UPDATED INFORMATION! Posting to Regulations.gov

3/18/2013 update

The regulations.gov integration is currently unavailable due to changes to their webform and as a result our webform engine cannot submit successfully. As we posted last September, regulations.gov is in the process of developing an API that we would be able to integrate into our Luminate Advocacy product which would support more stable delivery. This delivery method will be officially supported by the regulations.gov team -- similar to the Communicating with Congress project that we are participating in for delivery to Capitol Hill. We are in communicating with the regulations.gov team on a monthly basis regarding the status of this project.

At this time, the regulations.gov team is in the process of performing testing of the API within the government and is waiting on federal agencies to implement the API and offer feedback before releasing it to the grassroots advocacy vendor community. We suspect that those agency implementations may have been moved to the back burner as agencies deal with the current budget issues, but continue to check in with our contacts on the regulations.gov team on a monthly basis to check on progress.

We will update this thread when we have news to report -- please subscribe to the thread so that you can be automatically notified by email when there is an update.

9/6/2012 update

The regulations.gov integration is currently unavailable due to changes to their webform and as a result our webform engine cannot submit successfully. Currently, regulations.gov is in the process of developing an API that we would be able to integrate into our Luminate Advocacy product to work around the issues that we have encountered with their webform. It will likely be months before this proposed solution becomes available. We do not have specific target dates at this time but we will keep you posted on progress and when a resolution is delivered.

6/27/2012 update

Our Advocacy team is in communications with the regulations.gov team to see if we can "retrain" our webform engine to deliver to their site. In the meantime, please continue follow the instructions below for submitting comments to the appropriate agency.

6/14/2012 update

Our Advocacy team discovered today that a change was made to the regulations.gov website which has caused the form to be "untrainable" and all deliveries are now failing. Unlike with previous changes, we were not notified in advance of this update and so we are in the process of contacting the regulations.gov team to resolve the issue. In the meantime, I'd encourage any clients who have active alerts (or are planning to launch alerts) which target regulations.gov to follow the instructions below for submitting comments to the appropriate agency.

1. 
   
   Work with the agency collecting comments to identify where to send a CD (or other electronic file) of comments. If you do not have a contact at that agency, please contact the regulations.gov staff – they will help you identify the right person to send these comments to. You can call or email the regulations.gov staff at:
   
   

Kristin Tensuan, eRulemaking Program Manager

Tensuan.Kristin@epamail.epa.gov

202-566-1519

2. Create a custom target for the purposes of collecting all your comments. You can name the target with an appropriate name to reflect the agency where they are being submitted. You will need to use a legitimate email address for collecting these responses.

3. Direct your constituents to take action on the alert targeting the custom target. At the end of the campaign, run a report to download all responses and submit them to the agency in the mutually agreed upon format.

We will update this thread should the status of regulations.gov delivery change.

2/3/2012 update

During the weekend of 2/11/2012, the regulations.gov website will be deploying a significant release. We don’t anticipate that there will be issues with Convio’s ability to deliver to webforms (and will have the opportunity to test our delivery prior to the release to confirm this). But, this release will involve some downtime for the regulations.gov site. Additionally, as with any major software release, there is a chance for problems to arise. We encourage any Convio clients who have any active alerts on regulations.gov to factor the planned release into your plans for launching or driving constituents to alerts. In particular, if you have active alerts for comment periods that close on 2/13, the regulations.gov staff are encouraging you to make sure that you get as many comments submitted prior to the weekend.

2/3/2012 update II

Convio continues to have inconsistent delivery to regulations.gov webforms. However, we continue to work with the eRulemaking staff (who oversee regulations.gov) to look to find a permanent fix to the delivery issues. The following are known issues at the current time:

1. Convio is not able to deliver comments to regulations.gov forms that require the country field to be populated. Most forms do not require this field so this should impact a limited number of alerts. Please use alternate forms of delivery for forms that require the Country field (see below for information on other means of delivering alerts)
   
   
   
2. For forms that Convio is able to deliver to, due to the velocity restrictions set by regulations.gov, and the tendency for responses to an action alert to be very heavy immediately following an email blast, the initial burst of Convio submissions that are sent to the form will likely include a significant number of failures. As the response rate tapers off, a larger percentage of messages will succeed. The messages which initially failed can still be delivered by using the “retry” links available on the “Alert Delivery Report” and “Alert Delivery Failure Report.” It may take a few days of submitting retries to get all messages delivered.

Convio is continuing to work with the regulations.gov staff to optimize our delivery. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in this thread or reach out to us through Customer Care.

5/26/2011 Update

Convio has continued to have intermittent issues with delivering to regulations.gov webforms over the past several months. Unfortunately, at this time our delivery success to regulations.gov forms is not consistent. We are in communications with the regulations.gov staff about their stated priority to develop an alternative method of delivery, such as a web service, in 2011. In the meantime, we propose that clients follow the following back-up process for collecting public comments for communications that would otherwise go through regulations.gov

1. 
   
