A New Online Tool From Sunlight Foundation Allows Users to Track Federal Regulation Comments
Yet another useful research tool from the wondeful and important Sunlight Foundation. Like all of Sunlight’s online research resources, their latest release is also free to access and use.
From Sunlight’s Announcement
The Sunlight Foundation launches a new influence-tracking website today that uncovers trends in the federal rulemaking process. Docket Wrench is a searchable database and visualization tool that explores the federal rulemaking system, monitoring comments from 10,000 organizations across 300 federal agencies.
The rulemaking process starts after Congress passes a bill and the president signs it into law. Docket Wrench is a useful, online tool to show how federal agencies are fine-tuning public policy — and the groups trying to influence the regulatory process. While these proposed rules and public comments are posted on Regulations.gov, Docket Wrench goes a step further and allows anyone to see who is commenting and if there are any similarities among the proposals.
Direct to Docket Wrench
Learn More, Register for a Free Training Session
See Also: A Complete List of All of the Research Tools the Sunlight Foundation Makes Available
Filed under: Associations and Organizations, News, Patrons and Users

About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.