- Email: [email protected]
Regulations.gov federal regulatory portal
Journal of Government Information 30 (2004) 81 – 86
Regulations.gov federal regulatory portal John Ashlina, Richard Davisb, Selene Daleckyb, Richard Grassoc, Lisa LaPlantb, Oscar Moralesd,*, Jennifer Nelsone, Michael Whitef, Sharon A. Whittg a
Technical Services Unit, Office of the Federal Register, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD 20740-6001, United States b Office of Electronic Information Dissemination Services, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20401, United States c U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20401, United States d e-Rulemaking Initiative, Office of Environmental Information, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC 20460, United States e U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD 20740-6001, United States f Office of the Federal Register, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD 20740-6001, United States g Office of Human Resources and Information Technology, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD 20740-6001, United States Available online 25 September 2004
Abstract The Regulations.gov Online Rulemaking Project is 1 of the 24 e-Government Initiatives on the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), which was announced by the White House in 2001. The Regulations.gov Web site is the central electronic rulemaking portal for the federal government. Through a single Web site, citizens can search, view, and comment on hundreds of federal regulations from approximately 160 federal agencies. Regulations.gov is the result of a collaborative effort by a number of federal agencies. D 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc. Keywords: Regulations; Rules; Rulemaking; e-Rulemaking; President’s management agenda (PMA); e-Government initiative; Online rulemaking initiative; Federal register
* Corresponding author. e-Rulemaking Initiative, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, MC 2822V, Washington, DC 20460. E-mail address: [email protected] (O. Morales). 1352-0237/$ - see front matter D 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.jgi.2004.07.001
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1. Introduction The voice of the people is a cornerstone of democracy. In the United States, citizens have the right and responsibility to participate in their government. With the emergence of new online technologies, it is easier than ever for citizens to take part in the federal democratic process. The Regulations.gov Web site (www.regulations.gov) is a groundbreaking achievement in the creation of a citizen-centered e-democracy. This regulatory clearinghouse enables the public to easily participate in the federal rulemaking process. From the Regulations.gov Web site, the public can view a description of every proposed rule currently open for comment, read the full text of these documents, and submit comments to the federal agencies that have created them. The spectrum of regulatory impact spans from federal grants to food labels. Federal regulations (or rules) affect every American by establishing the rights and obligations of the public and government. In order to implement laws passed by Congress, more than 4000 new rules are created each year by hundreds of different federal agencies. Before a federal agency may adopt new rules, it is required to notify the public about its intentions and solicit comments. According to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), as many as 500 rules can be open for comment at any given time; and in 2001, more than 23 million people submitted comments on rules. The Regulations.gov Web site is the first step in reaching the goals outlined in the eRulemaking Initiative. The e-Rulemaking Initiative is one of the 24 e-Government initiatives on the President’s Management Agenda (PMA). One of the goals of the PMA is to expand eGovernment services by utilizing existing information technology systems to create new applications, increasing efficiency, and saving taxpayer dollars.
2. Initiatives prior to the launch of Regulations.gov Free access to online federal regulatory information has been available since the mid1990s. In 1994, GPO Access, an innovative service of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), transformed public access to government information. Established by Public Law 103-40, the Government Printing Office Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act of 1993, GPO Access offers free electronic access to official information from all three branches of the federal government. GPO Access allows people worldwide to access federal government information products electronically and to use those products without restriction, unless otherwise noted. It provides access to more than 3900 full-text databases through over 80 applications. GPO Access contains numerous federal regulatory applications, including the Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, and the List of CFR Sections Affected. GPO’s participation in the Regulations.gov project attests to its continuing commitment to providing citizens with efficient, free, permanent public access to federal regulatory information. The Federal Register, published by the Office of the Federal Register (OFR), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), is the official daily publication for rules,
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proposed rules, and notices of federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents. On GPO Access, it is updated daily by 6 a.m. and is published Monday through Friday, except federal holidays. GPO Access contains Federal Register volumes from 59 (1994) to the present. Documents are available in Summary, Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF), ASCII text, or HTML. 3. Steps leading up to the launch of Regulations.gov In 2001, President Bush launched the PMA.1 The purpose of the PMA is to reform the federal government by making it more efficient, citizen centered, and results oriented. The Online Rulemaking Initiative, or e-Rulemaking, is one of the 24 e-Government initiatives2 on the PMA. In response to the initiatives, the OMB, along with a group of other federal agencies, began to develop plans for several phases of a central online rulemaking portal for the U.S. government. At about the same time in 2001, the OFR was involved in discussions with the General Accounting Office, the staff of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, and other federal agencies regarding the future of electronic rulemaking. The Senate was considering legislation, which later became the E-Government Act of 2002.3 In response to congressional interest, the OFR developed a Web site to help nonexperts find regulations open