§ 3007.10 - Submission of non-public materials under seal.

§ 3007.10 Submission of non-public materials under seal.

(a) Non-public materials shall not be filed electronically pursuant to § 3001.9 of this chapter, but shall be filed in sealed envelopes clearly marked “Confidential. Do Not Post on Web.” The person filing the non-public materials shall submit two copies consisting, where practicable, of two paper hard copies as well as two copies in easily usable electronic form such as compact discs (CDs) or digital video discs (DVDs) of the non-public materials which shall also be clearly marked “Confidential. Do Not Post on Web.” Spreadsheets submitted in electronic form shall display the formulas used, their links to related spreadsheets, and shall not be password protected. All workpapers or data shall be submitted in a form, and be accompanied by sufficient explanation and documentation to allow them to be replicated using a publicly available PC application. Each page of any paper hard copy non-public materials submitted shall be clearly marked as non-public.

(b) The person submitting the non-public materials shall also file an electronic public (redacted) copy of the non-public materials pursuant to § 3001.9 of this chapter. The electronic public (redacted) copy of the materials which are not spreadsheets, data files, or programs must be submitted in a searchable electronic format, but need not be submitted in its native format. As part of its publicly available electronic filing, the Postal Service must appropriately redact materials that contain both public and non-public information. For example, the Postal Service may not identify a whole page or a whole table as non-public materials if the page or table contains both public and non-public information, but must redact only the information it claims to be non-public. If practicable, the Postal Service shall sequentially number each page of the materials identified as non-public.

(c) The Postal Service or third party shall use the graphical redaction (blackout) method for all redacted materials. Should the Postal Service wish to use any other method, it must state with particularity the competitive harm associated with use of the graphical redaction method to justify the use of any other method, and indicate the number of lines or pages removed at each redaction.

(d) The Postal Service or third party shall mark each page, item, and thing, or portion thereof, that it seeks to protect from disclosure in a manner reasonably calculated to alert custodians to the confidential nature of the information or materials.