Federal agencies publish thousands of rules every year. To ensure the public has an opportunity to participate in the rulemaking process, agencies solicit comments on proposed regulations. We surveyed 52 program offices at 10 agencies about the comment process. Almost all of them indicated that the process led to at least some substantive changes to their final rules. Eight of the ten selected a...

When federal agencies propose new rules, they usually provide an opportunity for public comment, but agencies aren't required to collect or verify commenters' identity information. Mass mailing campaigns can result in thousands of duplicate comments. Agencies can post them individually, as attachments to a single comment, or as a count of duplicates received. Practices vary among agencies, within...

Each year, nearly every adult and business provides some form of information to a federal agency, whether via tax forms or benefits applications. Agencies estimate the time and resources it takes to provide this information to help manage the paperwork burden placed on the public. How do they ensure their estimates are accurate? The law requires agencies to solicit public input on information col...

Studies have found that federal agencies issue more regulations shortly before a president leaves office. This is often called "midnight rulemaking." We looked the last 120 days of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations and compared the activity level to non-transition years. We found agencies in these periods: published about 2.5 times as many regulations, were more likely to provide adv...

Federal agencies can design their regulations in many ways. For example, some regulatory designs establish an outcome but allow flexibility in how to achieve it, while others are more prescriptive and require certain technologies or actions. We looked at how some agencies choose among the regulatory designs and compliance and enforcement tools available to them, and how they evaluate those choice...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) uses a variety of documents to communicate its interpretation of tax laws to the public, but only considers Internal Revenue Bulletin (IRB) guidance to be authoritative. IRS information published outside of the IRB can help taxpayers understand tax laws and make informed decisions, but does not always include information clarifying the limitations of its use. IRS...

GAO identified key elements of regulatory user fees for decision makers to consider as they design, implement, and evaluate these fees. Setting regulatory user fees: Congress determines in statute the degree of flexibility to make fee design and implementation decisions that will be retained or delegated to the agency. This has implications for whether agencies issue regulations to set fees, who...

The four departments—Agriculture (USDA), Education (Education), Health and Human Services (HHS), and Labor (DOL)—and their selected components used guidance for multiple purposes, such as clarifying or interpreting regulations and providing grant administration information. The terminology used for agency guidance varied and agency components issued varying amounts of guidance, ranging from ab...

How often and to what extent agencies included selected key elements of cost-benefit analysis varied by rule type. The selected key elements in GAO's review are a statement of purpose; monetized or quantified costs and benefits or a qualitative discussion of them; and a discussion of alternatives. The 203 rules GAO reviewed are categorized into three broad, nonmutually exclusive categories—major...

Agencies often made changes to regulations in response to completed retrospective regulatory analyses, but could improve the reporting of progress. Executive Orders and related implementation guidance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) require executive agencies, and encourage independent regulatory agencies, to develop and implement retrospective review plans. Agencies use semiannual...

All seven U.S. regulatory agencies that GAO contacted reported engaging in a range of international regulatory cooperation activities to fulfill their missions. These activities include the United States and its trading partners developing and using international standards, recognizing each other's regulations as equivalent, and sharing scientific data. U.S. agency officials GAO interviewed said t...

Agencies did not publish a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), enabling the public to comment on a proposed rule, for about 35 percent of major rules and about 44 percent of nonmajor rules published during 2003 through 2010. A major rule has significant economic impact and may, for example, have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more. Agencies published a total of 568 major rule...