The Unified Agenda is published twice each year. It normally appears in a single day's edition of the Federal Register in April and in October. The Regulatory Plan is published once each year, as part of the October Unified Agenda. Users of the October Unified Agenda have the option of searching for information in both the Regulatory Plan and the Unified Agenda, or they may limit their searches to just the Regulatory Plan.
Regulatory Plan Components
The Regulatory Plan contains the most important significant regulatory actions that each agency reasonably expects to issue in the current fiscal year or thereafter. For each department or agency, the Plan contains a statement of regulatory priorities and separate entries for each action included in the Plan.
If you choose to limit your research to the Regulatory Plan, you have the following options:
If you wish to search in both the Regulatory Plan and the Unified Agenda for information that may be contained in either of the databases, then you should follow the instructions given below for the Unified Agenda. The indexes described under the Unified Agenda cover both databases.
Unified Agenda Components
The Unified Agenda contains a compilation of the agenda documents of each department or agency. Each of these agenda documents has the following components:
You have several methods available to locate individual entries that may be of interest to you:
Stages of the rulemaking process
Each agency lists its entries in as many as five groups:
1. Prerule Stage -- actions agencies will undertake in the next 12 months to determine whether or how to initiate rulemaking. Such actions occur prior to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) and may include Advance Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRMs) and reviews of existing regulations.
2. Proposed Rule Stage -- actions for which agencies plan to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking as the next step in their rulemaking process or for which the closing date of the NPRM Comment Period is the next step.
3. Final Rule Stage -- actions for which agencies plan to publish a final rule or an interim final rule or to take other final action as the next step in their rulemaking process.
4. Long-Term Actions -- items for which the agency does not expect to have a regulatory action (ANPRM, NPRM, or Final Rule) within the 12 months after publication of the current edition of the Unified Agenda.
5. Completed Actions -- actions or reviews the agency completed or withdrew since publishing its last agenda. This section also includes items that were begun and completed between issues of the Agenda.
Sequence Numbers and Regulation Identifier Numbers
Each entry in the Unified Agenda bears two identification numbers, a "sequence number" and a "regulation identifier number" (RIN). Though both numbers may be helpful to users in locating items of interest, they serve different functions.
The RIN assigned to an individual proceeding remains with it throughout its entire "lifetime" in the Unified Agenda. The RIN thus provides a means of tracking a particular regulatory action from one edition of the Unified Agenda to the next. (For example, if you know the RIN of a particular action, you can quickly find the current entry by using that number as your search term in the Unified Agenda Database.) The first four numbers of each RIN are a code that identifies the agency. Thus all entries from an agency will have the same first four numbers in their RINs.
The sequence number merely identifies the location of an entry in a particular edition of the Unified Agenda. Sequence numbers for the same entry will ordinarily be different in different editions of the Agenda. Internet users who also refer to the printed edition of the Agenda in the Federal Register may find it helpful to understand how the sequence numbers are assigned. In the Federal Register, each agency's agenda appears as a separate part, organized alphabetically in four groups:
All entries are numbered sequentially from the beginning to the end of the Unified Agenda. These numbers are used in the indexes to enable readers to find entries on specific subjects. Both sequence numbers and RINs appear in agency tables of contents.
In the October editions of the Unified Agenda, which include The Regulatory Plan, all Plan entries appear at the beginning of the Agenda, arranged by department or agency, and thus have the lowest sequence numbers. The October Agenda also cross-references each Plan entry in the agency's regular Agenda section.
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