U.S. Department of Labor Announces Upgraded Data System to Assist Mine Operators in Ensuring Compliance with Mine Safety and Health Regulations

WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has completed a major upgrade to its primary data system – the Mine Data Retrieval System (MDRS) – bringing increased functionality and more intuitive navigation to this widely used feature.

The MDRS offers a variety of tools to help operators monitor their compliance with MSHA regulations. The system provides access to comprehensive mine location, status, ownership, employment, production, accident/inspection/violations history, and health sampling data. Additionally, MSHA's compliance assistance calculators – Pattern of Violations (POV), Significant and Substantial Rate, and Violations per Inspection Day – can be accessed here. The MDRS gateway is the most visited page on the agency's website, www.msha.gov.

All the standard reports previously provided are still available, but now MSHA-wide statistical reports providing real-time data are also tied to the MDRS. Furthermore, the new system provides advanced search capabilities where users can select entire industries, multiple mines, and ownership groups. The platform also allows users to export datasets into either Excel or PDF for further analysis.

"The new Mine Data Retrieval System will simplify the process for operators and others to obtain key data points and compare the safety of their mines with industry standards," said MSHA Assistant Secretary David G. Zatezalo.

The upgrade has been in the works for more than a year and was guided in part by input from stakeholders, including mine operators and associations, who participated via three webinars. A beta version was run side-by-side with the original platform on the agency homepage as MSHA gathered feedback and refined the system.

The new MDRS is now the exclusive gateway to this real-time data, posted prominently on www.msha.gov and available through this link.

MSHA will continue to seek feedback and improve the MDRS to assist all stakeholders and the general public in monitoring the safety and health of the nation's miners.

The Office of Compliance Initiatives (OCI) is part of the Department of Labor's Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, and fosters a compliance assistance culture within the Department designed to complement its ongoing enforcement efforts. This office focuses on helping enforcement agencies more effectively use online resources to deliver information and compliance assistance to help the American people. In August 2018, OCI launched Worker.gov and Employer.gov to provide information about workers' rights and the responsibilities of job creators toward their workers.