Establishing Information Quality Guidelines in Social Information Systems: Comparison and Discussion of Two Approaches

Social Information Systems (SocIS) enable many people to interact digitally and collaboratively create and share digital content. Nevertheless, the large and heterogenous SocIS communities make it challenging to ensure information quality (IQ) because members’ interpretation and evaluation of content might be very different. As a remedy, many platforms explicitly state normative IQ guidelines. Guidelines can be developed either by the community members themselves or by the platform provider (and imposed on the community). It is unclear, however, which of these two approaches members agree with more strongly and which produces the more satisficatory IQ guidelines. Through an empirical survey study covering 15 different SocIS platforms, we find that members do agree more and are more satisfied when guidelines have been developed by the community. These findings are important for platform providers to improve IQ and retain members, and also inform research on IQ in SocIS

The National Firefighter Registry (NFR) : National Firefighter Registry Subcommittee meeting May 15, 2020

This information is distributed solely for the purpose of pre dissemination peer review under applicable information quality guidelines. It has not been formally disseminated by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It does not represent and should not be construed to represent any agency determination or policy.NFRS_meeting_Program_Slides-5-13-20.pdfIntroduction & background / Kenny Fent -- Protocol & design / Miriam Siegel -- Data sharing / Alex Mayer -- Communication plan / Will Wepsala -- Enrollment questionnarie / Andrea Wikinson -- NIOSH - National Firefighter Registry -- Questions for input / Paul Middendorf.20211087

An Analysis of the Sixth Government Report on the Costs and Benefits of Federal Regulations

Also of interest by Hahn and Litan, "A Review of the Office of Management and Budget's Draft Guidelines for Conducting Regulatory Analyses". This paper critically reviews the draft of the Office of Management and Budget's sixth report on the benefits and costs of federal regulation. According to Robert W. Hahn and Robert E. Litan, the draft report represents an improvement over previous reports in some ways. While there has been progress, they say, some useful innovations from last year are not included in this draft. Mr. Hahn and Mr. Litan claim that there is room for significant improvement in this draft report. They offer five recommendations, one for Congress and four for OMB, that would help hold lawmakers more accountable for the regulations they produce. These recommendations focus on getting the regulatory agencies to produce better analysis, making that analysis more transparent and readily available, and making the regulatory process itself more transparent The authors recommend that OMB include a scorecard that summarizes the extent to which regulatory analyses comply with OMB's guidelines for regulatory analysis; provide information on regulations addressing terrorist threats; summarize useful information on a number of OMB's regulatory oversight activities, including return letters, prompt letters, turnaround time, and regulations and programs recommended for improvement or reform; and ask independent agencies to provide annual assessments of the costs and benefits of their economically significant regulations. Mr. Hahn and Mr. Litan also suggest that Congress require agencies to comply with OMB's information quality guidelines and guidelines for regulatory analysis.

The Information Quality Act: OMB's Guidance and Initial Implementation

This report describes the IQA and OMB's and the agencies information quality guidelines, noting how several key terms are defined, how risk-related information is to be treated, and how agencies correction process should be established

An Analysis of the Fifth Government Report on the Costs and Benefits of Federal Regulation

This paper critically reviews the draft of the Office of Management and Budget's fifth report on the benefits and costs of federal regulation. The draft report is a significant improvement over previous reports in terms of the responsiveness to the congressional mandate, and the information it provides on recent improvements at OMB. We think the changes that OMB has made to increase transparency and efficiency are significant. These include making greater use of the Internet to communicate information, sending letters to agencies encouraging specific regulations with net benefits, and providing information on turnaround time for reviewing rules. There is still room for substantial improvement, however. We offer six recommendations, one for Congress and five for OMB, that we believe would be helpful in holding regulators and lawmakers more accountable for the regulations they produce. Our recommendations focus on getting the regulatory agencies to produce better analysis, making that analysis more transparent and readily available, and making the regulatory process itself more transparent. We recommend that Congress require agencies to comply with OMB's economic guidelines. We also suggest that OMB improve its report by including a scorecard on the extent to which regulatory analyses comply with their guidelines; providing more information on regulations aimed at reducing terrorism; and making greater use of its in-house expertise to improve estimates of benefits and costs for individual regulations.