for comment and submit comments to agencies. The OFR staff designed a program to extract rulemaking information from its document tracking system and post brief summaries of open rules on the Web along with links to the associated Federal Register documents. That Web site was known as the Federal Register E-Docket (FRED). In April 2002, OMB became aware of the FRED Web site and invited OFR to join forces with the interagency team already working on the e-Rulemaking Initiative. As with many federal initiatives, the Regulations.gov Web site is the result of a unique collaborative effort of five agencies and six different contracting firms. Agencies participating in this initiative include the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Transportation (DOT), Department of Labor (DOL), Department of Agriculture (USDA), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Department of Health and Human Services/ Food and Drug Administration (HHS/FDA), General Services Administration (GSA), Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), National Archives and Records Administration/Federal Register (NARA/FR), and the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). Contracting firms include Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Vredenburg, NetStar-1, Booz Allen and Hamilton, DynCorp, and Battelle. Despite some funding limitations, a partnership between the National Archives and Records Administration/Office of the Federal Register (NARA/OFR), U.S. GPO, and the EPA was able to make use of existing information systems by linking them together so that they could communicate in a manner that appears to be a single seamless application. The agencies utilized mostly in-house staff and relatively few contractors. OFR took an existing database used for internal tracking purposes and modified it into a regulatory information
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application for the public. OFR and GPO were able to establish a technical process to automatically harvest regulations from an existing Federal Register database on GPO Access and repurpose the material to provide the content for the Regulations.gov site. In addition, EPA borrowed and modified an existing comment application owned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). NARA/OFR designed the Web site and search function that tracks rules open for comment. The DOL and several other agencies provided additional technical support for XML documentation/registry and testing. The partners opened the site to the public on January 23, 2003. The EPA is the managing partner of the eRulemaking Initiative and currently hosts the comment portion of the application in Research Triangle Park, NC, and the GPO provides user support and hosts the Web site. All other partners continue to contribute time and resources to the site, which has helped Regulations.gov become an easily accessible way for citizens to find and comment on proposed federal rules.
4. Functionality of Regulations.gov Regulations.gov enables the public to search, view, and comment on hundreds of proposed federal regulations from approximately 160 federal agencies through a single Web site. Each day a partnership between the NARA/OFR and the U.S. GPO catalogs the rules open for comment. First, information is extracted from the OFR’s tracking system and Federal Register documents. The information is then posted in a current database of open rulemaking actions, including rule summaries and rules open for comment in HTML and PDF formats. Finally, links to a universal comment form are created. In order to find open, proposed rules, the site allows visitors to search by keyword or browse by agency and subagency name. The system permits users to print out their comment forms for mailing or to use alternative electronic methods to submit comments, such as agency email boxes or docket sites, which may appear as links in the HTML and PDF versions of Federal Register documents. Electronic comments are then conveyed to servers where they are sorted and sent on to each agency or subagency in daily packets. The consolidated site enables visitors to easily move from one proposed rule to the next. The site also contains a topical search utility and a list of links to related regulatory information. By providing greater access to open rulemaking actions, Regulations.gov gives citizens an opportunity to air their views and receive a fair hearing on regulatory requirements before they become final.
5. Impact of Regulations.gov Regulations.gov, with its simple search tool, is designed to empower and encourage all segments of the public, from farmers in Illinois to fishermen in Alaska, to participate in the federal rulemaking process. Now, anyone with access to a personal computer and the Internet, either at home, work, or a local library, can participate in the regulatory process. All of the participating agencies involved in the Regulations.gov project have made it their mission to
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make federal government information readily available to all citizens, and now Regulations.gov gives them the tool to do so. From the official launch of Regulations.gov in January 2003 through January 2004, there were more than 2.4 million connections to the Web site, averaging nearly 8000 hits per day. The three most significant accomplishments of Regulations.gov include the following: (1) Citizens have better access to information by providing the public the ability to easily search and view proposed rules that are open for comment across several agencies at one Web site; (2) the Web site strengthens e-democracy by making the rulemaking process more transparent and providing the public an easily accessible way to submit comments regarding important issues that affect them; and (3) the quality of government policy decision making is improved by increasing the opportunity for public participation so the agency can make better-informed decisions on particular issues. The e-Rulemaking Initiative will save taxpayer dollars and make the federal government more efficient by consolidating redundant docket information technology systems across agencies and by reducing duplicative spending for these systems. The initiative will save an estimated US$94 million over 3 years by creating one central docket system for the federal government. Reducing duplicative information technology spending helps to maximize current information technology investments and opportunities for future development and ensures that taxpayer dollars are more wisely spent. The e-Rulemaking Initiative will also reduce costs by creating a unified, cost-effective regulatory management system to ensure greater efficiency, economies of scale, quality, and appropriate consistency in the federal rulemaking process.
