Four Things in the EO 14421 Webinar That Aren't in the RFI
By Patrick Miller
The Department of Energy (DOE) held its public webinar on the Executive Order (EO) 14421 request for information (RFI) on September 16. Most of the hour restated the notice, but four things came up that aren't in the RFI text at all. The one with the shortest fuse is that a phone call to DOE about this proceeding puts a memo in the public docket, and you're the one who has to write it.
Overview
DOE held its informational webinar on the EO 14421 RFI on September 16, 2026, and I've spent some time with the transcript since. Most of the hour walks the notice section by section, which is what an informational webinar is supposed to do, and I wrote up the notice itself when it published. Four items came up that I couldn't find anywhere in the RFI text, and this post is only about those. One caveat before any of it, which is that the transcript DOE published is machine-generated and garbled in places, so I'm reporting what was said rather than quoting it.
Talking to DOE Puts Things on the Record
Andrew McClure, who directs DOE's Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), said that because this proceeding includes a noticed public meeting, DOE is applying its permit-but-disclose ex parte guidance. He didn't name the exact document, but it appears to be DOE's Guidance on Ex Parte Communications, issued by the Office of the General Counsel and published at 74 FR 52795 in October 2009. A noticed public meeting is one of the triggers listed there, so the September 16 webinar is probably what pulled this proceeding in.
What that guidance requires is fairly specific. An in-person meeting or telephone call between DOE and an interested party will require a memorandum memorializing the meeting to be placed in the public docket, summarizing the issues discussed and listing the attendees and the date. The interested party has to complete that memorandum and submit it to DOE within one week of the meeting. DOE reserves the right to supplement it, or to demand that the filer do so if DOE thinks something important was left out or characterized incorrectly. Memoranda go to an ex parte mailbox at the Office of the General Counsel rather than to the docket directly. The guidance also covers something the webinar skipped, which is that documents handed to DOE employees during one of these meetings go into the record, and a party that doesn't want them there shouldn't provide them.
McClure added that DOE's role in such meetings is primarily to listen and ask clarifying questions, and that a private meeting doesn't create a private compliance determination or preferred access to the decision-making process. A call to DOE goes on the public record the same way a filed comment does and the write-up is your responsibility (not DOE’s). Anyone on your team planning to phone DOE instead of filing should be aware of this.
No Determination From the Nameplate
DOE made this point twice, once as guidance on the kind of evidence Sections B and C are after, and again in the closing list of things not to do. The closing version was that respondents shouldn't assume DOE can determine product design, origin, ownership, control, or supply chain risk from a brand name or a headquarters location alone. The RFI doesn't say any of this. Most of the inventory work I've seen starts with vendor name and corporate domicile, because those are the fields an asset record already carries. DOE is asking about design, ownership, control, and supply chain facts that those records mostly don't hold.
Preserve the Facts on Deals Already in Motion
For transactions in flight, DOE advised stakeholders to preserve the relevant transaction facts and put practical information into the docket. The facts it named were timing, contracting milestones, equipment status, dependencies, replacement options, reliability constraints, and possible mitigation. DOE was also clear that the RFI doesn't decide any individual transaction, and that future procedures may address licensing, mitigation, or phased compliance without DOE saying today what those procedures will contain. If you're mid-procurement on something that might land in scope, that's a reason to capture the facts now, while they're still easy to reconstruct.
Section D as Four Stages, With a Caveat
DOE presented Section D, the existing equipment and mitigation questions, as four stages. Inventory covers the equipment fields DOE listed, things like manufacturer, model, production facility, firmware version, connectivity, support status, and replacement lead time. Analyze covers origin, ownership, remote access, reliability, safety, replacement availability, and continuity of essential service. Mitigate runs from isolation and monitoring through disconnection, replacement, removal, and firmware or vendor changes. Verify covers reporting, testing, inspection, attestation, independent assessment, and recordkeeping. DOE said directly that these stages are an organizing framework for the questions, and not an announcement that it has adopted a required sequence or that it requires every listed data element, so that caveat has to travel with the frame anywhere it gets reused.
Written responses are due October 9. The ex parte guidance, though, applies now rather than at the deadline.
