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Page 576 64 RegNet: An NPR Regulatory Reform Initiative Toward NII/GII Collaboratories John P. Ziebarth, National Center for Supercomputing Applications W. Neil Thompson, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission J.D. Nyhart, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kenneth Kaplan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bill Ribarsky, Georgia Institute of Technology Gio Wiederhold, Stanford University Michael R. Genesereth, Stanford University Kenneth Gilpatric, National Performance Review NetResults.RegNet and Administrative Conference of the United States (formerly) Tim E. Roxey, National Performance Review RegNet.Industry, Baltimore Gas and Electric, and Council for Excellence in Government William J. Olmstead, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Ben Slone, Finite Matters Ltd. Jim Acklin, Regulatory Information Alliance Summary The premise of this paper is that the pressures of U.S. growth into a national economy, associated societal complexities, and advances in present information technology are rapidly leading the United States out of the post-Industrial Age and into the Information Age. The relationship between the various components of our government and its citizens in an Information Age are substantially different from those found in the post-Industrial Age. The actual structure of our government has been tuned for an Industrial Age level of societal complexity and technology sophistication, and it is being challenged by current conditions. Given that the preamble to the Constitution of the United States was probably the first written occurrence of a national goal and objective, the original structure of the government was crafted so that the implementation of government, or governance, allowed citizens to achieve the preamble's intent. For individuals for whom this was not the case, governmental process allowed changes to be made. Regulatory reform initiatives today, especially those involving the implementation of technology, have a significantly greater degree of difficulty in being able to allow citizens to enjoy the intent specified in the national goals and objectives. This is predominantly due to the lack of a national information plan that deals specifically with mapping citizens' needs and rights to regulatory information to national goals and objectives. When an entity consistently fails to deliver to its customers the products that allow the customers to enjoy the achievement of the entity's goals and objectives, then that entity is doomed to fail. If the entity is a federal, state, or local government, then that entity is not permitted to fail and action is required to be taken. In the following sections, there is a development of several key attributes. These attributes are complexities in regulatory interaction, complexities in implemented levels of technology, and unit of governance involved in the interaction. The discussion shows that when societal complexity and/or technology advances cause government to be engrossed in too fine a level of detail that is too fine, then the structure of government changes to accommodate the complexities. The most dramatic revision so far has been the development of the fourth branch (referring to the creation of the regulatory agencies and programs) of our federal government. It is time now for the various levels of governance to redefine themselves and their customers and return to a citizen-centered philosophy.

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Page 577 Statement of the Problem Perhaps to fully understand RegNet, it is best to understand RegNet's customers and the problems that they experience. First and foremost among the customers is the private citizen in the United States who is seeking regulatory information or to have an impact on changing the system. Next there are citizens who form themselves into public interest groups, typically centered on a particular topic or concern. Then there are corporations—both for-profit and not-for-profits—that represent various commercial or private interests. Finally, there are various agencies of government at the local, state, and federal levels. Each of these customer groups will pursue regulatory information for different reasons. The individual citizen may seek regulatory information to achieve some level of assurance that the regulations are safe and sane and adequately deal with the citizen's concerns. Public interest groups will typically look through regulations in order to find out how the public might better comply with them. In some public interest groups, the intent is to become better aware of the regulation in order to lobby industry or government to more effectively meet the requirements. Corporations will use the body of regulatory information in their day-to-day operations to remain in compliance with the rules as they pursue their corporate goals and objectives. Finally, the various regulators will look at their regulations in one of two different ways. The first is in their role of oversight, or watchdog, and in this case they will review regulations to inspect or enforce them on the industry sector they oversee. The second way the government uses the regulatory information is with the intention of fine-tuning or improving it. Unfortunately, because of the vast complexity of government today, these RegNet customers typically become frustrated in their pursuit of information. This complexity stems from the many agencies and organizations (international, federal, state, local, and tribal) that issue regulations independently and without consistency. The breadth of this problem encompasses all regulators and regulated entities (industry, government, and the private sector). This frustration of dealing with government is complicated by the inability to deal with the immense collection of regulatory information using present paper-based methods of access. In addition, the communications between people and their government is limited by technologies (telephones, fax, personal meetings) that have not been able to deal with the enormity of these complex information structures. The primary cause of this frustration is that the national goals and objectives are not being met by the current implementation of technology. This discussion, though complicated and fundamental, is centered on the least complex form of governmental interaction—the one-to-one model. This simplest interaction is used to enforce rules and to gather or publish information. The other three forms of interaction, discussed in the background section below, are all more complex than the previous. All four of these levels of regulatory interaction have serious problems associated with them. How do we know that this is the case? Customer satisfaction is low, costs to maintain the bureaucracy are high, and the effectiveness of many regulations is poor to nonexistent. Even the ancedotal stories of regulatory abuses and excess are making for best-selling novels these days. The solution is to revise the regulatory structure—the current effort is called either reinvention or reengineering. At best, reinvention will blend intelligent technological implementations with thoughtful structural modifications in such a way that quality regulatory services are delivered to as wide a customer base as possible. This is the so-called citizen-centered form of governance. Background The six planning and demonstration projects contemplated in this paper are best understood as having three conceptual dimensions, as shown in Figure 1. One dimension is technological. Each project is defined as having a locus on a spectrum of increasing sophistication in communication and information technology. By accurately situating a given project on the IT-sophistication dimension, we can begin to see the interrelatedness of all six projects. We are also able to resolve questions of how, when, and where—with respect both to conducting the project itself and to operation of the project's end product by its eventual users.

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Page 578 A second dimension relates to regulatory functions. Each project has its space on a spectrum of increasing forum complexity or multiplicity of interested entities. Again, by carefully defining the position of a particular project along a dimension of regulatory-function complexity, we can appreciate project interrelatedness. We can then address the issues of who will or should be involved in project operation and eventual product use, and what exactly they will or should do. A third conceptual dimension embraces the entire list of governmental units and agencies, graded by increasing scope—local, county and municipal, tribal and state, federal and international—each governmental unit with a discrete set of "customers" and entities subject to its authority. By relating our six projects to such a spectrum of agencies and associated client sets, bearing in mind national goals and objectives, we can approach an understanding of why these proposed projects are crucial and should be funded. Figure 1 Complexities owing to three conceptual dimensions of demonstration projects. X-Axis: Information Technology Information (the content) and technology (the conduit) have been with us for a long time. No doubt, properties of the conduit have always had a heavy effect on the content, just as qualities and purposes of the content affect conduit developments. Acknowledging the reciprocal relationship and importance of the two, it is helpful to keep them distinct in analysis. To the degree that conduit and content can be considered separately, the former is discussed in this section. The following section, on regulatory functions, treats content. Following that, in a section on governmental units and their customers, we treat context—the considerations that give relevance to conduit and content. Students of the human history of information often parse the subject into four general periods, reflecting available and utilized technologies. Earliest was an oral or bardic culture, when human memory was the chief tool for information exchange (perhaps supplemented by musical instruments, cave paintings, and carved objects). Later, scribal culture arose, adding to the serviceable toolkit such devices as pen, brush, ink, paper, and expert familiarity with their combined use. In the fifteenth century, the use of movable metal type in printing presses changed human society fundamentally. More recently, the theory goes, a similarly profound shift has started—digitization of information. It will affect human thinking, working, playing, and relationships in unknowable ways—regarding entity boundaries and properties, groups, ownable or meaningful objects, transactions, and disputes about all of the above. The foregoing historical framework is a useful aid for understanding issues we face today. Our problems stem in significant part from cultural conflict. The entities, habits, tools, methods, and competencies of print

