NPRM-basics
This article provides a brief introduction to notice(s) of proposed rule making and the basic information you need to submit a comment. If you are looking for the FSF's blog post about the Department of Education NPRM, see the blog post By 12/15: Send us comments to rally the Dept. of Ed. toward free licensing.
Contents
NPRMs and where to find them
A notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) is a public notice issued by law when one of the independent agencies (e.g., Department of Energy, FCC, Department of Education, etc) of the US government wishes to add, remove, or change a rule or regulation as part of the rulemaking process. Such a notice usually provides the public with a short period of time in which they can submit comments.
The Federal Register (FR) is the official journal of the federal government of the United States and it contains government agency rules, notice(s) of proposed rule making (NPRM), and public notices. The FR website is <https://www.federalregister.gov/>. The FR itself contains many resources to help you write and submit an effective comment on an NPRM and this document does not serve as a substitute for those resources.
Preparing your comment
The basic components of your NPRM should include:
- The name of the agency, its address, and any individual to whom you are supposed to address your comment.
- Clear and unambiguous citation of the actual NPRM you are commenting on or any other legal documents refer to in your comment.
- Clear and unambiguous citation of any of the proposed rules or specific questions you are addressing from the NPRM in your comment.
This information is all available in the NPRM itself. The NPRM, as it appears in the FR, will have a heading that includes the name of the issuing agency, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) title and parts affected, and a brief description of the specific subject of the document. It will also include: an agency docket number, which identifies the document within the agency's internal filing system; a Regulation Identifier Number (RIN) which is way of tracking regulatory actions; and instructions for filing comments and the date by which comments must be filed.
Example NPRM published in the Federal Register
On Tuesday, November 03, 2015, an NPRM from the Department of Education (ED) with the title: Open Licensing Requirement for Direct Grant Programs was published in volume 80 of the Federal Register, pages 67672 -- 67677. The heading of this NPRM in the FR looks as follows:
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 2 CFR Part 3474 [Docket ID ED–2015–OS–0105] RIN 1894–AA07 Open Licensing Requirement for Direct Grant Programs
With this information, you now have two ways to reference this NPRM. Since the Federal Register is a journal, you can choose to cite it in the format: "title, volume FR page (Month, day, year)". Which would look like this: Open Licensing Requirement for Direct Grant Programs, 80 FR 67672 (Nov. 3rd, 2015). The other way you can cite it is by the Dept. of Ed. docket number: Docket ID ED–2015–OS–0105.
The next key piece of info you need in your comment are the rules effected by the NPRM. In this case the header tell us it is "2 CFR Part 3474". Later in the document they make a more specific reference to the rule they are proposing when they write: "Proposed §3474.20 would establish an open licensing requirement for copyrightable works created using funds from direct competitive grant programs." So let's make sense of that nomenclature so you feel comfortable understanding it in general.
CFR refers to the Code of Federal Regulations, which is published by the Federal Register and contains all of the rules and regulations by executive departments and agencies of the federal government (IRS, FCC, Department of Education, et al). It is organized into 50 different titles. Title 2 of the CFR is dedicated to rules and regulations on federal grants and agreements. Chapter 34 of Title 2 reserves parts 3400 to 3486 for the Department of Education's rules and regulations on federal grants and agreements. So putting it together, "2 CFR 3474" is letting us know the rules that will be effected will be part 3474 of title 2 in the Code of Federal Regulations.
In this NPRM, the Dept. of Ed. is saying they wish to create a new section to part 3474, the number of this section is 20, and they refer to it as: §3474.20. And within this section, they some paragraphs, "(a)" and "(b)", which if you wish you can cite them as well. For example, you could write: "§3474.20 (a)."
Example comment template
There are a number of different ways to format such a letter or comment. Below are two examples for formatting your comment based on the information from NPRM referenced above.
A formal letter might begin like this:
Ms. Sharon Leu U.S. Department of Education 400 Maryland Avenue SW Room 6W252 Washington, DC 20202 December 18, 2015 Re: Docket ID ED-2015-OS-0105 Dear Ms. Leu, The Free Software Foundation applauds the efforts of the Department to ensure that educational resources created with direct competitive grant funds under free licenses. [... snip ...] However, missing from the list of conditions that the licenses must grant in §3474.20 (a) is the ability to distribute modified versions of a work ...
Another common format is to do a fancy cover letter that looks something like
this:
Before the
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue SW Room 6W252 Washington, DC 20202
)
In the matter of )
)
Open Licensing Requirement ) Docket ID ED-2015-OS-0105
for Direct Grant Programs )
)
COMMENTS BY THE FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION
Joshua Gay
Licensing & Compliance Manager
Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St.
Fifth Floor
Boston, MA 02110
December 18, 2015
And, lastly, when writing your comment, you should always pay particular attention to any specific instructions on how they would like your comment organized and what, if any, additional information they would like you to provide.