6. Future steps in the e-Rulemaking Initiative The launch of the Regulations.gov Web site was the first milestone in reaching the goals of the e-Rulemaking Initiative. The second component of the initiative will build upon Regulations.gov and will streamline costs by creating a more unified, Web-accessible electronic docket across all federal rulemaking agencies. A centralized online federal docket system will improve the public’s ability to participate in the rulemaking process by giving the public access to all rulemakings, supporting regulatory documents, and comments submitted by others through one Web site. The initiative’s third component will transform the federal rulemaking process by creating a virtual desktop for federal regulation writers that will provide tools to support the development and review of federal regulations and other documents, as well as assist in analyzing all public comments to be considered for a rulemaking action. The e-Rulemaking Initiative seeks to increase public participation in the federal regulatory process and will enhance rulemaking practices within federal agencies through the use of electronic tools and services. Ultimately, this initiative will improve agency processes, save taxpayer resources, enhance public participation, and yield timelier federal regulatory decisions.
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Notes 1. Announced in the summer of 2001, the President’s Management Agenda is an aggressive strategy for improving the management of the federal government. It focuses on five areas across the government where improvements and progress can be made. Available: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2002/mgmt.pdf. 2. In his February 2002 budget submission to Congress, the President outlined a management agenda that includes expanding electronic government—or e-Government. e-Government uses improved Internet-based technology to make it easy for citizens and businesses to interact with the government, save taxpayer dollars, and streamline citizen-to-government communications. The 24 e-Government initiatives include several government-wide projects to integrate agency operations and information technology investments. Available: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/index.html. 3. e-Government Act of 2002 (Pub. L. 107-347): To enhance the management and promotion of electronic government services and processes by establishing a federal chief information officer within the Office of Management and Budget and by establishing a broad framework of measures that require using Internet-based information technology to enhance citizen access to government information and services, and for other purposes. Signed into law on December 17, 2002—[H.R. 2458]. Available: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/topics/science.html.
Regulations.gov federal regulatory portal John Ashlina, Richard Davisb, Selene Daleckyb, Richard Grassoc, Lisa LaPlantb, Oscar Moralesd,*, Jennifer Nelsone, Michael Whitef, Sharon A. Whittg a
Technical Services Unit, Office of the Federal Register, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD 20740-6001, United States b Office of Electronic Information Dissemination Services, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20401, United States c U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20401, United States d e-Rulemaking Initiative, Office of Environmental Information, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC 20460, United States e U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD 20740-6001, United States f Office of the Federal Register, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD 20740-6001, United States g Office of Human Resources and Information Technology, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD 20740-6001, United States Available online 25 September 2004
Abstract The Regulations.gov Online Rulemaking Project is 1 of the 24 e-Government Initiatives on the President’s Management Agenda (PMA), which was announced by the White House in 2001. The Regulations.gov Web site is the central electronic rulemaking portal for the federal government. Through a single Web site, citizens can search, view, and comment on hundreds of federal regulations from approximately 160 federal agencies. Regulations.gov is the result of a collaborative effort by a number of federal agencies. D 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc. Keywords: Regulations; Rules; Rulemaking; e-Rulemaking; President’s management agenda (PMA); e-Government initiative; Online rulemaking initiative; Federal register
* Corresponding author. e-Rulemaking Initiative, Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, MC 2822V, Washington, DC 20460. E-mail address: [email protected] (O. Morales). 1352-0237/$ - see front matter D 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.jgi.2004.07.001
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1. Introduction The voice of the people is a cornerstone of democracy. In the United States, citizens have the right and responsibility to participate in their government. With the emergence of new online technologies, it is easier than ever for citizens to take part in the federal democratic process. The Regulations.gov Web site (www.regulations.gov) is a groundbreaking achievement in the creation of a citizen-centered e-democracy. This regulatory clearinghouse enables the public to easily participate in the federal rulemaking process. From the Regulations.gov Web site, the public can view a description of every proposed rule currently open for comment, read the full text of these documents, and submit comments to the federal agencies that have created them. The spectrum of regulatory impact spans from federal grants to food labels. Federal regulations (or rules) affect every American by establishing the rights and obligations of the public and government. In order to implement laws passed by Congress, more than 4000 new rules are created each year by hundreds of different federal agencies. Before a federal agency may adopt new rules, it is required to notify the public about its intentions and solicit comments. According to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), as many as 500 rules can be open for comment at any given time; and in 2001, more than 23 million people submitted comments on rules. The Regulations.gov Web site is the first step in reaching the goals outlined in the eRulemaking Initiative. The e-Rulemaking Initiative is one of the 24 e-Government initiatives on the President’s Management Agenda (PMA). One of the goals of the PMA is to expand eGovernment services by utilizing existing information technology systems to create new applications, increasing efficiency, and saving taxpayer dollars.