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Page 579 culture are in the process of incomplete and uneasy evolution into those of digitized-information culture. Letterpress was the first technological invention enabling the print or book period. Photography, telegraph, typewriters, photocopiers, and faxes expanded the power of printed word. Those methods form the core of a conservative model of IT sophistication. Technological advances in the recent two decades and growing user familiarity with those methods suggest that there may be a very detailed spectrum of sophistication in information technology, but we offer below a simplified scale for sorting the proposed six projects. We describe four marks on the spectrum of information technology sophistication: 1. Conservative model of IT sophistication—paper documents, photocopying, telefax and hard-copy communications, physical libraries, face-to-face meetings and forums. 2. Progressive standard model of IT sophistication—electronic documents and copying, e-mail and file-transfer communications, non-physical libraries and transaction forums (e.g., BBS, commercial on-line services). 3. Emerging model of IT sophistication—electronic information objects and copying, graphical data representation, nonimmersive virtual reality techniques, virtual transaction forums (e.g., WWW, Mosaic). 4. Advanced model of IT sophistication—virtual 3-D interfaces and data representation, competent AI agents, immersive VR. Y-Axis: Regulatory Functions Before discussing regulatory functions, we should step back and look at functions of government more broadly. Regardless of conduits available, one function of rulership is the gathering and publishing of information. Ancient polities in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Rome, whatever their varied structures and operational differences, all gathered information from their subjects and the world at large, processed it in some fashion, and disseminated it. Information typically collected would include, for instance, head counts, land boundaries, tallies of wealth and capability, and assessments of intention. Disseminations commonly took the form of rules, orders, decisions, and descriptions. More modern governments—for example, those of Florence in the 1500s, France in the 1600s, and Britain in the 1700s—were information entities just as the ancient polities had been, but the moderns had a quantitatively different problem. Often they had larger populations and accumulations of wealth, more sophisticated communications technology (conduits), and certainly more complex data, both to gather and to publish. Those modern polities handled the increased volume and complexity, generally, by inventing tiered and nested organizational hierarchies with specified subject matter authority—offices, bureaus, ministries, and committees. In the 1780s, the founders of the United States chose a three-part form of government that we are all familiar with: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. One was to write laws, another to administer them, and the third to resolve cases and disputes. Each functional power was separated from the other two, counterweighting and limiting them. Our country's founders were not openly concerned with informational volume and complexity. They aimed instead to secure entities and their properties by averting in the long term both the tyranny and the license, respectively, of too little and too much liberty. That constitutional division of government functions has served us remarkably well. However, though it may well have sufficed for the degree of informational complexity foreseen by the founders, it did not anticipate the industrial revolution and associated advances in information technology that would unintentionally engender an extensive increase in complexity. When in due course informational volume and complexity became too great for government to handle, threatening to overwhelm resources of the federal executive, judiciary, and legislature with details, a fourth branch of national government was invented: the administrative and regulatory agencies (Figure 2). Regulation as we understand it today was largely unknown during the first century of this republic. Individual states had engaged in economic regulation for a long time (of turnpikes, bridges, mills, foodstuffs, civic hygiene, and licensing of physicians, for example). But federal involvement with private productive enterprise

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Page 580 was limited to canals, the national highway system, and banks. A strong revenue base, a trained civil service, and systematic economic information—necessary conditions of a modern regulatory state—were lacking until after the Civil War. Figure 2 Three branches of government plus administrative and regulatory agencies as a fourth, to handle increasing volume and complexity of information. Requirements of organized ingenuity, production, and distribution for nationwide conflict combined after the Civil War with private economies of scale and a competitive, almost predatory work ethic (expressed in the doctrines of Social Darwinism and laissez-faire). Results of the combination were dense concentrations of wealth and productivity in transportation (rails, shipping), commodities (oils, steel, sugar), and finance. Also, significant abuses of market freedom occurred, some groups were treated with shocking unfairness, and gilded figures flaunted their success and power. The corrective was a wave of regulation. It started tentatively with the Interstate Commerce Commission (1887) and the Sherman Act (1890) and continued, massively, through the Progressive Era (1902–14). Two other great regulatory expansions happened later. One we call the New Deal (1933–38). Chiefly, it reallocated power among economic interest groups. The other began in the late 1960s and lasted about a decade. In it, political issue groups sought substantial reform of civil, social, and consumer rights, environmental protection, and renewed political responsiveness after Vietnam and Watergate. Between each of the major expansionary waves, there were interglacials (so to speak) when implementation, adjustment, consolidation, and reassessment took place with respect to the preceding regulatory impetus. The oscillatory cycle evidently runs like this: Perceived abuses or inequity prompt disillusionment with a free market; regulatory discipline is applied

