[Federal Register: December 7, 2009 (Volume 74, Number 233)]
[The Regulatory Plan]
[Page 64132-64133]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr07de09-245]
I. What Are The Regulatory Plan and the Unified Agenda?
The Regulatory Plan serves as a defining statement of the
Administration's regulatory and deregulatory policies and priorities.
The Plan is part of the fall edition of the Unified Agenda. Each
participating agency's regulatory plan contains: (1) A narrative
statement of the agency's regulatory priorities and, for most agencies,
(2) a description of the most important significant regulatory and
deregulatory actions that the agency reasonably expects to issue in
proposed or final form during the upcoming fiscal year. This edition
includes the regulatory plans of 27 agencies.
The Unified Agenda provides information about regulations that the
Government is considering or reviewing. The Unified Agenda has appeared
in the Federal Register twice each year since 1983 and has been
available online since 1995. To further the objective of using modern
technology to deliver better service to the American people for lower
cost, beginning with the fall 2007 edition, the Internet is the basic
means for conveying Regulatory Agenda information to the maximum extent
legally permissible. The complete Unified Agenda, including The
Regulatory Plan, is available to the public at http://reginfo.gov. The
online Unified Agenda offers flexible search tools and will soon offer
access to the entire historic Unified Agenda database.
The fall 2009 Unified Agenda publication appearing in the Federal
Register consists of The Regulatory Plan and agency regulatory
flexibility agendas, in accordance with the publication requirements of
the Regulatory Flexibility Act. Agency regulatory flexibility agendas
contain only those Agenda entries for rules which are likely to have a
significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities
and entries that have been selected for periodic review under section
610 of the Regulatory Flexibility Act. Printed entries display only the
fields required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act. Complete agenda
information for those entries appears, in a uniform format, in the
online Unified Agenda at http://reginfo.gov.
These publication formats meet the publication mandates of the
Regulatory Flexibility Act and Executive Order 12866, as well as move
the Agenda process toward the goal of e-Government, at a substantially
reduced printing cost compared with prior editions. The current format
does not reduce the amount of information available to the public, but
it does limit most of the content of the Agenda to online access. The
complete online edition of the Unified Agenda includes regulatory
agendas from 59 Federal agencies. Agencies of the United States
Congress are not included.
The following agencies have no entries identified for inclusion in
the printed regulatory flexibility agenda. An asterisk (*) indicates
agencies that appear in the Regulatory Plan. The regulatory agendas of
these agencies are available to the public at http://reginfo.gov.
Department of Defense *
Department of Education *
Department of Housing and Urban Development *
Department of State
Department of Veterans Affairs *
Agency for International Development
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board
Commission on Civil Rights
Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Committee for Purchase From People Who Are Blind or Severely
Disabled
Consumer Product Safety Commission
Corporation for National and Community Service
Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of
Columbia
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission *
Farm Credit Administration
Farm Credit System Insurance Corporation
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Federal Housing Finance Agency
Federal Maritime Commission *
Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
Federal Trade Commission *
Institute of Museum and Library Services
National Aeronautics and Space Administration *
National Archives and Records Administration *
National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Humanities
National Indian Gaming Commission *
National Science Foundation
Office of Government Ethics
Office of Management and Budget
Office of Personnel Management *
Peace Corps
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation *
Postal Regulatory Commission *
Railroad Retirement Board
Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board
Selective Service System
Social Security Administration *
Surface Transportation Board
The Regulatory Information Service Center (the Center) compiles the
Plan and the Unified Agenda for the Office of Information and
Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), part of the Office of Management and Budget.
OIRA is responsible for overseeing the Federal Government's regulatory,
paperwork, and information resource management activities, including
implementation of Executive Order 12866. The Center also provides
information about Federal regulatory activity to the President and his
Executive Office, the Congress, agency managers, and the public.
[[Page 64133]]
The activities included in the Agenda are, in general, those that
will have a regulatory action within the next 12 months. Agencies may
choose to include activities that will have a longer timeframe than 12
months. Agency agendas also show actions or reviews completed or
withdrawn since the last Unified Agenda. Executive Order 12866 does not
require agencies to include regulations concerning military or foreign
affairs functions or regulations related to agency organization,
management, or personnel matters.
Agencies prepared entries for this publication to give the public
notice of their plans to review, propose, and issue regulations. They
have tried to predict their activities over the next 12 months as
accurately as possible, but dates and schedules are subject to change.
Agencies may withdraw some of the regulations now under development,
and they may issue or propose other regulations not included in their
agendas. Agency actions in the rulemaking process may occur before or
after the dates they have listed. The Regulatory Plan and the Unified
Agenda do not create a legal obligation on agencies to adhere to
schedules in this publication or to confine their regulatory activities
to those regulations that appear within it.