TY - JOUR
T1 - Deliberative E-Rulemaking Project
T2 - Challenges to Enacting Real World Deliberation
AU - Stromer-Galley, Jennifer
AU - Webb, Nick
AU - Muhlberger, Peter
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0713143. We would like to thank Lauren Bryant, Mike Ferguson, Ting Liu, Mike Mussman, and Brian Tramontano, who were our able assistants at the University at Albany.
Funding Information:
In a final wrinkle for the project, but one that government agencies experience frequently, we became the subject of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the hunting and gun rights advocacy group that was vocal following Director Wenk’s announcement of the lead ban by parks’ personnel in 2009, and one of the organizations we unsuccessfully invited to participate in the deliberation, sought all e-mail communication, reports, documents, data, and transcripts on the lead deliberation. They also submitted FOIA requests to the National Science Foundation and to the National Parks Service. Because the project is funded by the federal government and because we all are employed by public universities, we were legally compelled to respond to the request.
PY - 2012/1
Y1 - 2012/1
N2 - This article describes the challenges facing a federal government-funded initiative to promote online deliberation to improve the public comment process by federal and state government agencies in the United States. The three year project met several difficulties. Some have been technical, but our primary obstacle has been in securing partnerships with government agencies. Due to institutional, legal, and organizational challenges, many government agencies are resistant to opening up the public comment process to a deliberative structure, although some change occurred following the Obama administration's Open Government Initiative. This article describes the objectives of the original research project and details the challenges faced with the hope of guiding future deliberation research projects that aim to work with federal agencies in the U.S.
AB - This article describes the challenges facing a federal government-funded initiative to promote online deliberation to improve the public comment process by federal and state government agencies in the United States. The three year project met several difficulties. Some have been technical, but our primary obstacle has been in securing partnerships with government agencies. Due to institutional, legal, and organizational challenges, many government agencies are resistant to opening up the public comment process to a deliberative structure, although some change occurred following the Obama administration's Open Government Initiative. This article describes the objectives of the original research project and details the challenges faced with the hope of guiding future deliberation research projects that aim to work with federal agencies in the U.S.
KW - E-rulemaking
KW - government rulemaking
KW - natural language processing
KW - online deliberation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84861006287&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84861006287&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/19331681.2012.635971
DO - 10.1080/19331681.2012.635971
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84861006287
VL - 9
SP - 82
EP - 96
JO - Journal of Information Technology and Politics
JF - Journal of Information Technology and Politics
SN - 1933-1681
IS - 1
ER -