FAS Significant Guidance Documents

The Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) is providing the information below to increase the quality and transparency of agency guidance practices, and to comply with the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) "Final Bulletin for Agency Good Guidance Practices" published in the Federal Register on January 25, 2007 (72 FR 3432–3440).  While FAS has several guidance documents relating to making application to the various programs it administers, it has been determined the Agency does not have any significant guidance documents, as defined in the OMB Bulletin referenced above. The term ‘‘guidance document’’ means an agency statement of general applicability and future effect, other than a regulatory action, that sets forth a policy on a statutory, regulatory, or technical issue or an interpretation of a statutory or regulatory issue.  A discussion of this definition and various types of guidance documents and other background information is available at the following sites:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/2007/
012507_good_guidance.pdf

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda/fy2007/
m07-13.pdf
 

Members of the public who wish to request that the agency issue, reconsider, modify, or rescind a significant guidance document, or to complain that the agency is not following the procedures in OMB's Bulletin, or is improperly treating a significant guidance document as a binding requirement, may do so by sending an email to

Good_Guidance_Comments@fas.usda.gov

Or by mailing a letter to the following office:

Guidance Officer
Office of Administrative Operations
USDA Foreign Agricultural Service
Mail Stop 1035
Washington, DC 20250-1035

Additionally, you may submit comments through www.regulations.gov on new or revised guidance documents open for comment as indicated in the chart below.

This agency effort and OMB's Bulletin is intended to improve the internal management of the Executive Branch and is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity, against the United States, its agencies or other entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.