Legal Considerations in e-Rulemaking

The Administrative Conference of the United States adopted four recommendations at its Fifty-fourth Plenary Session. Electronic rulemaking and video hearings are addressed by one recommendation each.

Recommendation 2011–1 "Legal Considerations in e-Rulemaking" recommends that agencies:

• consider using content analysis software to reduce the need for agency staff to spend time reading identical or nearly identical comments,
• provide timely, online access to all studies and reports upon which they rely,
• implement appropriate procedures for the handling of confidential, trade secret, or other protected information,
• consider the potential need to revise Privacy Act notices and recordkeeping schedules to accommodate e-Rulemaking, and
• replace paper files with electronic records in the rulemaking docket and in the record for appellate review.

Recommendation 2011–4 ‘‘Agency Use of Video Hearings: Best Practices and Possibilities for Expansion" encourages agencies, especially those with a high volume of cases, to consider the use of video teleconferencing technology for hearings and other administrative proceedings. The recommendation sets forth factors agencies should consider when deciding whether to use video teleconferencing and best practices for the implementation of this technology.

Nextgov reports the recommendations say Federal agencies should make more of an effort to post translations of proposed new regulations on their websites for non-English speakers -- provide text-only versions of the proposals to make them more accessible to citizens with low-bandwidth Internet and more compatible with software that translates Web pages into audio for the blind.