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Page 581 to remedy the market failure; inefficiency or ineffectiveness in due course spoils the regulators; and market efficiencies and discipline are pressed forward to correct the regulatory failure. As we have suggested, administrative and regulatory agencies arose in part as a consequence of this mounting complexity of information. In addition to the function of information gathering and publishing, agencies typically included the three constitutional functions. The traditional and general branches—executive, judicial, and legislative—in effect allowed a limited portion of their respective functions to be delegated to expert and focused subordinate agencies. In concept, these agencies would spare the executive branch, the Court, and the Congress from detailed and repetitive chores of administration, dispute resolution, and rule making. In the ordinary scheme, agencies would report to both the executive branch and Congress, and agency decisions would be subject to review by the Court. An agency's four functions would each connect and operate in different ways with its customer set, from an information base held partly in common. These four functions are described below. 1. A one-to-one exchange between entities. The most primitive level of forum complexity is a one-to-one exchange (Figure 3). Two entities, face to face, engage in a transaction. Entity and face may be virtual or electronic; matter transacted may be hard copy or digitized; an entity may constitute a group of subentities or itself be a subentity of a larger organization; the transaction may be asynchronous or real-time, enduring a millisecond or a decade—none of these local circumstances alters the essential topology of the one-to-one exchange. An agency's information gathering and disseminating function fits cleanly at this primitive level. When a private entity seeks information from an agency (a FOIA request, say, or a general inquiry about policy and procedure), or when an agency asks the private entity to forward information (a tax return or application form or compliance data, for instance), the relationship is one-to-one. Much of an agency's administrative function also fits in this category. Investigation, inspection, granting of licenses, and specific enforcement of rules all can be visualized as an administrative officer on one side of the table and a regulatory subject entity on the other. 2. A one-to-two relationship. Slightly more complicated is the one-to-two entity relationship (Figure 4). It is the model for most adjudicatory or dispute-resolution proceedings. A judge or hearing officer or neutral observer sits on one side of the table; on the other side sit two adversarial parties. There may be exchanges between the two adversaries (e.g., discovery or settlement discussions), but transactions with the forum officer tend to be bound by formal requirements. Traditional adjudication and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) are both accommodated in this category. 3. A one-to-many relationship. This category comprises traditional rule-making scenarios or any proceedings in which a single officer or official body sits on one side of the table and multiple interested parties sit on the other (Figure 5). Again, it does not matter that the commissioners transact decisional information among themselves or that groups of interested parties form coalitions and exchange information. The topological complexity is formally undisturbed: one to many. 4. A many-to-many configuration (Figure 6). The many-to-many relationship can be conceptualized in two ways. It can be seen as an extreme development of the one-to-many configuration, when the single officer on the one side of the table is reduced in authority from central decisionmaker to forum moderator, meeting president, or coequal participant. A legislative assembly or negotiated rule making fits this pattern. Alternatively, this category can be visualized as a roundtable forum without chairing officer or moderator and with all entities having equal power to affect decisions of the forum. Our account of regulatory development is intended as a summary and overview, and may be too simplified. There have been many efforts over the years to reform regulation—both its substance and its procedures—in narrowly confined areas within a given agency and across broad sweeps of government. Certainly, our short history gives no idea of the extensive variety of regulatory function practiced today and the detailed articulation of those functions with private entities. In important ways, the detailed variety and extensive articulation are aspects of the problem that our six proposed projects are designed to address. For the purposes of this paper, we have contrived a measuring system for the regulatory function dimension of analysis, a sequence of check marks. It accommodates all of the variety of agency functions as well as the myriad contemporary articulations of regulator with regulatee or other external entity. It does so in a

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Page 582 fashion that seems sensible and accessible both to students of governance and administrative law and to experts incommunications and information technology and software engineering. It may be that there are many workablemeasuring schemes. We develop one below, borrowing substantially from formulations in microeconomics,information physics, and psychology.

