Making regulations easier to use

We write rules to protect consumers, but what actually protects consumers is people: advocates knowing what rights people have, government agencies’ supervision and enforcement staff having a clear view of what potential violations to look out for; and responsible industry employees following the rules.

Today, we’re releasing a new open source tool we built, eRegulations, to help make regulations easier to understand. Check it out: consumerfinance.gov/rules-policy/regulations/

One thing that’s become clear during our two years as an agency is that federal regulations can be difficult to navigate. Finding answers to questions about a regulation is hard. Frequently, it means connecting information from different places, spread throughout a regulation, often separated by dozens or even hundreds of pages. As a result, we found people were trying to understand regulations by using paper editions, several different online tools to piece together the relevant information, or even paid subscription services that still don’t make things easy, and are expensive.

“Right now I’m stuck using a combination of paper, e-CFR, online FR, and commercially available tools . . . “

This is a common complaint, and one that we were excited to take a crack at. The above quote came from one of our regulations attorneys. That attorney went on to say:

“…but only (the) eRegulations tool combines it all in one place, and also puts it in a useful, usable, and readable format.”

So, how does eRegulations make using regulations easier?

The public, industry, and the government, including CFPB, all benefit from regulations that are easier to use. With that goal in mind, we set out to build a tool with the following features:

Easy to search and navigate. Key terms are defined throughout. Official interpretations are available throughout. Include certain sections of the “Federal Register preambles” to help explain the background to any particular paragraph. Ability to see previous, current, and future versions.

We loved talking to regulators, from CFPB and elsewhere, to prototype, test and improve ideas – it’s how we created the tool that accomplishes these goals. Ideally, using eRegulations will lead to better compliance, more efficient supervision, and improved accessibility.

Here’s hoping that even more people who work with regulations will have the same reaction as this member of our bank supervision team:

 “The eRegulations site has been very helpful to my work. It has become my go-to resource on Reg. E and the Official Interpretations. I use it several times a week in the course of completing regulatory compliance evaluations. My prior preference was to use the printed book or e-CFR, but I’ve found the eRegulations (tool) to be easier to read, search, and navigate than the printed book, and more efficient than the e-CFR because of the way eRegs incorporates the commentary.”

New rules about international money transfers – also called “remittances” –  in Regulation E will take effect on October 28, 2013, and you can now use the eRegulations tool to check out the regulation.

We need your help

There are two ways we’d love your help with our work to make regulations easier to use. First, the tool is a work in progress.  If you have comments or suggestions, please write to us at CFPB_eRegs_Team@cfpb.gov. We read every message and would love to hear what you think.

Second, the tool is open source, so we’d love for other agencies, developers, or groups to use it and adapt it. And remember, the first time a citizen developer suggested a change to our open source software, it was to fix a typo (thanks again, by the way!), so no contribution is too small.

A note from our lawyers

Please note, eRegulations is not an official legal edition of the Code of Federal Regulations or the Federal Register, and it does not replace the official versions of those publications.