Agencies write thousands of rules each year. As the amount and complexity of rulemaking increases, so, too does the challenge to the agencies to write clear, informed and appropriate rules that implement legislation in the public interest.

Agencies have different practices for writing draft rules but, in every case, agency officials could benefit from better tools to help them manage the large quantity of information they must master and to assist with appropriate archiving and storage of information. Rule writing is also directly related to the comment processs, which provides input for rule writing to the agency official.

E-rulemaking seeks to increase the number and quality of comments so tools and processes are needed to assist the rulewriter in sorting through and using the comments. The goal is to increase the intelligibility of the final rule and speed up the rulewriting process.

Innovations are needed to help the agency:

• Write better, more informed rules;
• Write rules faster;
• Write well-drafted, clear, concise and intelligible rules; and
• Take advantage of comments in the rule writing process.