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Page 583 Figure 5 A one-to-many relationship. Z-Axis: Government Agencies and Customers A detailed exploration of business process reengineering or government reinvention is beyond the scope of this paper. But two central principles from those undertakings inform our discussions here: (1) productive entities or units exist, and their current boundaries and methods of operation often reflect historical accident, ingrained habit, or risk aversion; and (2) both entity boundaries and productive processes frequently need to be reengineered so as to be customer driven, market and competition oriented, enterprising, decentralized, and community responsive. Understandings of public entity ''effectiveness" and "efficiency" differ from those applicable to private, profit-making entities. And the concept of a public entity's customers or clients is not the same as that applying to a private entity. Still, there are strong analogies that assist analysis. We hear anecdotally that some 82,000 governmental units have been identified within the United States (not including metanational entities, such as treaty organization or international dispute-resolution bodies). Of course, each governmental unit has various sets of clients or customers or respondent entities grouped according to subject matter issues for formal proceedings. A comprehensive map of these groups would be dizzyingly complex, but a simplified scale is developed below that allows us to tear apart the complexity, to locate governmental units and their customers along a spectrum of entity scope, and to describe regions where each of the six proposed projects are relevant both as to project operations and as to end-product users.

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Page 584 There are four check marks on the government entity axis: 1. Local governance and associated customers (e.g., PTAs, neighborhood councils, tenant associations, town meetings, and subcounty authorities), 2. Counties, cities, or municipalities (e.g., government offices, school boards, or zoning and natural resources authorities), 3. Tribal or state governance units (e.g., courts, agencies, legislatures, and executives), and 4. National or international governance units (e.g., the federal sovereign and its branches, and international entities). Figure 6 A many-to-many configuration The Plan This discussion includes the development of a comprehensive national plan called RegNet that supports national goals and objectives vital to economic prosperity and security. The RegNet national plan integrates (1) ongoing reinventing government and regulatory reform initiatives, and (2) advanced high-performance computing, communications, and information technology with (3) intergovernmental, interacademic, interindustry, and public interests. This plan is an integral part of the proposed technology development and demonstration projects initiated in this paper. The following is a summary of the RegNet national plan attributes, which reflect human and technological needs, two separate but interdependent requirements to meet in furthering national goals and objectives.

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Page 585 RegNet—A Human and Technology-based Definition • The RegNet national plan is a system that links human communications and information (HCI) needs to regulatory information and regulatory processes (RIRP) through high-performance computing, communications, and information technology (HPCCIT). • It is multilevel based (intergovernmental, interacademic, interindustry, and intercitizen). • It supports all users who want or need to access regulatory information and/or to participate in regulatory processes (international; national, including federal, state, local, and tribal governments; industry; and the public)—for example, all regulators and all regulated entities (industry, public, private, and nonprofit sectors; and the public). • It is a national, integrated, intelligent, distributed, multimedia, World Wide Web (WWW)-based regulatory communications and information system and people network. RegNet—A Citizen-based Definition • Under this definition, RegNet is an advanced regulatory information system that provides the public and industry with easy access to one-stop shopping for the regulatory information and participation needed to (1) reduce regulatory burden, (2) increase efficiency, effectiveness, and profitability, and (3) become more economically competitive both nationally and globally for economic growth. • It provides full access to (1) all intergovernmental regulatory information (existing laws, rules, and regulations), and (2) communication links for participating in regulatory processes (regulatory compliance reviews; making, modifying, or eliminating laws, rules, regulations, policies, standards, guidelines, and positions; and alternative dispute resolution and negotiations). RegNet—A Concept and Initiative for Regulatory Reform and Economic Development • RegNet is an interdisciplinary consortium of intergovernmental, interacademic, interindustry, and citizen entities. • It is a grand challenge (as defined in the High Performance Computing Act of 1991). • It supports national challenge applications (as defined by OSTP, National Coordination Office for HPCC Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications). • It is intelligent (as defined by ARPA and others). • It is distributed (globally). • It is intergovernmental (international, federal, state, local, and tribal governments), interacademic, interindustry, and intercitizen based. • It provides citizen and