Submitted by Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Boyd, Office of Marine Environmental Protection

As announced on Maritime Commons Aug. 11, 2017, the Coast Guard is upgrading its legacy Homeport Internet Portal to the new Homeport 2.0. The Office of Marine Environmental Protection’s Vessel Response Plan staff would like to take this opportunity to inform vessel response plan preparers/holders how the transition will impact Homeport’s Vessel Response Plan Express feature.

During the transition period, which lasts August 18 through September 12, legacy Homeport will be operational and available, including VRP Express. However, any changes made to the content of legacy Homeport-VRP Express during this transition period will not be migrated to Homeport 2.0-VRP Express. As a result, VRP Express plan preparers/holders who continue to submit changes directly to legacy Homeport-VRP Express after August 17 will be required to resubmit those changes via Homeport 2.0-VRP Express once it is available September 12. This includes changes made by the Vessel Response Program staff.

The following recommendations are offered to VRP Express users to minimize the amount of duplicated administrative effort during the transition period:

(1) VRP Express users who submit plans and revisions directly to VRP Express are strongly encouraged to postpone submissions until Homeport 2.0-VRP Express is available September 12.

(2) If it is critical that a plan or revisions be submitted during the transition period, please email them directly to the Vessel Response Plan program at vrp@uscg.mil.

The VRP staff will continue to review vessel response plans in the order they are received. However, not all data pertaining to such submissions will be entered into VRP Express immediately. Low-priority submissions may not be reflected until after September 12. Submissions deemed high-priority (at the discretion of the VRP staff) may in some cases continue to be entered into legacy Homeport-VRP Express during the transition period.

The VRP staff continues to communicate with the Homeport 2.0 transition team and will inform you of any changes impacting VRP Express as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience as we work together through this Homeport 2.0 website transition. If you have any questions or comments about VRP Express, please send them to vrp@uscg.mil.

This blog is not a replacement or substitute for the formal posting of regulations and updates or existing processes for receiving formal feedback of the same. Links provided on this blog will direct the reader to official source documents, such as the Federal Register, Homeport and the Code of Federal Regulations. These documents remain the official source for regulatory information published by the Coast Guard.