Federal Register 2.0 Now Available
Federal Register 2.0 (FR 2.0) -- a new online version of the Federal Register, featuring Web 2.0 functions enabling users to comment, plain language summaries of regulations, and access by subject -- is now available.
Click here to access the FR 2.0 source code on Github. HT @bethnoveck and @govpulse.
Click here for a video describing the history of the Federal Register and the features of FR 2.0.
Click here for background information on FR 2.0.
Of particular interest to those interested in open government data efforts is that FR 2.0 appears to include features and functions that were originally developed as part of innovative nongovernmental erulemaking efforts, such as the University at Albany's DeER (Deliberative E-Rulemaking) Project, the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy's FedThread, the Cornell e-Rulemaking Initiative's Regulation Room, and WestEd's GovPulse. Some of GovPulse's innovative Federal Register-related technology was developed as part of The Sunlight Foundation's 2009 Apps for America Challenge. Click here for a video describing the Federal Register-related innovations developed through the Apps for America Challenge.
These projects arose because in 2009 the Office of the Federal Register and the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) began making the Federal Register available online in XML for free of charge bulk access on GPO's FDsys. This free bulk access to legal information enabled nongovernmental developers to create innovative systems and tools for use in connection with that information. With FR 2.0, the U.S. federal government is reincorporating some of these innovative systems and tools, to enhance public access to the law and public participation in agency rulemaking and other aspects of federal public policy.
This kind of socially beneficial collaboration between government as data provider and civil society organizations as technology innovators is consistent with the model proposed by David Robinson et al. in their paper, Government Data and the Invisible Hand, 11 Yale Journal of Law and Technology 160-175 (2009) (Issue No. 2).
One statement in the video describing new features of FR 2.0 seems questionable. The video seems to suggest that the "Summary" field in each proposed or final rule is a feature new to FR 2.0. However, the "Summary" field appears for many years to have been a required field for proposed or final rules published in the Federal Register. See, e.g., Federal Register Document Drafting Handbook 1-6, 1-8 (1998), and this proposed rule from 1998. I've sent an email to the Office of the Federal Register asking for clarification of this point; I'll post any response I receive on the version of this post at the Legal Informatics Blog.
Comment
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Comment by Rob Richards on August 13, 2010 at 2:15pm -
Thanks to Steve Ressler of GovLoop http://www.govloop.com for mentioning the GovLoop version of this post in his recent Huffington Post article, Three Signs That Government Is More Innovative Than Ever http://j.mp/a7YRhe
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Comment by Rob Richards on July 27, 2010 at 2:36pm
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Michael White, Managing Editor, Office of the Federal Register, kindly gave me his permission to post the following information which he sent me today:
"You are correct that the summary field is not a new addition to the Federal Register. In the video, it is not clear that our new emphasis is on improving the summaries with plain language content, as opposed to creating the summary itself. Under Federal Register regulations, summaries are to be written 'in simple language,' but agencies do not always fulfill that requirement in keeping with plain language principles.
So we are taking some new approaches: First we are working directly with agencies to encourage them to rewrite their summaries in plain language. We do not edit the official text of the Register without agencies' permission, but we can be much more aggressive in requiring plain language. We are also working with central management authorities, such as OIRA, GSA/RISC, and the eRulemaking program management office to establish best practices for agency documents. The plain language summary is one of several key topics under discussion.
In addition, there is a new 'abstract' feature on the Federal Register 2.0 website (a new summary of the summary). The featured documents in news sections may display shortened or clarified titles and brief abstracts of material taken from the summary. In the abstract, our webmaster may rewrite or condense summaries to clarify the subject matter of these documents.
This process is just beginning, and we have a long way to go to change agency culture and to fully implement our own abstracting process. I hope this clarifies the information in the video."
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Comment by Rob Richards on July 27, 2010 at 12:29am
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RT @bethnoveck @govpulse Source code of Federal Register 2.0 now available on Github! http://bit.ly/9w5yyN
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