This story today at Wired News reports that:
Sometime in the next year or so, at least 180 federal agencies will bring their websites together in a new portal that may well end up owing an important part of its utility to a constituency not generally associated with the workings of government: video-game developers. The so-called eRulemaking project seeks to dramatically increase public comment and participation in the process of crafting and drafting legislation.If you are not aware of the current federal government project, regulations.gov, take a look. Here is the onsite description:
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.This site is a work in progress. Here is a story from the 1/13/04 Washington Post. Some quotes: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 Bush administration's e-rulemaking project, which is being run by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Management and Budget and a committee of agencies, is a multimillion-dollar replacement for the patchwork of rulemaking systems and document repositories, or dockets, that some 180 federal agencies, boards and commissions now use.And here is another story, published yesterday, that begins: "Lockheed Martin recently landed a $98 million contract for E-Rulemaking, which itself is one of the 24 e-government initiatives under the aegis of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)." Posted by Marcia Oddi at February 11, 2004 10:43 AMThe change has created tension among the agencies over whether the choice will be to run a giant, centralized docket or one that allows agencies with highly developed electronic systems -- such as the Department of Transportation, the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Communications Commission -- to keep what they have built and link themselves to a larger system. So far, only the first "module" of the project has been developed: www.regulations.gov, which is capable of displaying all the regulatory proposals from federal agencies and taking comments on them.
The next generation, which is under consideration, will also have to be able to display underlying studies and analyses, and offer users lots of other electronic bells and whistles for searching and retrieving documents online.
Conference discussion centered on new technology, the operation and future of the federal government's efforts to use the Internet for rulemaking, expansion of the public's role in rulemaking, and how electronic systems might be evaluated for their effectiveness.