PUC working group hears Canadian regulator on safety culture; survey finds trust the main barrier to non‑punitive sharing

Carolina, the working‑group facilitator convened by the California Public Utilities Commission, opened the session by saying the group would focus on mechanisms to support open information flow and the confidentiality and non‑punitive mechanisms that other high‑reliability sectors use.

Dr. Claudine Bradley, technical lead for human and organizational factors at the Canada Energy Regulator, described the CER’s stepped approach to safety culture: issuing a public "statement on safety culture," publishing indicators and learning tools, offering e‑learning modules and workshops, and experimenting with non‑evaluative dialogues between regulator and companies. "We did not want it to turn into a compliance activity," Bradley said, explaining the CER chose not to codify safety culture into prescriptive regulation and instead sought to "articulate our expectations" and build trust through outreach and demonstration.

Carolina presented the working‑group’s survey of 11 respondents from PUC staff, investor‑owned utilities, interveners and anonymous replies. She said respondents reported moderate conceptual understanding of non‑punitive reporting but significantly lower confidence that information would be treated without punitive consequence. "Trust came through as a single point of failure," Carolina summarized, noting respondents cited unclear boundaries between enforcement duties and confidential learning, fear of reinterpretation of shared data, and resource uncertainty as primary barriers.

Utility representatives on the call signaled interest in a collaborative path forward. Melvin Brown of Southern California Edison emphasized the importance of building trust before information sharing: "non‑punitive sharing ... without fear, without blame," he said. Lauren Godinez of SoCalGas and other IOU representatives proposed beginning work on a joint safety culture policy statement that the utilities and the commission could review together and recommended forming a task force to draft a concept paper for safety reporting systems.

Carolina told the group the working plan will separate discussion of formal safety reporting system design (to be handled by a dedicated task force) from the broader issues of how culture assessment information is interpreted and used. She also noted an upcoming safety culture assessment for the jurisdiction beginning August 1 and said the group will onboard a facilitator and revisit the annual work plan at the next quarterly meeting.

The session closed with an acknowledgement of the tradeoffs participants raised: clear, predictable boundaries and leadership modeling were repeatedly named as confidence builders, while respondents warned against blanket secrecy. The working group committed to continued dialogue, further stakeholder engagement (including unions), and the formation of a task force to draft the concept paper on non‑punitive reporting.