Regulatory Approved Standards have been approved by FERC or other regulators and are subject to financial penalties.
	NERC BOT-approved Standards are voluntary and considered good utility practice. They are subject to revisions in order to be approved as mandatory, enforceable Standards
	Each Region has a regional Standards Development Process to develop implement and approve regional standards. If these Standards are approved by the Region’s Board of Directors they are considered good utility practice. The purpose of a regional standard is to deal with a physical difference in the bulk power system of a region, or because of a need for more stringent requirements for a region. Regional Standards may be submitted to NERC and, if approved by NERC’s Board of Trustees, are submitted to regulators (FERC in the US) to become mandatory.
	Regional Standards that have not been approved as mandatory may be included in the annual Regional compliance program but are not subject to penalty.

MAPPCOR requested an interpretation of this Regional Standard. MRO's reponse is included in Response to MAPPCOR.

All persons who are directly and materially affected by the reliability of the North American bulk power systems shall be permitted to request a formal interpretation of a standard. If a question regarding the interpretation of a Standard were sent to the MRO, it would be forwarded to NERC for formal interpretation.

Interpretation requests are sent to the standards process manager explaining the specific circumstances surrounding the request and what clarifications are required as applied to those circumstances. The detailed process steps can be found on the NERC website.

The MRO follows the definitions posted in the NERC Glossary of Terms Used in Reliability Standards. NERC's Definition of Terms may also be found at this location.

Entities are responsible for all requirements that match the functions for which they are registered. NERC has provided the Functional Model-Violation Risk Factors Matrix which lists all regulatory approved Requirements and their associated functions.

The MRO follows the NERC Statement for Compliance Registry Criteria to determine which entities are on the Regional Registry. This document describes how NERC will identify organizations that may be candidates for registration and assign them to the compliance registry. Definitions of the function types are included.

Regional guidelines and procedures are established by MRO Committees comprise of industry members. These procedures and guidelines may be referenced during the on-going standards development process to create mandatory Standards.

Although the guidelines developed by these groups are not subject to penalty, they are considered good utility practice and should be adhered to by the Registered Entities of the MRO.

Data retention is a compliance element.  A Standard will include data retention if one or more Requirements have specifications for data and/or documentation retention. This will include a timeframe for retaining that information. If an Entity installs new equipment or systems, the documentation would begin at the time of installation and be kept for the timeframe stated in the Standard. Individual Requirements may state specific information be included in documentation. For a compliance audit, the MRO has developed Preparing for Compliance which contains information regarding compliance program development, documentation of evidence, and preparing the data for review at an audit.