industry access to regulatory information. • It provides opportunity for intercitizen, interindustry, and intergovernment participation in regulatory processes and in regulatory reform. • It is of the people, by the people and, for the people. • It requires cooperation, collaboration through coordination, and integration at all levels (see citizen-centric model). • It is a comprehensive regulatory reform initiative that plans for the use of advanced computing, communications, and information technology. • It supports all national and international user levels through the national information infrastructure (NII) and global information infrastructure (GII). Such a plan implies the full integration of appropriate and applicable data, information, and material in specific domains of interests. This is also the objective of the Vice President's National Performance Review

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Page 586 (NPR) RegNet project—to coordinate the planning, development, and implementation of a distributed, intelligent regulatory information system. This plan will include consideration of both national and global information infrastructure environments. This plan recognizes that the need for information and material in the private sector is different from that of the public and nonprofit sectors. For example, governments need information to develop laws, rules, regulations, policies, procedures, and practices, whereas the public and industry need access to government processes to become better informed and more able to participate in the decisionmaking processes that affect their future. In addition, the private sector's needs derive from the desire to be in compliance with regulations and associated processes. With information fully distributed to all interested parties, individuals will be adequately prepared to support national goals and objectives. Deployment Issues Only nine participating HPCCIT federal agencies are coordinated by the National Coordination Office for High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC). This coordination is tied directly to the nation's economic policy in support of national high performance computing (see the High Performance Computing Act of 1991). There are no other federal policy level offices responsible for coordinating HPCCIT national goals and objectives, leaving more than 130 remaining federal agencies, departments, and commissions without HPCCIT policy coordination and integration. This lack of coordination and integration results in inconsistencies, inefficiencies, wasted time, and misdirection of precious human resources and funding. The eventuality and schedule for RegNet deployment rest, in part, on enforcement of HPCCIT policy throughout the federal government, but more importantly on intergovernmental cooperation, collaboration, coordination, and integration, perhaps starting with the National Governors' Association. As it approaches the twenty-first century, the United States faces challenges that transcend state lines and national boarders. This country must shape economic policies for a competitive marketplace. RegNet will contribute to HPCCIT, NII, and GII by playing a vital role in meeting national economic and security goals and objectives. The NCSA RegNet project addresses and responds to these challenges by underpinning a plan and demonstration project that is based on national goals and objectives (reinventing government, regulatory reform, grand challenge applications, and national challenge applications vital to national prosperity, including NII and GII initiatives). The issues are important ones for the country's federal, state, and local governments and, more significantly, for its people and businesses. The proposed projects directly support national goals and objectives of NII, GII, and intergovernmental regulatory communication and information needs. Also, the following national challenge applications have been identified by the HPCCIT subcommittee: • Public access to government information; • Health care education and training; • Digital libraries; • Electronic commerce; • Advanced manufacturing; • Environmental monitoring; and • Crisis management. This discussion supports the development of a national plan that would be able to encompass and embrace disparate demonstration projects affecting international, federal, state, local, and tribal governments as they affect American citizens. We describe five demonstration projects in federal, state, city, tribal, and rural environments. In essence, a needs assessment of stakeholders has been performed by Congress and the executive branch (e.g., bills and hearings in support of the High Performance Computing Act of December 1991, and subsequent legislation, and executive orders). Regulators, the regulated, and the public need easy access to

