Important health, safety, and environmental regulations have been under attack since the beginning of the Bush administration. Upon taking office last January, President Bush halted all regulatory actions in progress and began to roll back a slew of regulations implemented at the end of the Clinton administration. This included protections for ergonomics hazards in the workplace, standards for hard rock mining, and a ban on building new roads through national parks, just to name a few. In this climate of de-regulation, transparency at OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is more important than ever. OIRA is an extremely powerful office, with a history of interfering with agency regulations and pushing the political agenda of the White House. During OIRA's earlier years, when there were no requirements for transparency, business interests frequently leveraged the office to halt agency regulatory proposals, undetected by the public. However, since John Graham's confirmation as OIRA administrator in July of 2001, transparency has improved greatly even as he has aggressively asserted OIRA's influence, as detailed here. Graham, to his credit, released a memo on October 18, 2001, outlining his vision for transparency to OIRA staff; among other things, it discussed the current disclosure requirements under Executive Order 12866 (which governs OIRA regulatory review), the use of the Internet to make materials accessible, and the upgrading of OIRA's electronic management system. Since this memo, a huge volume of new information has appeared on OMB's web site, which has made it much easier for the public to follow OIRA's activities. Specifically, this includes:

• Improved data on paperwork and regulatory reviews. During the Clinton administration, OIRA began posting data on its information collection reviews, conducted under the Paperwork Reduction Act, and its regulatory reviews, conducted under Executive Order 12866. (The first Clinton OIRA administrator, Sally Katzen, also took a huge step in improving disclosure by listing rules that were sent to OIRA and being reviewed. Past administrations refused to provide such information until OIRA had completed its review.) This data, however, was not searchable, incomplete, and difficult to understand. Graham has moved to change this. In the short term, this has meant adding information to the databases currently available. For instance, rules are now labeled if they are "economically significant" (with more than a $100 million impact). More recently, Graham has begun providing the data in a format that could be dumped into a database and made searchable by an outside interested party. Over the long term, Graham has committed that OIRA will provide a searchable database for both paperwork and regulatory reviews on its own by 2003. Although this is all good news, one remaining problem is the issue of context and explanation. To understand OIRA's data, you have to know something about it in advance. For instance, when a regulatory review is labeled "Consistent with Change," that means OIRA has approved the regulation with changes from when it was received. There is no way of knowing this from OIRA's web site. OIRA should attempt to provide more context and explanation to make the information it provides more accessible and usable.
• Aggregate regulatory review data. OIRA keeps aggregate regulatory review tables -- reported monthly and aggregated further over the course of a year -- that document the number of rules OIRA is reviewing from each agency, the percentage of rules changed at OIRA, and the average time OIRA reviews take. To see these tables, click here. These tables are extremely useful for getting a broad perspective on the flow of regulatory work. Previously, they were only made available in OIRA's docket library, but Graham has made them available online.
• Letters to agencies. When Graham has rejected an agency rule, he has delivered a "return letter" -- made public through the Internet -- describing the reasons for the rejection. Likewise, "post-review" letters on proposed rules are available on the web, as are "prompt letters" advising agencies to look at a particular problem. One quibble is that the letters do not include the OMB number assigned to rules under review, which would enable the public to match the rule in the letter to the rule in the OIRA database, in case it is not clear from the written description.
• Meeting logs. OIRA must log all meetings with those outside the government on a regulation under review. Each log contains the identities and affiliations of everyone at the meeting, as well the meeting's subject matter. Previously this information was only available in OIRA's docket library -- where sloppy handwriting was frequently a problem -- but now it is up on the web site, typed.

In addition to these improvements to the web site, Graham has also begun revamping the OIRA docket library. OIRA's library contains files for each specific regulation reviewed by OIRA. Most significantly, these files include details on any changes made to a regulation while under review - an important resource for assessing the influence and effectiveness of the office. In the past, such files were so poorly organized and documented as to make them almost unusable. Graham has set out to change this with a comprehensive effort to overhaul and reorganize the library. Currently, the docket library is out of commission while it undergoes the reorganization, but in the end it should be worth it. Of course, even with these improvements, there are still transparency issues to be solved. For instance, Graham has begun to involve OIRA more in agency decision-making before a regulation has been received for review -- "upfront" in his words. Yet the rules governing OIRA transparency only apply when a regulation is actually sitting at OIRA. This means nothing is disclosed, even if Graham is having substantial influence in shaping regulations upfront. During this time, for instance, Graham can meet with anyone he wants outside of government and not disclose it to the public. Another major issue to resolve deals with documentation of the transactions between OIRA and agencies. Often OIRA desk officers will interact with agency personnel via telephone communication. As a result, there is no paper trail to hold OIRA and the agency accountable for actions that unfold. Real transparency will require an ability for the public to understand the actions taken by OIRA. These are substantial holes to be sure. Yet given OIRA's past, and its historical resistance to disclosure, we applaud John Graham -- at least where transparency is concerned. Back to Executive Report