This site displays a prototype of a “Web 2.0” version of the daily Federal Register. It is not an official legal edition of the Federal Register, and does not replace the official print version or the official electronic version on GPO’s govinfo.gov.
The documents posted on this site are XML renditions of published Federal Register documents. Each document posted on the site includes a link to the corresponding official PDF file on govinfo.gov. This prototype edition of the daily Federal Register on FederalRegister.gov will remain an unofficial informational resource until the Administrative Committee of the Federal Register (ACFR) issues a regulation granting it official legal status. For complete information about, and access to, our official publications and services, go to About the Federal Register on NARA's archives.gov.
The OFR/GPO partnership is committed to presenting accurate and reliable regulatory information on FederalRegister.gov with the objective of establishing the XML-based Federal Register as an ACFR-sanctioned publication in the future. While every effort has been made to ensure that the material on FederalRegister.gov is accurately displayed, consistent with the official SGML-based PDF version on govinfo.gov, those relying on it for legal research should verify their results against an official edition of the Federal Register. Until the ACFR grants it official status, the XML rendition of the daily Federal Register on FederalRegister.gov does not provide legal notice to the public or judicial notice to the courts.
We have two things to highlight today. First, the White House announced that agencies are releasing their final regulatory reform plans, including hundreds of initiatives that are designed to reduce costs, simplify the system, and eliminate redundancy and inconsistency. The White House keeps an inventory of agencies’ regulatory reform plans on its website. We also have a tally of the agency plans published in the Federal Register on the FederalRegister.gov website.
On another front, we sometimes get comments from users who prefer to read the Federal Register in its traditional form. Some users don’t see the point of presenting regulatory information in a web news journal format. Their view is that the Federal Register should not reach out to the public, but should instead function merely as a legal notification system for lawyers and regulatory experts.
To begin with, our Federal Register edition on FDsys.gov still presents PDFs of printed pages and text files in much the same manner as they have always appeared on GPO Access, albeit with a much better search engine and underlying metadata. But we also believe that regulatory information should be presented in a more open manner to reach non-experts. Here is a case in point: A scan of today’s issue shows an FCC proposed rule on “cramming” (unauthorized telephone charges). The article is “Empowering Consumers to Prevent and Detect Billing for Unauthorized Charges: Consumer Information and Disclosure; Truth-in-Billing and Billing Format.”
A quick online search shows a handful of news stories related to cramming in the past few weeks, but they offer no easy way to affect the outcome of the debate and agency decision-making. For example, USAToday has a good discussion of the “pros and cons” of taking action on cramming regulations. Whatever your views on the need for regulations or how they should be written, it is clear that unauthorized telephone charges may affect the pocketbooks of tens of millions of U.S. consumers. Many people have no idea that third parties are charging them $20 or more per month for services they did not order and do not want (for more background, see FCC.gov).
This is quite clearly not just an issue that concerns regulatory experts — it gets to the heart of our reasons for developing Federal Register 2.0 and why we created an Application Programming Interface to spur development of specialized information tools. We want to give you the ability to track the issues of the day, and make your voices heard. In essence, FederalRegister.gov aims to put into practice James Madison’s maxim that “a well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”
You can comment on the FCC’s proposed cramming rule, identified by CG Docket No. 11-116, by any of the following methods:
Comments are due on or before October 24, 2011. Reply comments are due on or before November 21, 2011.