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Today is big big day for American e-democracy. The U.S. Federal Government unveiled their new <http://www.regulations.gov> site. The first federal e-government portal site with the words "participate" or "democratic process" on the home page. The site says: Regulations.gov is the U.S. Government web site that makes it easier for you to participate in Federal rulemaking - an essential part of the American democratic process. On this site, you can find, review, and submit comments on Federal documents that are open for comment and published in the Federal Register, the Government’s legal newspaper. As a member of the public, you can submit comments about these regulations, and have the Government take your views into account . The site will allow you to more easily find and comment electronically on proposed regulations from across different agencies. Whether it will increase your political influence or reform the regulatory process is another matter of course. Some Clift Notes Suggestions A couple of quick suggestions, the Topical Guide to Regulations and Services <http://www.regulations.gov/topical_guide.cfm> should be a profile link from the home page. It is much more than a Related Link. I'd also change the phrase "Search Open Regs" to "List Proposed Regs" that is what what clicking there conveniently does. On the home page, unless you read the full text at right you wouldn't know that the selection tools on the top banner will list proposed regulations - I thought was getting access to existing regulations. I'd switch "Find Regulations" to "List Proposed Regs" and simply say "Search Proposed Regulations" for the search option. Now my main "what's next" suggestions: 1. What's Popular - Ensure that site usage creates automatic pathways to "What's Popular" lists for all users. If X proposal is generating high amounts of aggregate traffic or a daily or weekly surge in new traffic, use that data to generate dynamic directories _across the whole of government_ to the information most people are looking for that day/week/year. This is already being done by the excellent Department of Transportation e-rulemaking web site: http://dms.dot.gov/reports/topdock_rpt.htm This is how people find good shareware all the time: http://download.com.com/3101-2001-0-1.html And how we know what is hot on Yahoo News: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=index2&cid=1046 Comment statistics should also generate a public display listing the proposed regulations receiving the most frequent comments. 2. Public e-access to public e-comments - I understand that this is a future goal of this effort. I don't know if this is written down anywhere, but key government officials have indicated to me this is a goal. This is huge. For the first time the business of interest group influence on proposed regulations will gain _timely_ transparency. For the first time across government (the DOT system allows you to see comments already), official decision-making process will have an online interface that will allow the public to then further comment on other public submissions. Let's help the government do this right and then share this version of highly structured online consultation with governments around the country/world. 3. What's New - Personalization and e-mail notification are the most politically powerful tools available for e-government today. Notification doesn't change what information becomes public, so this is more a technical choice. Information only has value in the political process if you know about it when it can be used to influence a decision, a decision-maker, or the public. It should be a fundamental right of all Americans to track a set of keywords, agencies, or other factors and be notified via e-mail when something of likely interest is newly available on Regulations.gov. There could be volume restrictions per user to balance the server demand and provide equitable service. This would prevent putting put all the "value-added" commercial tracking services the big lobby groups use from going out of business. Those businesses will politically stop anything that provides too much convenience to those who are willing and able to pay big bucks for any political advantage. If the UK government can use these tools, why not us? http://www.info4local.gov.uk/emailalert.asp Also, check out the features of these sites: http://www.itpapers.com and http://www.bitpipe.com End of my main comments ... Folks at CDT also have comments on what they would like to see next: http://www.cdt.org/publications/pp_9.03.shtml (The full text of their Policy Post in below.) Here is the a news item from the Washington Post on this: U.S. Opens Online Portal to Rulemaking Web Site Invites Wider Participation in the Regulatory Process http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30469-2003Jan22.html Can anyone find a press release online about the new site? Something related: Congress Plans to Slash E-Gov Funding http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/1573661 (Adding more e-regulation features will cost money, hey Congress, help us out here and invest in your own online public services as well.) A number of very recent articles and presentations by the number one academic e-rulemaking guru, Stuart Shulman: http://www.drake.edu/artsci/faculty/sshulman/NSF/research.htm For commentary on rules, regulatory reform in general: http://www.ombwatch.org/regs http://www.ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/risk/rsk-3.cfm Past DO-WIRE posts on e-rulemaking: http://www.mail-archive.com/do-wire@tc.umn.edu/msg00515.html http://www.mail-archive.com/do-wire@tc.umn.edu/msg00586.html http://mail.tc.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0205&L=do-wire&P=R273 Steven Clift Democracies Online http://www.e-democracy.org/do ------- Forwarded message follows ------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: CDT Policy Post 9.03: Feds Open Portal for Online Comments on Regulations Date sent: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 15:01:33 -0500 (EST) Keywords: CDT POLICY POST Volume 9, Number 3, January 23, 2003 A Briefing On Public Policy Issues Affecting Civil Liberties Online from The Center For Democracy and Technology Contents: (1) Feds Open Portal for Online Comments on Regulations (2) Improvements Needed in New Site (2) Background on Online Rulemaking and E-government ___________________________________________ (1) Feds Open Portal for Online Comments on Regulations In a step forward for e-government, the Bush Administration today unveiled a new web site, http://www.regulations.gov, that allows individuals to more easily find and comment on proposed rules being considered by federal agencies. Increasingly, government agencies have been accepting online comments opposing or supporting