In January, President Obama signed an Executive Order requiring all federal agencies to review existing regulations. The goal is to figure out what should stay, what should change, and what should go; making our regulatory program less burdensome, more effective, and better equipped to achieve regulatory goals. As a key step toward fulfilling the President’s mission, DHS today published a notice in the Federal Register seeking public comment on how best to develop a preliminary plan for a DHS-wide review of our existing regulations - It’s all a part of the Obama administration’s efforts to increase transparency and accountability in regulatory compliance across the federal government.

To execute the most efficient review possible, we need to hear from you. That’s why, in addition to the Federal Register comment mechanism, we are encouraging individuals and organizations, and State, local, and tribal entities to submit comments using the IdeaScale public dialogue tool—a simple, web-based forum that facilitates a two way conversation about how DHS regulations can best serve the public while still meeting their regulatory objectives.

Tell us which regulations you think should be modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed altogether to better serve you and your community. With IdeaScale, you can submit new ideas, add comments on ideas, and vote on ideas submitted by other participants.

It’s a simple and effective way to contribute to the mission of DHS. By participating, you are helping the Department better serve you as we support the Obama administration’s promise to increase transparency and accountability across the federal government.

The dialogue opens today, so get your ideas in and keep them coming for the duration of the comment period. We look forward to hearing from you!

A few months ago, the DHS Private Sector Office started a project to gather all the training, publications, guidance, alerts, newsletters, programs, and services available to the private sector from across the department.  The idea was to centralize all this information and publish it in a catalog for our private sector partners, providing them direct lines of access to critical resources at DHS - whether they need a contact in the Intelligence and Analysis Private Sector Partnership Program, or if they just want to read the latest on this blog - the Private Sector Resources Catalog was to be a "white pages" of sorts where our partners in academia, the non-profit world, NGOs, and the business sector could find at-a-glance information on any topic or office within DHS.

The resulting product turned out to be a fantastic resource we think has value both for the intended private sector audience and for the public alike.  The catalog provides information, contact numbers and email addresses, and websites for almost every program, office, and component within DHS.  Need the 4-1-1 on the 3-1-1 liquid restrictions for passenger travel on commercial airlines, or information about TSA's Security Grant Programs?  Just visit the TSA Programs and Services section.  Want a run down of all the DHS Centers of Excellence?  Check out the Science and Technology Directorate section.  There is also an A-Z appendix of key program office and component contacts from around the department. 

We hope that our partners in the private sector and indeed the public will find this a useful resource.  President Obama and Secretary Napolitano are committed to increased transparency and public access to those serving in the public trust; the catalog is another tool that serves that purpose.

Check out the new Private Sector Resources Catalog, and leave your feedback in the comments section of the blog.

So it's been almost two weeks since we launched "The Blog @ Homeland Security." We've been posting some regular content, like the Morning Roundup, some highlights of the Secretary and Deputy Secretary’s travel, and of course, a lot of our statements and press releases. We've also started to get down to the purpose of the blog: transparency.

We've seen a lot of supportive comments roll in, and, naturally, we've seen some criticism as well. It's true, official blogging isn't easy. Look at this as an evolving discussion, a work in progress.

Secretary Napolitano just posted some thoughts on the Leadership Journal about her upcoming trip to Europe and Kuwait. We encourage you to check it out, and keep checking the blog while she's traveling. We'll be dedicating most of our posts next week to tracking her trip. We'll have some guests talking about how her trip, stop by stop, is connected to our efforts here at home.

Thanks for your interest. We're doing this because the President issued a call for transparency when he assumed the office, and Secretary Napolitano wants to answer it. And keep leaving comments – we're listening.