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Page 594 properties of the site and the work to be performed there. As a result, it will be easier for even inexperienced users to get information quickly and, based on what they have found, carry out further queries. Proposed Work This project will develop the VReg, a real-time 3-D navigation system for exploring cross-referenced databases. The cross-referenced databases will be formulated and implemented as part of this project and will consist, on the one hand, of regulatory information (local, state, national, international) and, on the other hand, of geographical information (with accompanying layers of geological, economic, local climate, and other data). The databases will be organized as servers with their own sets of calls for placing or retrieving information. Since queries could be made over networks, the database servers could be distributed. Thus communities could maintain their own servers of local regulations or geographical and economic data—they would just use the appropriate calls for organization and data placement. The geographical servers will be extensions of those that already exist and will rely on the massive capability in government (e.g., Army databases) and business (e.g., geographic information companies such as ERDAS). The regulatory servers will be developed and linked with the geographical servers as part of this project. A central index, using the RegNet WWW Server, will be set up with addresses and information about the satellite sites. Serving as a Model The VGIS system upon which VReg is based is highly flexible and portable. All it takes is different terrain data, 3-D building plans, and appropriate sets of GIS layers to explore a multitude of distributed regulation scenarios. As part of the project, we will provide documentation on how the terrain data server and GIS layers are set up. We will also provide documentation for the cross-referenced regulation server. In addition, some of the regulatory information (e.g., federal regulations) will be reusable in many situations. Since all 3-D graphics in VReg ultimately use Open GL, which is the de facto standard in 3-D graphics, our software can run on a variety of different platforms. Communications using standard TCP/IP protocols will ensure that our system can be used in a distributed fashion by anyone who has access to the Internet. In addition, standard UNIX socket mechanisms will be used for distributed communication on local area networks. The VGIS system we have developed has truly immersive capability for navigating and understanding complex and dynamic terrain-based databases. The system provides the means for visualizing terrain models consisting of elevation and imagery data, along with GIS raster layers, protruding features, buildings, vehicles, and other objects. We have implemented window-based and virtual reality versions and in both cases provide a direct manipulation, visual interface for accessing the GIS data. Unique terrain data structures and algorithms allow rendering of large, high-resolution data sets at interactive rates. VGIS represents a significant advance over previous 2-D, map-based systems or 3-D GISs with decidedly noninteractive rates (having typical delays to produce images of several seconds or more). It can be used anywhere a traditional GIS can be used. Thus it can be used for urban planning, evaluation of geology, vegetation, soil, waterway, or road patterns, flood planning, and many other tasks. In addition, the ability to have detailed 3-D views and to jump to a different location to see the view from there opens new possibilities. Planners for new buildings or other facilities can see full 3-D views from their prospective sites or can see the view from nearby existing buildings with their planned facility in place. VGIS is implemented using the simple virtual environment (SVE) tool kit, a device-independent library that provides mechanisms and software tools for developing virtual environment (VE) applications. SVE is based on the graphics library (GL) of Silicon Graphics, and VGIS has been run on a number of different hardware systems with GL support. VGIS can be used either with a workstation window-based interface, or with an immersive virtual reality interface. The conventional window-based interface in VGIS parallels the functionality of the immersive interface. The 2-D workstation mouse can be used to rotate the user's viewpoint, move through the environment,

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Page 595 select objects, and pull down menus. The user's view is displayed in a workstation window. In the immersive environment, users wear a head-mounted display (HMD) and hold a three-dimensional mouse controller, with six degree-of-freedom trackers attached to both the HMD and the 3-D mouse. The head tracking allows the HMD graphics to be generated in accordance with the user's viewpoint, so that the user feels a sense of presence within the virtual environment. System Features Users of VGIS have complete freedom in navigating the virtual world described by the databases. Both the window-based and immersive interfaces allow flight through six degrees of freedom (pitch, yaw, roll, and three-dimensional translation). To avoid getting lost or to find specific locations, the user can toggle a labeled grid coordinate overlay or bring up an overview 2-D finder map. The user can then select and jump to locations on either the finder map or in the 3-D world. This provides fast capability to view the 3-D world from any location within it. In query mode, selection of any feature, terrain location, building, or other object in the 3-D world brings up GIS information about the location or object. Since it would be straightforward, within the GIS, to provide links to other data associated with an object, this selection could, for example, bring up a full, 3-D model of a building interior. As an alternative, the user could merely fly through the building wall to enter the interior model. Individual units, such as vehicles, or groups of units can be placed on or allowed to move over the terrain, and symbolic information, such as markers or lines of demarcation, can be laid down or moved around. These are just some of the features available in the VGIS system. Use in this Project Our VReg implementation will provide a visual interface for fast and easy retrieval of geography- or location-specific