eRulemaking

Aligned to goals:

• 2.1: Provide more insight into the agency's decision-making process.
• 2.3: Collect and use input from the public and other stakeholders for decision-making.

To facilitate the public's involvement in the Department's rulemaking process, the Department participates in Regulations.gov, an electronic government-wide access point that enables the public to submit comments on different types of federal regulatory documents and to read and respond to comments submitted by other members of the public during the public comment period.

Regulations.gov improves the public's access to and participation in rulemaking by providing one central electronic location to search, retrieve, and read all federal regulatory material. Through this site, the public can view a description of regulations currently open for comment, read the full text of these documents and any supporting regulatory documents, and submit comments to the appropriate federal agency. The public uses Regulations.gov to access Department of Education proposed, interim final, and final regulations, as well as a limited number of our other regulatory documents requesting public comment. We note that, with respect to other regulatory documents, the Department accepts public comments through e-mail and regular mail. We anticipate that the Department will expand its use of Regulations.gov to include these other regulatory documents in the future.

A recent search of Regulations.gov showed that the Department of Education has received and posted more than 6,300 public submissions on 980 notices and 100 rulemakings.