President Obama's Jan. 18 Executive Order 13563, "Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review" (E.O. 13563), instructed federal agencies to develop plans for the ongoing review of existing regulations to identify rules that are "outmoded, ineffective, insufficient, or excessively burdensome, and to modify, streamline, expand, or repeal them." On Aug. 23, the administration released final retrospective review plans, submitted by 26 agencies, that contain the list of rules to be addressed in accordance with the E.O. The plans also include descriptions of how the agencies intend to incorporate ongoing retrospective review processes into their administrative procedures. OMB Watch now has a webpage where the public can read about the plans of key health, safety, and environmental agencies responsible for safeguarding the public.

The page contains an overall assessment of the plans, links to source documents, and analyses of the individual plans of three agencies: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)), and the Department of Labor (DOL).

The public interest community has been concerned that the “look-back” process would encourage some agencies to weaken important health and safety protections and/or have a “chilling” effect on agencies and cause them to pull proposed rules from the review process.

Overall, agencies stuck to their missions and did not cave to political or industry pressure, although some included proposed new rules in the review process. The final plans closely reflect the preliminary plans released by agencies in May. Many of the agencies found inefficiencies in paperwork submission procedures, approval processes, or outdated technology requirements that can be fixed through minor changes to existing regulations. Others found that better coordination between departments or among agencies could eliminate redundancies and streamline procedures.

Many agencies were careful to provide public comment periods and some used the comments to inform the rules they targeted for action. Strikingly, the vast majority of comments provided were by representatives of regulated industries, indicating that the retrospective review process allowed for additional opportunities for special interests to attempt to influence the rulemaking process and the standards that keep our families and communities safe from harm. Despite this, many agencies stood firm and recognized that their mission to protect the public had to come first.