Improving Regulations: With Your Help

On January 18, 2011, President Obama ordered federal agencies (via Executive Order 13563) to review existing significant regulations to determine whether they should be modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed. As time passes and technologies, legal standards, and circumstances change, regulations may become outmoded, ineffective, insufficient, or excessively burdensome. We want to make our regulatory program more effective and less burdensome while still achieving its regulatory objectives. The Department sought suggestions from regulated entities and the general public. We incorporated those suggestions throughout the plan. The Department also incorporated best practices from the extensive agency efforts already underway to review existing regulations, respond to petitions for rulemaking, modernize technologies, and engage the public. Read the Preliminary Plan for Retrospective Review of Existing Regulations (PDF) Going forward, the Department proposes to establish a Department‐wide working group that will institutionalize a culture of retrospective review. The working group plans to review one to three rules each year, and the components have already identified several candidate rules that the group will evaluate through the retrospective review process described in this plan. Once the working group reviews these initial candidates, the Department plans to report to the public on the outcome of its assessment. Throughout this process, the Department seeks to build upon its commitment to open government and to promote evidence‐based, decision‐making with respect to regulations Members of the public are encouraged to comment on this Preliminary Plan and suggest additional candidate rules on or before June 30, 2011.   To comment on the Justice Department's Preliminary Plan, visit www.regulations.gov and insert DOJ-LA-2011-0016 in the “Enter Keyword or ID” box.  Once you are taken to the docket for this plan, click on the "Submit a Comment" bubble to open the comment form. We look forward to hearing from you.