The new system will be installed on Inspectors’ Portable Application for Laptops, or IPAL. It will prompt a pop-up message when a violation is entered electronically that meets the criteria for review as a potential flagrant violation, indicating that the inspector must complete a special assessment review form.

Once the warning has been displayed, the system will automatically open the form for completion.

For a violation to be considered flagrant under federal guidelines, specific evaluation criteria must be met for reckless or repeated failure violations. These include citations or orders that are classified as significant and substantial, and injury or illness that is at least permanently disabling, or a citation of order that is considered an unwarrantable failure.

Other criteria include negligence, which is evaluated as reckless disregard, or the existence of at least two other prior “unwarrantable failure” violations of the same safety or health standard within the last 15 months.

A violation is caused by an unwarrantable failure if the operator in question has engaged in "aggravated conduct constituting more than ordinary negligence" at an operation.

“The pop-up message is yet another tool to assist our inspectors in citing violations efficiently and accurately,” assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health Joseph Main said.

In the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act, a flagrant violation is defined as “a reckless or repeated failure to make reasonable efforts to eliminate a known violation of a mandatory safety and health standard that substantially and proximately caused, or reasonably could have been expected to cause, death or serious bodily injury”

Civil penalties for flagrant violations, as dictated under the MINER Act, can be up to $US220,000 for each one issued.