2. Initiatives prior to the launch of Regulations.gov Free access to online federal regulatory information has been available since the mid1990s. In 1994, GPO Access, an innovative service of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), transformed public access to government information. Established by Public Law 103-40, the Government Printing Office Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act of 1993, GPO Access offers free electronic access to official information from all three branches of the federal government. GPO Access allows people worldwide to access federal government information products electronically and to use those products without restriction, unless otherwise noted. It provides access to more than 3900 full-text databases through over 80 applications. GPO Access contains numerous federal regulatory applications, including the Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, and the List of CFR Sections Affected. GPO’s participation in the Regulations.gov project attests to its continuing commitment to providing citizens with efficient, free, permanent public access to federal regulatory information. The Federal Register, published by the Office of the Federal Register (OFR), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), is the official daily publication for rules,
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proposed rules, and notices of federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents. On GPO Access, it is updated daily by 6 a.m. and is published Monday through Friday, except federal holidays. GPO Access contains Federal Register volumes from 59 (1994) to the present. Documents are available in Summary, Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF), ASCII text, or HTML. 3. Steps leading up to the launch of Regulations.gov In 2001, President Bush launched the PMA.1 The purpose of the PMA is to reform the federal government by making it more efficient, citizen centered, and results oriented. The Online Rulemaking Initiative, or e-Rulemaking, is one of the 24 e-Government initiatives2 on the PMA. In response to the initiatives, the OMB, along with a group of other federal agencies, began to develop plans for several phases of a central online rulemaking portal for the U.S. government. At about the same time in 2001, the OFR was involved in discussions with the General Accounting Office, the staff of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, and other federal agencies regarding the future of electronic rulemaking. The Senate was considering legislation, which later became the E-Government Act of 2002.3 In response to congressional interest, the OFR developed a Web site to help nonexperts find regulations open for comment and submit comments to agencies. The OFR staff designed a program to extract rulemaking information from its document tracking system and post brief summaries of open rules on the Web along with links to the associated Federal Register documents. That Web site was known as the Federal Register E-Docket (FRED). In April 2002, OMB became aware of the FRED Web site and invited OFR to join forces with the interagency team already working on the e-Rulemaking Initiative. As with many federal initiatives, the Regulations.gov Web site is the result of a unique collaborative effort of five agencies and six different contracting firms. Agencies participating in this initiative include the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Transportation (DOT), Department of Labor (DOL), Department of Agriculture (USDA), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Department of Health and Human Services/ Food and Drug Administration (HHS/FDA), General Services Administration (GSA), Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), National Archives and Records Administration/Federal Register (NARA/FR), and the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). Contracting firms include Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Vredenburg, NetStar-1, Booz Allen and Hamilton, DynCorp, and Battelle. Despite some funding limitations, a partnership between the National Archives and Records Administration/Office of the Federal Register (NARA/OFR), U.S. GPO, and the EPA was able to make use of existing information systems by linking them together so that they could communicate in a manner that appears to be a single seamless application. The agencies utilized mostly in-house staff and relatively few contractors. OFR took an existing database used for internal tracking purposes and modified it into a regulatory information
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application for the public. OFR and GPO were able to establish a technical process to automatically harvest regulations from an existing Federal Register database on GPO Access and repurpose the material to provide the content for the Regulations.gov site. In addition, EPA borrowed and modified an existing comment application owned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). NARA/OFR designed the Web site and search function that tracks rules open for comment. The DOL and several other agencies provided additional technical support for XML documentation/registry and testing. The partners opened the site to the public on January 23, 2003. The EPA is the managing partner of the eRulemaking Initiative and currently hosts the comment portion of the application in Research Triangle Park, NC, and the GPO provides user support and hosts the Web site. All other partners continue to contribute time and resources to the site, which has helped Regulations.gov become an easily accessible way for citizens to find and comment on proposed federal rules.
