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Full-Text Articles in Law
Achieving The Potential: The Future Of Federal E-Rulemaking: A Report To Congress And The President, Cynthia R. Farina
Achieving The Potential: The Future Of Federal E-Rulemaking: A Report To Congress And The President, Cynthia R. Farina
Cynthia R. Farina
Federal regulations are among the most important and widely used tools for implementing the laws of the land – affecting the food we eat, the air we breathe, the safety of consumer products, the quality of the workplace, the soundness of our financial institutions, the smooth operation of our businesses, and much more. Despite the central role of rulemaking in executing public policy, both regulated entities (especially small businesses) and the general public find it extremely difficult to follow the regulatory process; actively participating in it is even harder. E-rulemaking is the use of technology (particularly, computers and the World …
Balancing Inclusion And “Enlightened Understanding” In Designing Online Civic Participation Systems: Experiences From Regulation Room, Cynthia R. Farina, Mary J. Newhart, Josiah Heidt, Jackeline Solivan
Balancing Inclusion And “Enlightened Understanding” In Designing Online Civic Participation Systems: Experiences From Regulation Room, Cynthia R. Farina, Mary J. Newhart, Josiah Heidt, Jackeline Solivan
Cynthia R. Farina
New forms of online citizen participation in government decision making have been fostered in the United States (U.S.) under the Obama Administration. Use of Web information technologies have been encouraged in an effort to create more back-and-forth communication between citizens and their government. These “Civic Participation 2.0” attempts to open the government up to broader public participation are based on three pillars of open government—transparency, participation, and collaboration. Thus far, the Administration has modeled Civic Participation 2.0 almost exclusively on the Web 2.0 ethos, in which users are enabled to shape the discussion and encouraged to assess the value of …
Regulation Room: How The Internet Improves Public Participation In Rulemaking, Jackeline Solivan, Cynthia R. Farina
Regulation Room: How The Internet Improves Public Participation In Rulemaking, Jackeline Solivan, Cynthia R. Farina
Cynthia R. Farina
Cornell eRulemaking Initiative (CeRI) designed and operated Regulation Room, a pilot project that provides an online environment for people and groups to learn about, discuss, and react to selected proposed federal rules. The project is a unique collaboration between CeRI academic researchers and the government. The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) was CeRI's first agency partner and chose Regulation Room as its first open government "flagship initiative." USDOT received a White House Open Government Leading Practices Award for its collaboration in the project. CeRI owns, designs, operates, and controls Regulation Room, but works closely with partner agencies to identify suitable …
Rulemaking 2.0, Cynthia R. Farina, Mary J. Newhart, Claire Cardie, Dan Cosley
Rulemaking 2.0, Cynthia R. Farina, Mary J. Newhart, Claire Cardie, Dan Cosley
Cynthia R. Farina
In response to President Obama's Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, federal agencies are on the verge of a new generation in online rulemaking. However, unless we recognize the several barriers to making rulemaking a more broadly participatory process, and purposefully adapt Web 2.0 technologies and methods to lower those barriers, Rulemaking 2.0 is likely to disappoint agencies and open-government advocates alike. This article describes the design, operation, and initial results of Regulation Room, a pilot public rulemaking participation platform created by a cross-disciplinary group of Cornell researchers in collaboration with the Department of Transportation. Regulation Room uses selected live …
Rulemaking 2.0: Understanding And Getting Better Public Participation, Cynthia R. Farina, Mary J. Newhart
Rulemaking 2.0: Understanding And Getting Better Public Participation, Cynthia R. Farina, Mary J. Newhart
Cynthia R. Farina
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 …