Law Commons^™

Barriers To Participatory Erulemaking Platform Adoption: Lessons Learned From Regulationroom, Mary J. Newhart, Joshua D. Brooks

Cornell e-Rulemaking Initiative Publications

Rulemaking, the process through which United States (U.S.) federal government agencies develop major health, safety and economic regulations, was an early target of electronic government (e-government) efforts. Because it was an established decision-making process that had substantial formal requirements of transparency, public participation and responsiveness it seemed a perfect target for technology-supported participatory policymaking. It was believed that new technologies could transform rulemaking, increasing its democratic legitimacy and improving its policy outcomes by broadening the range of participating individuals and groups (Brandon and Carlitz, 2003; Coglianese, 2004; Noveck, 2004). Despite the promise of a more deliberative and democratic process, rulemaking …

Rulemaking 2.0: Understanding And Getting Better Public Participation, Cynthia R. Farina, Mary J. Newhart

Cornell e-Rulemaking Initiative Publications

More than a decade after the launch of Regulations.gov, the government-wide federal online rulemaking portal, and nearly four years since the Obama Administration directed agencies to use “innovative tools and practices that create new and easier methods for public engagement,” there are still more questions than answers about what value social media and other Web 2 .0 technologies can bring to rulemaking–and about how agencies can realize that value.

This report, commissioned by the IBM Center for the Business of Government, begins to provide those answers. Drawing on insights from a number of disciplines and on three years of actual …