This is a summary of a recently accepted proposal to the National Science Foundation for a planning grant to develop a project that will examine the impact of new communications technology on public involvement in the regulatory rule-making process. Other key documents from the grant proposal are available on line if you have Adobe Reader. One goal of the longer-term project is to contribute to the development and deployment of more sophisticated and manageable information systems for citizen/government interaction. Both the planning phase and the larger research project will promote further collaboration between social scientists working on the democratic process of governance and federal agencies with significant information service components.

Federal agencies are increasingly deploying new technologies to improve citizen/government interaction. In a statement released by the White House on December 17, 1999, the Clinton Administration reinforced the importance of upgrading the "capacity of regulatory agencies for using the Internet to become more open, efficient, and responsive…." Earlier efforts in the area of electronic government have created new opportunities as well as challenges associated with real-world operating constraints. For example, on December 15, 1997, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) sought public comment on proposed national standards to govern the marketing of organic agricultural products. According to the online journal GOVEXEC.COM, the USDA's National Organic Program (NOP) conducted "the first fully electronic rule-making for a major regulation in federal history" (see this url and scroll down). Following publication of the proposed rule over the Internet, the USDA received over 275,000 public comments by E-mail, WWW, fax and postal mail. The public comment process earned several awards for government innovation and has drawn the attention of other federal agencies looking to reinvent the public comment process to take advantage of Internet technology.

This experiment in electronic government has yielded a rich database that, because of its format and size, presents novel analytical challenges. New methodologies are needed to efficiently assess and integrate citizen comments into the regulatory process. This researcher currently is collaborating with USDA staff who implemented the public comment process. Staff members have expressed a strong interest in supporting this project, and have supplied an initial data set of over 20,000 comments submitted to the NOP via Internet technology.

One objective of the planning phase is to use the initial data set to test the viability of computer-based qualitative data analysis for the efficient integration of citizen comments. A second objective is to develop a design for a multi-agency project modeled on the USDA's NOP experiment. Therefore, a number of key questions will be explored in the planning phase and the resultant project that will be of interest to the academic community and federal regulatory agencies as they standardize systems for gathering and analyzing citizen input:

· Does the application of Internet technology contribute to greater citizen involvement in regulatory agenda-setting?
· How can the public comment process be modified to ensure the input of underrepresented groups who may not have Internet access?
· Will the ground-breaking NOP process shape the way the federal government uses advanced technology when managing large qualitative data sets derived from citizen/government interaction?
· What role can the use of qualitative data analysis software play in expediting informed analysis of patterns in public commentary and in what ways can these findings be used to affect policy decisions?

Link to Stuart W. Shulman's Home Page
Link to the Providence College Working Group on Qualitative Data Analysis

Questions and feedback are encouraged. Please send email to: sshulman@providence.edu

The research project was initiated during October 1999. This web page is periodically updated to reflect the ongoing development of the ideas and research (last updated June 18, 2000). Initial findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, in San Jose California, March 24-26, 2000 and at the June 2000 annual meeting of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society. The research will next be presented at the September 2000 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. The APSA draft paper is available at:

http://www.providence.edu/polisci/shulman/new_work/APSA2000.pdf