proposed regulations, and a 1998 law requires all agencies, "when practicable," to accept submission of online comments by October of this year. But in the past, citizens had to know what agency might have responsibility for an area of interest. The new regulations.gov web site allows Internet users to search by keyword across government agencies for areas of interest, rather than having to guess which agency is writing a particular regulation. The site also creates a common interface for filing comments. Agencies generally have different rules about what kind of information they want from persons submitting comments and different formatting styles. The new web site automatically provide submitters with the proper fields needed to submit comments to all covered agencies. ___________________________________________ (2) Improvements Needed in New Site While the introduction of regulations.gov is a positive step, its creators intend to improve it over time. Here are some immediate improvements CDT is recommending. * The search engine should be augmented with various browsing functions. While one of the main benefits of the site is the ability to search by keyword across departments and break down the "stovepipes" that have traditionally made government bureaucracies practically obscure, the current search tool may not be of much use if an individual does not know the exact terminology for a regulation. Browsing tools can be the only way for individuals not steeped in policy terminology to find a particular rule for comment. The site creators say that they plan to implement browsing features gradually. CDT believes that there are some helpful browsing features that could easily be added to the site immediately to assist citizens who are not experts in any particular field. Specifically, the site should include: * A "New Today" feature (similar to the existing Federal Register Table of Contents, but focused only on proposed regulations). * A "Closing This Week" section that would serve as a reminder of comment periods that are ending soon. * A "Hot Topics" section listing a few proposals that are especially important or are of broad public interest. * Also useful, and something the sponsors of the site say that they envision, would be a means for individuals to read the comments of others. If well-designed, this feature could allow for a new kind of interaction between individuals similar to town hall meetings. (If poorly-designed, this feature could also turn comment periods into "flame wars" familiar to all Usenet and chat room participants.) CDT believes that this would be a worthwhile experiment for government to try to improve participatory democracy using online tools. * Finally, we note that the comments are limited to 4000 characters - a limitation that seems unnecessary, and that basically would seem to create two tracks for filing comments: regulation.gov for non- professionals versus other electronic means, including agency web sites, for businesses, their lawyers and other experts, whose comments frequently exceed 4000 characters. Ironically, the new site also shines a light on agencies that are not yet accepting comments online. A quick search today showed that the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Air Force, among others, do not accept comments online. This should change, both as the site itself brings pressure on agencies to improve and as the upcoming October deadline approaches. ___________________________________________ (3) Background on Online Rulemaking and E-government Public comments on proposed government regulations are an important part of the democratic process -- in the United States, the concept of federal "notice and comment" rulemaking was a major reform of the first half of the 20th century. While agencies should not make decisions based solely on the referendum of pro and con comments, the comment process remains the most important tool that individuals have to influence the often opaque exercise of power by regulatory agencies in Washington. In practice, citizen participation in rulemaking has been low, in part because the information was available only in the Federal Register in printed form. As the Federal Register has gone online, and as federal agencies themselves have posted proposed rules on their own agency web sites, a greater number of individuals have been able to participate in the comment process. The Pew Internet & American Life Studies have shown that Americans see commenting on government rules and regulations as a top priority for e-government, and 60% of Americans (75% of Internet users) say that the Internet is the first place that they now look for government information. Congress recognized the importance of allowing individuals to interact with government online when it passed the Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA) of 1998 requiring agencies to create means for individuals to submit information electronically by October 21, 2003. The E-Government Act of 2002 reaffirmed the obligation. Yet, the move online has created varying means for individuals to submit comments. To this day, some agencies do not provide web interfaces or accept email or even fax. The rules for submission vary even if the comments are on similar or related topics. For example, the FTC and FCC recently had two different sets of rules for submission of comments on proposed telemarketing "Do Not Call" lists. E-gov resources and background information: Federal Register online: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/fr-cont.html Pew Internet & American Life study on e-gov: http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=80 CDT's e-government page: http://www.cdt.org/righttoknow/ ___________________________________________ Detailed information about online civil liberties issues may be found at http://www.cdt.org/ . This document may be redistributed freely in full or linked to http://www.cdt.org/publications/pp_9.03.shtml . Excerpts may be re-posted with prior permission of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Policy Post 9.03 Copyright 2003 Center for Democracy and Technology -- To subscribe to CDT's Activist Network, sign up at: http://www.cdt.org/join/ If you ever wish to remove yourself from the list, unsubscribe at: http://www.cdt.org/action/unsubscribe.shtml If you just want to change your address, you should unsubscribe yourself and then sign up again or contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Clark, Grassroots Webmaster [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key available on keyservers Center for Democracy and Technology 1634 Eye Street NW, Suite 1100 Washington, DC 20006 http://www.cdt.org/ voice: 202-637-9800 fax: 202-637-0968 ------- End of forwarded message ------- ^ ^ ^ ^ Steven L. 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