CeRI: helping the public speak to regulators

This morning, Google News shows 354 stories related to yesterday’s announcement by USDOT of a new proposed regulation to ban texting by drivers of some commercial vehicles.  The LII’s partner project CeRI was prominently featured in DOT’s announcement. CeRI has opened regulationroom.org, a place where the public can go to learn about the proposed regulation and comment on it.  For the public, Regulation Room is a place to offer the government feedback on the new rule .  For CeRI researchers, it’s an experiment in using Web 2.0 techniques and user-interface design to offer richer interactions that we hope will improve the quality and effectiveness of public input into the agency rulemaking process.  We’re watching this process closely — along with the load average on the server it runs on — and we hope you’ll join in.