Scope

Establishments with 250 or more employees that are currently required to keep OSHA injury and illness records, and establishments with 20-249 employees that are classified in certain industries with historically high rates of occupational injuries and illnesses, must electronically submit information from OSHA Forms 300 (Log of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses), 300A (Summary of Work-Related Injuries and Illnesses), and 301 (Injury and Illness Incident Report). Covered establishments with 20-249 employees must electronically submit information from OSHA Form 300A.

Note that the following OSHA-approved State Plans have not yet adopted the requirement to submit injury and illness reports electronically: CA, MD, MN, SC, UT, WA and WY. Establishments in these states are not currently required to submit their summary data through the Injury Tracking Application (ITA). Similarly, state and local government establishments in IL, ME, NJ, and NY are not currently required to submit their data through the ITA. Contact information for each of the State Plans can be found at https://www.osha.gov/dcsp/osp/states.html.

Compliance deadlines

The requirement became effective on January 1, 2017. The new reporting requirements will be phased in over two years. In 2017, all covered establishments must submit information from their completed 2016 Form 300A by December 15, 2017. In 2018, covered establishments with 250 or more employees must submit information from all completed 2017 forms (300A, 300, and 301) by July 1, 2018, and covered establishments with 20-249 employees must submit information from their completed 2017 Form 300A by July 1, 2018. Beginning in 2019 and every year thereafter, covered establishments must submit the information by March 2.

How electronic submission works

OSHA will provide a secure website that offers three options for data submission. First, users will be able to manually enter data into a web form. Second, users will be able to upload a CSV file to process single or multiple establishments at the same time. Last, users of automated recordkeeping systems will have the ability to transmit data electronically via an API (application programming interface). OSHA will provide status updates and related information as it becomes available.

Update

OSHA intends to issue a separate proposal to reconsider, revise, or remove other provisions of the prior final rule and to seek comment on those provisions in that separate proposal.  There is no further change to the underlying rule requirements or the requirements in the preamble. A notice of proposed rulemaking to reconsider, revise, or remove portions of the rule is expected in 2018.

History

On May 12, 2016, OSHA published a final rule (81 FR 29624) with an effective date of January 1, 2017, for the final rule’s electronic reporting requirements. Under these requirements, certain employers were required to electronically submit 2016 Form 300A data to OSHA by July 1, 2017. On June 28, 2017, the Labor Department proposed to delay the initial deadline for electronic submission of 2016 Form 300A data from July 1, 2017, to December 1, 2017, to provide the new administration the opportunity to review the new electronic reporting requirements prior to their implementation and allow affected entities sufficient time to familiarize themselves with the electronic reporting system, which was not made available until August 1, 2017 (82 FR 29261).

On August 14, 2017, OSHA received an alert from the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) in the Department of Homeland Security that indicated a potential compromise of user information for OSHA’s Injury Tracking Application (ITA). The ITA was taken off-line as a precaution. A complete scan was conducted by the National Information Technology Center (NITC). The NITC confirmed that there was no breach of the data in the ITA and that no information in the ITA was compromised. Public access to the ITA was restored on August 25, 2017.

In order to remain consistent with the intent to provide a four-month window, OSHA added two weeks to the proposed compliance date of December 1, 2017, to compensate for the time employers were unable to access the ITA in August. With the launch of the electronic reporting system on August 1, and the revised deadline of December 15, employers still had four months (August, September, October, November, and part of December) to submit their data.