It’s Sunshine Week, which means it’s as good a time as any to talk about rulemaking transparency.

When it comes to regulations, interested parties want to see more than just the text of the rule and the published notice explaining the rule (a.k.a. the preamble); they want to see information on why the agency made the decisions it made.

Disclosure of decisionmaking materials allows the public to hold agencies accountable. If an agency says it is relying on a particular scientific study, the public needs access to that study to make sure the agencies’ conclusion matches the science. If an agency’s decision is intended to reflect the policy priorities of the agency head or the president, documents or communications of those priorities need to be made available.

Currently, federal agencies are developing open government plans in response to the White House’s Open Government Directive. Agencies are accepting ideas for their plans through the end of the week. The plans are due April 7.

OMB Watch is urging a number of agencies to disclose more information in their rulemaking dockets. Among other items, agencies should disclose:

• Any study, research, or other input used during the rulemaking, regardless of whether the information ultimately informed the decisionmaking;
• All written communications among federal offices and agencies, including the White House Office of Management and Budget;
• All substantive communications, both written and oral, between the agency and an outside party pertaining to the rulemaking.

(These recommendations are based in part on a report written by OMB Watch Executive Director Gary Bass and other regulatory experts titled Advancing the Public Interest through Regulatory Reform.) 

Not only should agencies disclose more information about their rulemakings, they should make sure that information is more widely available. The easiest way to do this is to make information available online.

Currently, agencies maintain rulemaking dockets in hard copy (the official version) and online at Regulations.gov, the centralized portal for finding, viewing, and commenting on regulations. But the paper docket and the online docket do not necessarily match. Different agencies disclose different types of information through Regulations.gov, and some agencies choose only to post the bare minimum. If the two dockets are not identical, users of the online dockets cannot be confident that they are getting the full story.

You can participate in the development of agencies’ open government plans for the rest of the week. Here are the links to the participation and voting platforms for select agencies with strong rulemaking programs:

• Department of Agriculture: www.usda.gov/open/ideas.nsf
• Department of Health and Human Services: www.hhs.gov/open/discussion/index.html
• Department of the Interior: openinterior.ideascale.com
• Department of Labor: opendol.ideascale.com
• Department of Transportation: opendot.ideascale.com
• Environmental Protection Agency: openepa.ideascale.com