The following article was submitted to the California Air Resources Board employee newsletter (called "AirWaves") in an attempt to explain to ARB staff how their website/list serve presence might differ from most electronic publishing environments in California state government. We present here only the article and not the rest of the web page as it appeared that week. If you have any comments re: transparency in ARB's operations and its application to decentralizing the responsibility for publishing to the web, please contact webmaster@arb.ca.gov.


HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO ARB's INTERNET: An Interview with Mike Waugh, Manager, Regarding Public Benefits of ARB's Webservices
By Bill Welty

To make the ARB more responsive to the public and its stakeholders, CARBIS has developed a number of webservices that have indeed increased the transparency of ARB operations. Webservices include: listserv services, the use of ARB Outside to announce public workshops, the posting of Board agendas as well as the Board book itself, the posting of all rulemaking documents including staff reports and statements of reasons, as well as the webcasting of various forums and the Board meetings themselves. Combined, these services provide the public with a virtual microscope with which to observe ARB's programs and rulemaking activities.

Mike Waugh, Manager of SSD's Program Assistance Section, took full advantage of these webservices to increase the public involvement in the development of the Portable Diesel Engine ATCM. In this interview, Mike talks about the services he used and their effectiveness.

Bill Welty (BW): Hi Mike! So, I take it you're impressed with the webservices that make our regulatory activities more inclusive.

Mike Waugh (MW): Absolutely. For the Portable Diesel Engine ATCM, we used the listserv to notify nearly 700 stakeholders of meetings and available documents and handouts. Then we made that information available on a webpage for them to read and/or download.

BW: So, the services saved you time and money?

MW: Without a doubt. The listserv services alone saved us a lot of staff hours in telephone calls and saved us considerable postage, too. I've only been with the ARB for four years, so I can't imagine what it must've been like in the "old" days, when everything had to be mailed out.

Now, listserv makes the notification process pretty painless. And having background information on the web allows the public to get what they need when they need it. As you mentioned to me earlier, distributing information to the public and stakeholders now costs us virtually nothing.

BW: Yeah, Bill Fell says there are about 120 listserv lists related just to comment letters from the public. That's part of the transparency thing we talk about. Letting the public into our business is what everyone wants. Even the California Performance Review made it one of its top goals.

How did the webservices work for you on the Portable Diesel Engine ATCM?

MW: Well, let's see...the Board adopted the ATCM this past February. We kicked off our reg development with a workgroup meeting the prior January - 13 months prior. Ultimately, we had six workgroup meetings followed by four workshops. All of these meetings were noticed on our webpage, and we included handouts on our page, as well. Every public notice on the web included an agenda and maybe some background documentation or presentation material.

We'd fire off an e-mail on our listserv, letting our stakeholders know that the information was available, and everyone who participated in our meetings did so prepared. We had teleconferencing with all of our workgroup meetings, and three of the four workshops were webcast. So, right from the start even our initial discussions were open to anyone interested. You'd almost have to deliberately ignore us not to know what we were doing during our reg development.

BW: Would you say that this transparent approach was a success?

MW: I'll say this much: The Board adopted an ATCM that is estimated to cost nearly a half a billion dollars over the next 16 years or so, and no one testified against it at the Board hearing. I'm not saying that this phenomenon will happen every time, but I can tell you that it wouldn't have happened this last time if we hadn't taken such a transparent approach.

BW: What about the public comments leading up to the hearing?

MW: Well, prior to the February Board hearing date, our website provided the public with a convenient way to comment on the proposed ATCM. The OUTSIDE website has a Rulemaking button - on the left column, I think - that allows anyone to see what regulations are coming up, and then invites them to subscribe to a listserv to automatically receive a 45-day notice of a hearing or be notified of a 15-day comment period. I believe the same site has allowed the public to email their comments directly to the Board for some time now.

BW: And the webcast of that February Board meeting enabled staff and the public to actually watch the proceedings.

MW: Sure. I use it all the time myself when I can't make it to a Board hearing that I'm interested in.

BW: So, the bottom line is, webservices have made the ARB's business processes for initiating as well as adopting new regulations fairly transparent to the public.

MW: I'd say definitely so.

BW: Well, thanks, Mike, for taking time to talk about your experiences with ARB's webservices. I hope other program managers or those just beginning a rulemaking project will use them as effectively as you have. Any last comments?

MW: Thank you for asking me about our recent experiences. We've received quite a lot of compliments on our openness regarding our rulemaking activities. The ARB webservices make it pretty easy - and inexpensive - to get the word out. In fact, we're going through the same process now for our 2005 Distributed Generation Technology Review. We have almost 900 interested parties on our DG listserv, and next month we'll be having our fourth workgroup meeting. I'd say that our DG stakeholders are plugged in, no pun intended.

Contact: Bill Welty for additional information.