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Welcome to the eRegs Notice & Comment research home!

What is eRegulations?

eRegulations is an open-source platform for making regulations easier to find, read, and understand. We digitally digest agency regulations and rules to present their built-in structure in a clean, readable form, including their changes over time.

eRegulations Notice & Comment is a new feature that allows the public to comment on Notices of Proposed Rulemaking in a structured and more precise way. This makes it easier for commenters to respond to specific issues in the rule — down to the paragraph level — and allows agencies to efficiently sort and organize those comments.

You can learn more about the history, features, and background of the eRegulations platform at eregs.github.io.

Or, you can view the live Notice & Comment site at https://epa-notice.usa.gov/.

Notice & Comment Process

18F / GSA partnered with the EPA to pilot this new feature. We broke down the process into three phases:

• First, we talked to users about their past commenting experiences. By understanding our audience and their current behaviors, we were able to scope the feature down to something that could be designed and built in 8-12 weeks.
• Second, while we were building the tool, we tested it to validate our assumptions from the first round of research and check for any usability issues.
• Third, we will be researching the effects of the tool during the pilot with EPA’s open comment period.

Below are detailed plans and results of all three phases of our research:

Phase 1: Generative research

What do our users need? What are we going to build?

• Original research plan
• Findings
• Workshop with EPA results and user stories

Phase 2: Testing the tool

Does the tool we are building work for our users?

• Findings

Phase 3: Success?

Will commenters use the tool during the open comment period?

• Comment period research plan
• Findings