   Work with the agency collecting comments to identify where to send a CD (or other electronic file) of comments. If you do not have a contact at that agency, please contact the regulations.gov staff – they will help you identify the right person to send these comments to. You can call or email the regulations.gov staff at:
   
   

Kristin Tensuan, eRulemaking Program Manager

Tensuan.Kristin@epamail.epa.gov

202-566-1519

2. Create a custom target for the purposes of collecting all your comments. You can name the target with an appropriate name to reflect the agency where they are being submitted. You will need to use a legitimate email address for collecting these responses.

3. Direct your constituents to take action on the alert targeting the custom target. At the end of the campaign, run a report to download all responses and submit them to the agency in the mutually agreed upon format.

If you have any questions about how to go about running one of these campaigns, please post them here. We will keep you updated as we have more news of the ability to deliver messages to regulations.gov through the normal means.

2/23/2011 Update

I'm happy to report that Convio and the eRulemaking staff have ironed out the problems that we were having with delivery to regulations.gov and so we are back up and running again. Please continue to follow the best practices that we posted in November 2010 (see below). If you have any questions regarding delivery, please post them to this thread and we'll respond as quickly as possible.

2/11/2011 Update

Convio has been in communications with Regulations.gov over the past several weeks regarding their ability to handle the volume of messages that our clients are capable of generating via their campaigns. Unfortunately, at this time regulations.gov is experiencing technical difficulties and so we need to suspend delivery until they are able to once again begin receiving messages from us. In the meantime, we propose that clients follow the following process for collecting public comments for communications that would otherwise go through regulations.gov

1. 
   
   Work with the agency collecting comments to identify where to send a CD (or other electronic file) of comments. If you do not have a contact at that agency, please contact the regulations.gov staff – they will help you identify the right person to send these comments to. You can call or email the regulations.gov staff at:
   
   

Kristin Tensuan, eRulemaking Program Manager

Tensuan.Kristin@epamail.epa.gov

202-566-1519

2. Create a custom target for the purposes of collecting all your comments. You can name the target with an appropriate name to reflect the agency where they are being submitted. You will need to use a legitimate email address for collecting these responses.

3. Direct your constituents to take action on the alert targeting the custom target. At the end of the campaign, run a report to download all responses and submit them to the agency in the mutually agreed upon format.

If you have any questions about how to go about running one of these campaigns, please post them here. We will keep you updated as we have more news of the ability to deliver messages to regulations.gov through the normal means.

November 2010 Update

Convio's ability to deliver messages to regulations.gov has been back up and running since late August 2010 and messages are successfully being delivered. Last week Convio staff met with the eRulemaking program staff responsible for managing regulations.gov and we will be working together over the next year to improve our delivery of messages, particularly when a large number are generated in a short time frame. In the meantime, I wanted to share some best practices for alerts that target regulations.gov.

Delivering large volumes

Although Convio has the capacity to handle a large volume of constituents taking action on an alert targeting regulations.gov, unfortunately the regulations.gov platform does not have the capacity to handle the same volume of response. If you are planning to send an email that will likely generate thousands of action responses in a single day, the staff at regulations.gov would greatly appreciate advanced notification. As a professional courtesy, please send notification of a planned alert that will generate thousands of responses in a single day to:

regulations.gov_helpdesk@bah.com

You can also contact the regulations.gov staff by phone:

Kristin Tensuan, eRulemaking Program Manager.

202-566-1519

Privacy Notice

Comments made via regulations.gov are often made available publicly, often via the web, and will often include the full name and address of anyone who submitted comments. As such, it is a best practice to notify your constituents of this on your action form. The following privacy notice is displayed on the Regulations.gov comment submission form and can be copied for use in the call to action on your alert:

"Any information (e.g., personal or contact) you provide on this comment form or in an attachment may be publicly disclosed and searchable on the Internet and in a paper docket and will be provided to the Department or Agency issuing the notice. To view any additional information for submitting comments, such as anonymous or sensitive submissions, refer to the Privacy and Use Notice, the Federal Register notice on which you are commenting, and the Web site of the Department or Agency."

Required Contact fields

Some, but not all, of the agencies that use regulations.gov for comment submission do not require that the constituent provide their full postal address on the form. However, when configuring the action alert on Convio, all contact fields must be "required" on the form. If you would like to create a submission form that requires fewer fields, there is a workaround. You would need to create a custom target to capture submissions. You could then contact the agency accepting comments directly to arrange a method of delivering all comments submitted through your site, generally via a .csv file that you can save to a disk. This would require your working directly with the federal agency staff to arrange for delivery of the messages.

As we work with regulations.gov staff in the next year to improve delivery, some of these best practices may change. We'll update this post in the community to reflect those changes -- feel free to subscribe to the post to be notified via email when they do.

As always, please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions/feedback.

Best,

Michelle