Coming Soon: The Re-launch of Regulations.gov

By Alex Moll, Communications Officer, eRulemaking Program Management Office

Next week, the eRulemaking Program Management Office (PMO) will release the first installment in a series of website developments scheduled over the course of 2012 as part of a redesign of Regulations.gov. The substantial redesign aims to effectively re-launch Regulations.gov to meet the goals of Section 2 of Executive Order 13563. The re-launch consists of a new website to further advance program goals of access, education, efficiency, and participation.

• Access – increase the amount, breadth, and ease of access to rulemaking.
• Education – advance public understanding of the rulemaking process.
• Efficiency – sharpen processes for smarter governance via docket management best practices.
• Participation – raise motivation for and quality of public participation in agency decision-making.

Redesign – Focused on these program goals, we plan to re-launch Regulations.gov next week with new features and functionality, connections to Twitter and Facebook, and new application programming interfaces (APIs).

These include the following:

• Navigation – improved navigation with a simplified homepage.
• Learning – new homepage tabs allow users to browse featured regulations by category and learn about the regulatory process.
• Search – new sorting and filtering functions help change and refine search results.
• Social Media – better links to Twitter and Facebook and two-way communication with the public.
• Data Standardization – consistent use of the Regulation Identifier Number (RIN) and standardized regulatory data and descriptions across Federal agencies.
• Open Data – APIs that allow the app community to link directly to regulatory documents.

Discussion – Feel free to share your comments or questions with us. To kick off a discussion here, how do you think we can advance our mission with the power of technology?