Many of the recommendations contained within a bipartisan report released in 2019 by U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) to improve the federal government’s online regulatory comment systems are being adopted by the General Services Administration (GSA).
Sen. Portman and U.S. Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), formerly the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), previously released a staff report entitled, Abuses Of The Federal Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking Process.
The report concluded that “for online commenting to be beneficial to both the agencies and the public, online dockets must contain substantive, relevant information that is easy to identify. They should not contain abusive material or comments submitted under false identities, and agencies should take appropriate action against commenters who abuse the process.”
In their report, Sens. Portman and Carper called on the administration and Congress to work together to remedy such issues going forward.
In response, the GSA on Feb. 18 launched a new version of Regulations.gov, a federal shared service that provides the public with one-stop access to regulatory and deregulatory actions for over 200 federal agencies, including the ability to electronically submit comments. The new site significantly improves the integrity of the commenting process, according to the GSA, which also plans to introduce transparency and accountability into the source of automated comments.
“I am pleased that GSA is implementing the recommendations we made in our bipartisan PSI report in 2019 to improve Regulations.gov,” Sen. Portman said on Feb. 18. “It is important for Americans to have faith that the regulatory notice and comment process incorporates legitimate feedback about proposed rules and does not take into account disinformation.”
“It is also important for our regulatory agencies to use their resources effectively to review concerns, evidence and arguments from real human beings, rather than spend their time and money sifting through abusive submissions,” added Sen. Portman.
According to the senator’s office, examples of the misuse of the online regulatory commenting system include rampant use of stolen identities to post comments on proposed regulations with no recourse for victims; more than 100,000 comments containing profanity and threats of violence; and comments designed to flood the systems, such as those containing entire movie scripts and book text.