Coordination Division 
National Protection and Programs Directorate 


SUBJECT: 
Availability of PCII-notated Buffer Zone Plans and Vulnerability Reduction 
Purchasing Plans 

As a part of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Buffer Zone Protection Program 
(BZPP) your state has voluntarily submitted Buffer Zone Plans (BZPs) and Vulnerability 
Reduction Purchasing Plans (VRPPs) to DHS. If requested by SAA’s, these BZPs and VRPPs 
were validated as Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII). This Information Bulletin 
(IB) serves to notify SAA’s that, for those BZPs and VRPPs which were submitted and validated 
as PCII, these documents have been marked as PCII and are now available for SAA’s to 
download from the FEMA Preparedness Portal. The Portal is located at 
https://preparednessportal.dhs.gov/. 

All validated and marked PCII documents must be handled and disseminated according to the 
safeguarding and handling requirements for PCII and are protected from release under the 
Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and State and local disclosure laws in accordance 
with the Critical Infrastructure Information Act and its implementing Regulation (Final Rule 6 

C.F.R 29.) Non-PCII drafts and copies of the BZPs and VRPPs retained by State and local 
submitters, however, may be public records subject to disclosure under respective State and local 
disclosure laws. It is important that the State and local submitters have access to PCII marked 
copies of the information submitted. The marking includes a unique PCII submission 
identification number and a cover sheet. 
Once downloaded from the FEMA Preparedness Portal, the PCII-marked BZPs and VRPPs 
should be distributed to the appropriate organizations within your state to replace any unmarked 
drafts or copies of these documents. These unmarked documents will be required to be handled 

www.fema.gov 


in accordance with your State records retention laws. As a reminder, the PCII marked documents 
must be handled in accordance with the PCII requirements and may only be distributed to 
individuals authorized to access PCII. 

For more information on the Buffer Zone Protection Program or PCII-related matters, please 
contact Robert Mooney, Buffer Zone Protection Program Manager, at (703) 235-5753 or the 
PCII Program Office at (202) 360-3023 or pcii-info@dhs.gov. 

Should you have any questions regarding this IB, please contact your FEMA Program Analyst or 
the Centralized Scheduling and Information Desk (CSID) at 1-800-368-6498 or 
ASKcsid@dhs.gov. 

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