STATEMENT OF POLICY OF THE SERC BOARD OF DIRECTORS REGARDING THE CONFIDENTIALITY OF DATA SUBMITTED BY SERC MEMBERS
The SERC Reliability Corporation (“SERC”) is a voluntary organization whose purpose is to augment the reliability and adequacy of bulk power supply in the 13 States served by its member systems. SERC has more than 50 Regular and Associate Members who comprise all segments of the electric utility industry, including investor-owned utilities, cooperatives, municipals, federal and state systems, independent power producers and power marketers.
SERC has in place various Committees and Subcommittees, whose members are employees of SERC Members, to perform the functions necessary to accomplish its purposes. In order for SERC to perform those functions, it is necessary for its Members to provide to the Committees and Subcommittees certain data and other information, some of which is of a sensitive commercial nature that Members customarily hold confidential and do not disclose publicly.
SERC intends that its processes be open and inclusive, using the skills and perspectives of all its Members. In order to do that SERC believes it is necessary and desirable to treat as confidential any information provided to it by its Members for use in carrying out SERC functions and designated as such by its Members.
Therefore, SERC will put into place a process that will assure materials submitted to it for use in performing its functions will be used only for SERC purposes and will also be held confidential from release to third parties without written agreement from the Member providing those materials. The procedures will be applicable to SERC Staff, employees of SERC Members who are on SERC Committees and Subcommittees and therefore have access to confidential information, SERC vendors and SERC itself. It is the view of the SERC Board of Directors that adopting a process such as that described will allow SERC to perform the activities necessary to accomplish its purposes while providing assurance to its Members that furnishing competitively sensitive information to SERC will not result in a competitive disadvantage to the Members.