OpenRegs.com

New feature: Significant regulations

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:13:39 -0500

An often requested feature for OpenRegs.com is the ability to know when a proposed or final regulation is significant (and especially economically significant). We now label every significant regulation as such on the site and in the iPhone app. We also provide a daily feed of significant regs published in the Federal Register. To the best of our knowledge, no government website offers this functionality. So what’s a significant res? It’s a regulation that has been reviewed by the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs before it was published in the Federal Register. What constitutes a “significant” regulation is outlined in Executive Order 12,866:

(1) Have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more or adversely affect in a material way the economy, a sector of the economy, productivity, competition, jobs, the environment, public health or safety, or State, local, or tribal governments or communities [these are ‘economically significant’]; (2) Create a serious inconsistency or otherwise interfere with an action taken or planned by another agency; (3) Materially alter the budgetary impact of entitlements, grants, user fees, or loan programs or the rights and obligations of recipients thereof; or (4) Raise novel legal or policy issues arising out of legal mandates, the President’s priorities, or the principles set forth in this Executive order.

Please let us know what you think of this feature and how else we can improve the site.

OpenRegs.com iPhone app now available!

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:00:00 -0400

Good news! OpenRegs.com now has an iPhone app available for download.

Take the Federal Register with you wherever you go! With the OpenRegs app for the iPhone and iPod Touch you can find recently issued notices of final and proposed rulemaking. Browse by agency or comment periods closing soon or recently opened. You can mark individual regulations with a star and then easily view a list of all your starred regs. Regulations can also be emailed to a friend or to yourself for later reference. Best of all, it’s free!

Download it free now!

Need help? Visit our support and feedback page, or email us at app@openregs.com.

Jerry Brito was on NewsChannel 8’s “Federal News...

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:09:00 -0400

Jerry Brito was on NewsChannel 8’s “Federal News Tonight” earlier this week talking about OpenRegs.com.

Reason: OpenRegs.com vs. Regulations.gov: .Com Wins!

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:07:43 -0400

Reason: OpenRegs.com vs. Regulations.gov: .Com Wins!

Washington Post's Federal Eye

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:06:40 -0400

Washington Post's Federal Eye:

“Check out OpenRegs.com, a fantastic portal designed by George Mason University’s Jerry Brito that scrapes the Federal Register each day and allows users to read up on new or proposed regulations.”

Help Washington Watch track congressional earmarks

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:03:26 -0400

A good friend of OpenRegs.com is Washington Watch, a site that lets you find, rate, describe, and discuss legislation being considered by Congress. They have now begun a project to crowdsource earmark tracking and they need your help. As an added bonus, one lucky earmark tracker will win an Amazon Kindle. From Washington Watch:

Earmarks – they’re how members of Congress and senators steer federal funds to special interests and projects in their districts. It’s often called “pork barrel” spending because the money is divided up based on seniority and insider deals rather than the general welfare of the country. For years now, earmarking has been conducted behind the scenes, but the House and Senate recently required their membership to reveal earmark requests. The door to the smoke-filled room has been unlocked, and now we’re going to kick it down! The problem is that earmark information is spread out across congressional Web sites, and it’s in many different formats. The solution? We’ve created a system for compiling earmark data in one place—actually, for you to compile it. We want you to add earmarks to our database through our earmark entry form. Pick your hometown member of Congress or Senator, your favorite representative—or your least favorite—and put their earmarks in the database.

Check it out and lend a hand at www.washingtonwatch.com.

OpenRegs.com in the media

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:48:59 -0400

OpenRegs.com has received some great attention in the press lately. Perhaps the most flattering review was from Personal Democracy Forum’s TechPresident, which has this to say about our site:

It’s refreshingly clean, it’s eminently navigable, and it’s intuitive for lay folk. Compare the polished results for a search on pending food regs on OpenRegs.com with the nightmare that you get from the same search on Regulations.gov.

OpenRegs.com officially launched, help us spread the word

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:23:36 -0400

OpenRegs.com is officially open for business today. After much testing and tweaking, we’re finally (hopefully) ready for prime-time and we need your help spreading the word.

OpenRegs is an alternative to the federal government’s Regulations.gov regulatory dockets database. That site can be confusing and difficult to use for average citizens and experts alike. The goal of OpenRegs.com is to make the proposed and final regulations published in the Federal Register easy to find and discuss, so that citizens can become better informed and more involved in the regulatory process.

Every year federal agencies issue thousands of regulations that cost society billions of dollars. These rules don’t just matter to big business, they have an impact on everyone’s daily life. From the contents of your toothpaste and shampoo, to the price of your coffee and orange juice, to the design of your car, it’s all affected by federal regulations. Now OpenRegs.com lets you easily find and comment on proposed rules that will have an impact on you.

OpenRegs.com has features not available anywhere else. These include the ability to browse by, and subscribe to, individual agencies and topics codes. Also available are discussion forums for each agency and each regulation, user-submitted related links, and much more. We hope you’ll explore the site and join the conversation.

Please help us spread the word about our site. Tell your friends and family about it by emailing them, blogging about it, and posting it to your Facebook profile. Thanks for your support!