Open Government Initiative to Explore Technological Means for Increasing Public Participation in Rulemaking

The United States Department of Transportation, Office of the Secretary of Transportation (OST), Procurement Operations, OST Acquisition Services Division intends to enter into a contract to complete a portion of ongoing research and development of an e-rulemaking research study designed to explore the use of Web 2.0 tools and other information, communication, and collaboration technologies to facilitate the gathering and improvement of public comments in the federal rulemaking process. This e-rulemaking study is currently being implemented on a unique and private research platform designed, operated, and maintained by an educational institution for research and academic purposes. The site was developed and made operational at no cost to the Government and has previously been used for DOT rulemaking research using these applications. This proposed contract action involves a follow-on effort related to an existing research study and is designed to result in the identification of practices that will produce higher quality, more useful public comments on agency rulemakings. The study is also anticipated to result in the development of online educational and informational materials about rulemaking that meet the needs of a wide range of users and that could be used by any federal agency in their rulemaking efforts. The existing e-rulemaking platform has the immediate capability to accept current rulemakings on a site and use Web 2.0 discussion, drafting, and other tools to: instruct visitors on use of the site through video tutorials; allow visitors to comment on specific paragraphs of discussion postings and respond to other comments; and provides a platform for moderators to manage the monitoring and facilitation of comments. All interested offerors must have experience in rulemaking at the agency level and the capability for public outreach as well as an existing operational site with the immediate capability to facilitate and summarize rulemaking comments through the use of Web 2.0 tools. The required existing platform and site must also allow commenters to collaboratively edit and draft summaries through a wiki-type interface and provide neutral facilitation to commenters, as appropriate, to aid in drafting thorough comments. All interested offerors must be able to demonstrate existing capability and experience as described above. Interested offerors are requested to submit a capability statement on this announcement. The statement of interest should be submitted on institutional letterhead and identify a point of contact. All submittals to this announcement should be provided electronically to the following email address: [email protected] .