June 18, 2015 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Internet has become the means for disseminating the entirety of the Department of Labor's semiannual regulatory agenda. However, the Regulatory Flexibility Act requires publication of a regulatory flexibility agenda in the Federal Register. This Federal Register Notice contains the regulatory flexibility agenda.

This notice provides the unified agenda of rules scheduled for review or development between spring 2015 and spring 2016. The Regulatory Flexibility Act and Executive Order 12866 require publication of the agenda.

The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980 and Executive Order (E.O.) 12866 require the semiannual issuance of an inventory of rulemaking actions under development throughout the Department, offering for public review summarized information about forthcoming regulatory actions.

The Department of Defense (DoD) is publishing this semiannual agenda of regulatory documents, including those that are procurement- related, for public information and comments under Executive Order 12866 ``Regulatory Planning and Review.'' This agenda incorporates the objective and criteria, when applicable, of the regulatory reform program under the Executive order and other regulatory guidance. It contains DoD issuances initiated by DoD components that may have economic and environmental impact on State, local, or tribal interests under the criteria of Executive Order 12866. Although most DoD issuances listed in the agenda are of limited public impact, their nature may be of public interest, and therefore, they are published to provide notice of rulemaking and an opportunity for public participation in the internal DoD rulemaking process. Members of the public may submit comments on individual proposed and interim final rulemakings at www.regulations.gov during the comment period that follows publication in the Federal Register. This agenda updates the report published on November 21, 2014, and includes regulations expected to be issued and under review over the next 12 months. The next agenda is scheduled to be published in the fall of 2015. In addition to this agenda, DoD components also publish rulemaking notices pertaining to their specific statutory administration requirements as required. The complete Unified Agenda will be available online at www.reginfo.gov. Because publication in the Federal Register is mandated for the regulatory flexibility agendas required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act (5 U.S.C. 602), the Department of Defense's printed agenda entries include only: (1) Rules that are in the Agency's regulatory flexibility agenda, in accordance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act, because they are likely to have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities; and (2) any rules that the Agency has identified for periodic review under section 610 of the Regulatory Flexibility Act. Printing of these entries is limited to fields that contain information required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act's agenda requirements. Additional information on these entries is in the Unified Agenda available online.

The Spring 2015 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. Publication of the Spring 2015 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions represents a key component of the regulatory planning mechanism prescribed in Executive Order 12866 ``Regulatory Planning and Review'' (58 FR 51735) and incorporated by reference in the President's Executive Order 13563, ``Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review,'' issued on January 18, 2011 (76 FR 3821). The Regulatory Flexibility Act requires that agencies publish semiannual regulatory agendas in the Federal Register describing regulatory actions they are developing that may have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities (5 U.S.C. 602). In the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions (Unified Agenda) agencies report regulatory actions upcoming in the next year. Executive Order 12866 ``Regulatory Planning and Review,'' signed September 30, 1993 (58 FR 51735), and Office of Management and Budget memoranda implementing section 4 of that Order establish minimum standards for agencies' agendas, including specific types of information for each entry. The Unified Agenda helps agencies fulfill these requirements. All Federal regulatory agencies have chosen to publish their regulatory agendas as part of the Unified Agenda. The complete Unified Agenda for spring 2015, which contains the regulatory agendas for 63 Federal agencies, is available to the public at https://reginfo.gov. The spring 2015 Unified Agenda publication appearing in the Federal Register consists of agency regulatory flexibility agendas, in accordance with the publication requirements of the Regulatory Flexibility Act. Agency regulatory flexibility agendas contain only those Agenda entries for rules that are likely to have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities and entries that have been selected for periodic review under section 610 of the Regulatory Flexibility Act.