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 a new resource on FederalRegister.gov (FR2.0) — access to the pre-publication versions of Federal Register documents (PDF format) on file for public inspection at the Office of the Federal Register (OFR). For those who may not be aware, the Federal Register Act requires the OFR to file documents for public viewing at our office in Washington, D.C. at least one business day before publication in the Federal Register.
A few years ago, our public inspection service was quite literally a desktop piled high with paper documents. Anyone could drop by our office on North Capitol Street to preview the latest Federal Register documents, in paper form. But as a practical matter, public access was limited to a few Beltway insiders, who were able to get a jump on the rest of the world in obtaining “breaking news” of important or complex regulatory matters.
To broaden access, we created a bare-bones, digital version of our public inspection desk that was originally hosted on FederalRegister.gov. When FR2.0 took over the FederalRegister.gov domain we moved the public inspection service to OFR.gov, our office portal. That move was necessary because at the time, we simply did not have the resources to integrate both the daily Federal Register and the dynamically posted public inspection service.
Our customers have adjusted to the changes, but our ambition was to integrate and enhance these services, creating a one-stop shop for daily Federal Register information, whether it’s the current public inspection list, today’s FR2.0 table of contents, or the vast trove of older FR docs on FederalRegister.gov and FDsys. That has now been accomplished with the introduction of the public inspection pages on FederalRegister.gov.
You can still go to OFR.gov to view documents on public inspection, and it remains the place where the documents first appear online. But within minutes of posting, FR2.0 will sweep copies of those documents into FederalRegister.gov.
You will find that FR2.0 offers a much more versatile experience than the basic public inspection on OFR.gov. Unlike OFR.gov, the public inspection links on FR2.0 will remain viable. We provide ongoing access to the pre-publication versions so that news media, researchers, Twitter and Facebook users, and others can disseminate the links and know that access will be both immediate and enduring.
In addition to keeping public inspection PDFs viable, we build “Permalinks” into FR2.0 web pages and the PDFs themselves so that users can follow a path from the public inspection version to the final, published Federal Register document. That particularly benefits legal researchers who need to read and cite to the final published version.
And there’s more: the public inspection page on FR2.0 has a browseable calendar to get to prior sets of documents; we have a search page for documents currently on public inspection; and we link to public inspection documents from Agency browse pages and from the published Federal Register documents (in the “Key Information Sidebar”).
Perhaps the most useful new feature is that you can now subscribe to public inspection documents in several different ways — get the entire list, get notifications by agency, or get alerts triggered by saved search terms. Just look for the “Subscribe” icon on our FR2.0 pages and select “Notify when Filed on Public Inspection.” To learn more, read “About Public Inspection.“