The following letter circulated to agencies in the wake of the Transportation/Treasury approps (text courtesy of Harvard's Cary Coglianese): December 19, 2005 E-Rulemaking Executive Committee Members: Recently-signed provisions of the FY06 Treasury/Transportation/HUD appropriations bill contain restrictions on government-wide funding of E-Government (E-Gov) Initiatives. This significant legislation requires agencies to inform and secure Congressional approval to fund E-Gov initiatives including eRulemaking. The Office of Management and Budget and the eRulemaking Program Management Office (PMO) are aware of this and other Congressional appropriations restrictions and are working to resolve them. At the current rate of expenditures, the eRulemaking PMO available funding will expire in mid-February 2006. In response, as Co-Chairs of the eRulemaking Executive Committee and in conjunction and concurrence with the OMB E-Gov Administrator, we have decided to allocate remaining funds to operate and maintain the current Federal Docket Management System, Regulations.gov. This will ensure continued operations and service for federal agencies that have already implemented and use FDMS/Regulations.gov as well as millions of public users of the system. In addition, in light of the funding shortfall, eRulemaking will suspend all further agency implementation and development activities, effective beginning second quarter FY2006. As funding is approved and received, the PMO will resume agency implementation and system development activities to the extent that resources allow. The eRulemaking PMO will keep the eRulemaking Initiative partner agencies apprised of any future developments as information becomes available. We recognize that this action will impact E-Gov implementation plans for several agencies. We will continue to work with those agencies affected by this decision and renegotiated new migration and implementation dates. We regret that this decision had to be made but are doing so in consideration of the importance of maintaining functionality for all of our participating agencies and the user community. If you have any concerns or wish to discuss further please contact us . . . . We look forward to our continued collaboration on this important government-wide initiative. Sincerely, Kimberly T. Nelson Co-Chair, eRulemaking Executive Committee Chief Information Officer and Assistant Administrator Office of Environmental Information U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Donald R. Arbuckle Co-Chair, eRulemaking Executive Committee Deputy Administrator Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Office of Management and Budget It's unfortunate that work will apparently slow on the development of the e-rulemaking initiative, but it may be a blessing in disguise. The e-Rulemaking project has so far resulted in a clumsy system that is based on but less adequate than what was at the time the second-best system, EPA's e-docket system. Assuming that some funding will be scraped together in the future to pick back up on the project, maybe the interim period will allow for some re-thinking of the unfortunate direction that e-Rulemaking was headed in.