Draft toxicological profile for DEET (N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide)

This information is distributed solely for the purpose of pre-dissemination public comment under applicable information quality guidelines. It has not been formally disseminated by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. It does not represent and should not be construed to represent any agency determination or policy.This toxicological profile is prepared in accordance with guidelines developed by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The original guidelines were published in the Federal Register on April 17, 1987. Each profile will be revised and republished as necessary.Chemical manager(s)/author(s): Sam Keith, M.S., C.H.P., Carolyn Harper, Ph.D., Annette Ashizawa, Ph.D., Robert Williams, CDR, Ph.D., ATSDR, Division of Toxicology and Human Health Sciences, Atlanta, GA; Fernando Llados, Ph.D. Christina Coley, B.S., Heather Carlson-Lynch, M.S., SRC, Inc., North Syracuse, NY.tp185.pd

The Future of the Bush Administration Regulatory Reforms

The past eight years have been busy ones for aficionados of the regulatory process. Not since the late 1970s and early 1980s have as many requirements been imposed upon agencies writing a regulation. These include the implementation of the Information Quality Act, regulatory peer review, Executive Order 13422, and electronic rulemaking requirements among others. Since many of these requirements were imposed by executive order or other presidential action, the new administration will have important choices to make about whether to weaken, maintain, or strengthen these requirements. These decisions will affect nearly every area of regulatory policy This paper examines the Bush reforms by asking whether an incoming administration with different regulatory priorities will find the increased presidential power over regulatory agencies worth the other potentially deleterious effects of the reforms. I argue that several of the Bush reforms, the use of prompt letters and control over guidance documents will prove attractive to the Obama Administration, while others such as regulatory peer review and the non-guidance components of Executive Order 13422 will not.

“Regulatory Daubert”: A Proposal to Enhance Judicial Review of Agency Science by Incorporating Daubert Principles into Administrative Law

In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc, the US Supreme Court empowered federal judges to reject irrelevant or unreliable scientific evidence. Daubert provides a suitable framework for reviewing the quality of agency science and the soundness of agency decisions consistent with the standards established for review of agency rulemakings under the Administrative Procedure Act

“Regulatory Daubert”: A Proposal to Enhance Judicial Review of Agency Science by Incorporating Daubert Principles into Administrative Law

In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc, the US Supreme Court empowered federal judges to reject irrelevant or unreliable scientific evidence. Daubert provides a suitable framework for reviewing the quality of agency science and the soundness of agency decisions consistent with the standards established for review of agency rulemakings under the Administrative Procedure Act

The Grand Experiment in Regulatory Reporting

This paper evaluates a grand regulatory experiment, the first of its kind in the world, aimed at providing an objective and comprehensive characterization of the costs and benefits of U.S. federal regulation as well as identifying opportunities for reform. This experiment, if successful, could have important implications for reviewing the impact of regulation across the world. Five government reports on the costs and benefits of regulation are now complete. We offer a critical evaluation of these reports, using an approach that scores the reports on various dimensions. By and large, the reports represent a significant step forward in providing insights into the regulatory process and in providing information on the costs and benefits of regulation. But they also illustrate the shortcomings of having a government agency do the analysis. We recommend that the Office of Management and Budget require agencies to issue a scorecard evaluating each agency regulation; that OMB summarize the strengths and weaknesses of regulations using this scorecard; that OMB include not only executive agencies, but also independent agencies in its analysis; and that Congress create an agency or office outside of the executive branch to perform a regulatory evaluation function similar to that of OMB. While we are highly critical of some aspects of these important reports, we are guardedly optimistic about their potential to improve regulation and the regulatory process.