Federal Register coordinating more with Regulations.gov

The online Federal Register announced Monday that it is “now tightly integrated with the electronic dockets on Regulations.gov.”

Office of the Federal Register staffer Michael White said in a blog post that public comments on rules that appear on the Regulations.gov site now are accessible from FR2, as the Federalregister.gov website is called.

Members of the public and interest groups following a proposed rule also will find new supporting and related materials on both sites, White wrote.

“When we launched FR2 in mid-2010, one of our goals was to integrate access to regulatory information found on other federal websites,” he said. “But we had to crawl through a lot of electronic haystacks to find the right needles to link up to. We couldn’t always make a solid connection.” After Regulations.gov adopted its application programming interface, “we jumped at the chance to tap into it,” he wrote. “Now we believe there will be no more dead ends for Federal Register readers who want to delve into the background of a regulatory action and submit comments.”

OFR has been promoting electronic rule-making since 2002, working with the Government Printing Office and agencies such as the Transportation Department, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The most recent enhancements are designed to give prospective commenters one -click access to background documents and comments already submitted. “We think these enhancements are a big win for e-government, interagency data harmonization efforts and public participation in rule-making,” White wrote.