Introducing “Decoding the Unified Agenda: A Guide for Advocates”
Decoding the Unified Agenda will help you to decide whether to commit resources and engage with the rulemaking process.
If you’re trying to track what rulemaking federal agencies are doing, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with the Unified Agenda. Twice a year, the federal government publishes the Unified Agenda, which provides an update on all the rulemaking planned for the next six months across the federal government. If you want to understand or influence the rulemaking process, from the Department of Agriculture to the Surface Transportation Board and all the agencies in between, the Unified Agenda provides essential information on what agencies are doing.
But we know from personal experience that reading the Unified Agenda can sometimes be a baffling experience.
What does it mean when an agency says something is in a pre-rule stage? And how can you tell an essential initiative from one that is just a formality?
We’ve drafted Decoding the Unified Agenda to answer those questions and others, hoping that it will help make your advocacy easier and more effective. Decoding the Unified Agenda will help you to decide whether to commit resources and engage with the rulemaking process. It covers the following topics and “how-tos:”
- Identifying Important Issues: How to spot rules in the Unified Agenda that implicate significant matters of policy.
- Assessing Your Potential Strategic Contribution: How to determine whether you have access to information, stories, or other data relevant to the potential rulemaking.
- Making Your Plans: How to establish the amount of time you have to gather and provide information to the agency.
- Pushing Your Agenda: How to move forward if a rulemaking related to your campaign is absent or stalled.
Decoding the Unified Agenda provides a straightforward account of how to figure out what an agency is doing using the Unified Agenda and how to use it to plan your advocacy. Decoding the Unified Agenda is written in plain, simple language, with lots of examples, and headers. At just over 11 pages, we think you should be able to find what you need quickly.
Please check it out, and let us know what you think!
Kate, Nikka, and Diane