4. Functionality of Regulations.gov Regulations.gov enables the public to search, view, and comment on hundreds of proposed federal regulations from approximately 160 federal agencies through a single Web site. Each day a partnership between the NARA/OFR and the U.S. GPO catalogs the rules open for comment. First, information is extracted from the OFR’s tracking system and Federal Register documents. The information is then posted in a current database of open rulemaking actions, including rule summaries and rules open for comment in HTML and PDF formats. Finally, links to a universal comment form are created. In order to find open, proposed rules, the site allows visitors to search by keyword or browse by agency and subagency name. The system permits users to print out their comment forms for mailing or to use alternative electronic methods to submit comments, such as agency email boxes or docket sites, which may appear as links in the HTML and PDF versions of Federal Register documents. Electronic comments are then conveyed to servers where they are sorted and sent on to each agency or subagency in daily packets. The consolidated site enables visitors to easily move from one proposed rule to the next. The site also contains a topical search utility and a list of links to related regulatory information. By providing greater access to open rulemaking actions, Regulations.gov gives citizens an opportunity to air their views and receive a fair hearing on regulatory requirements before they become final.
5. Impact of Regulations.gov Regulations.gov, with its simple search tool, is designed to empower and encourage all segments of the public, from farmers in Illinois to fishermen in Alaska, to participate in the federal rulemaking process. Now, anyone with access to a personal computer and the Internet, either at home, work, or a local library, can participate in the regulatory process. All of the participating agencies involved in the Regulations.gov project have made it their mission to
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make federal government information readily available to all citizens, and now Regulations.gov gives them the tool to do so. From the official launch of Regulations.gov in January 2003 through January 2004, there were more than 2.4 million connections to the Web site, averaging nearly 8000 hits per day. The three most significant accomplishments of Regulations.gov include the following: (1) Citizens have better access to information by providing the public the ability to easily search and view proposed rules that are open for comment across several agencies at one Web site; (2) the Web site strengthens e-democracy by making the rulemaking process more transparent and providing the public an easily accessible way to submit comments regarding important issues that affect them; and (3) the quality of government policy decision making is improved by increasing the opportunity for public participation so the agency can make better-informed decisions on particular issues. The e-Rulemaking Initiative will save taxpayer dollars and make the federal government more efficient by consolidating redundant docket information technology systems across agencies and by reducing duplicative spending for these systems. The initiative will save an estimated US$94 million over 3 years by creating one central docket system for the federal government. Reducing duplicative information technology spending helps to maximize current information technology investments and opportunities for future development and ensures that taxpayer dollars are more wisely spent. The e-Rulemaking Initiative will also reduce costs by creating a unified, cost-effective regulatory management system to ensure greater efficiency, economies of scale, quality, and appropriate consistency in the federal rulemaking process.
6. Future steps in the e-Rulemaking Initiative The launch of the Regulations.gov Web site was the first milestone in reaching the goals of the e-Rulemaking Initiative. The second component of the initiative will build upon Regulations.gov and will streamline costs by creating a more unified, Web-accessible electronic docket across all federal rulemaking agencies. A centralized online federal docket system will improve the public’s ability to participate in the rulemaking process by giving the public access to all rulemakings, supporting regulatory documents, and comments submitted by others through one Web site. The initiative’s third component will transform the federal rulemaking process by creating a virtual desktop for federal regulation writers that will provide tools to support the development and review of federal regulations and other documents, as well as assist in analyzing all public comments to be considered for a rulemaking action. The e-Rulemaking Initiative seeks to increase public participation in the federal regulatory process and will enhance rulemaking practices within federal agencies through the use of electronic tools and services. Ultimately, this initiative will improve agency processes, save taxpayer resources, enhance public participation, and yield timelier federal regulatory decisions.
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Notes 1. Announced in the summer of 2001, the President’s Management Agenda is an aggressive strategy for improving the management of the federal government. It focuses on five areas across the government where improvements and progress can be made. Available: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2002/mgmt.pdf. 2. In his February 2002 budget submission to Congress, the President outlined a management agenda that includes expanding electronic government—or e-Government. e-Government uses improved Internet-based technology to make it easy for citizens and businesses to interact with the government, save taxpayer dollars, and streamline citizen-to-government communications. The 24 e-Government initiatives include several government-wide projects to integrate agency operations and information technology investments. Available: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/index.html. 3. e-Government Act of 2002 (Pub. L. 107-347): To enhance the management and promotion of electronic government services and processes by establishing a federal chief information officer within the Office of Management and Budget and by establishing a broad framework of measures that require using Internet-based information technology to enhance citizen access to government information and services, and for other purposes. Signed into law on December 17, 2002—[H.R. 2458]. Available: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/topics/science.html.