[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.