information. This capability itself can be quite useful, especially when one has simultaneous access to a database of regulatory information as we propose here. In addition, we propose to build for various types of facilities and situations a knowledge base that can be used by the system to automatically retrieve appropriate information from the GIS and cross-reference it with relevant regulations. Thus, for example, if one were siting a fuel storage facility, the system would know to look for information on substrate geology, water table and water runoff, whether the site is earthquake prone, whether other sites with flammable or toxic materials are nearby, and so on. The system could then also pull up relevant keyworded local, state, and federal regulations. This approach offers the possibility of a dynamic regulation model that streamlines the process and reduces the number of regulations. In the above example, it would be fairly straightforward to pinpoint redundant local, state, or federal regulations if they were accessible via the same server structure. One could then have a process of removing or ignoring redundant regulations. Also, the GIS offers the capability to store and retrieve (in an organized fashion) highly detailed inputs for engineering, economic, environmental, or other models; we will extend the knowledge base to enable automatic searches for this input information. Once in place the models could thus be run easily for user-selected scenarios. If validated by government agencies, model outputs could be used to satisfy sets of simple goals, and one could do away with large numbers of regulations. Our approach would also allow the user to play "what if," exploring different siting options, plant output structures, and the like to meet goals, maximize economic gains, or optimize other effects. Since the data are available and organized, it would also be possible for the user to obtain "real-time" environmental and economic impact studies. A Testbed Project We will develop distributed GIS and regulatory servers for Champaign County, Ill., (NCSA location) and for the Atlanta, Ga., area (Georgia Tech location). The Champaign County database will build on the regulatory and other information already available via CCNet (the Champaign County network), whereas the Atlanta

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Page 596 database will organize around extensive GIS information available for the area. Thus we will use significantly different locales—one rural and one urban—in our testbed project. We will apply our tools to a complex scenario, such as the decommissioning of a nuclear power plant and the shipping of waste materials to a storage facility. For the purpose of this exercise only, we could place the decommissioned power plant in the urban area and the storage facility in the rural area. We would then have to deal with a welter of different local regulations overlaid with a set of federal regulations for the two sites. We would use the distributed servers (allowing common pictures of the sites) and various collaborative tools (such as the annotation system described below) to do this. A 3-D Annotation System for Note-taking and Note-sharing A 3-D environment allows the user to visualize information in new and effective ways. Although visualizing and exploring a complex model or an extended site, the user may want to make notes about what he or she finds, or to query an object to obtain specific information about the object in the space. An annotation system should allow the user to integrate his notes directly into the environment and to obtain detailed textual, verbal, or other information while still within the 3-D space. This capability will be especially important in a regulatory environment where those representing several (sometimes competing) interests must work together, negotiate, or resolve differences about matters of complex and specific detail. With the annotation system they will be able to compile or exchange notes connected with specific features and actions (or time frames for dynamic simulations) in 3-D models and terrains. The annotations could be passed among remote users or even used in an asynchronous mode where notes left at one time are collected, organized, and reviewed at a later time. Demonstration Project Four:  Intelligent Distributed Access to Regulatory Information • Regulatory complexity: Low to Significant • Technological complexity: Emerging to Advanced • Government units: Local, State, Federal The recent increase in complexity of our regulatory environment has made it more difficult for • Affected citizens and businesses to find and understand applicable regulations; • Monitors to assess compliance with regulations; and • Regulatory bodies and involved participants to evaluate proposed changes. A network space for regulatory information and operation, RegNet, could be created as a means to decrease the regulatory complexity. The creation of RegNet would require the cooperation of authorities, businesses, consumer groups, and experts in the domains being addressed and would require academic involvement to study the technological and organizational problems and opportunities. RegNet development would require industrial participation to provide the operational services using appropriate technology and would require the cooperation of local, state, and federal regulatory agencies to put the technology to use. An application to provide online access to the text of regulations via the WWW could be developed. At this point, citizens, monitors, and regulators would be able to browse and access this text via computer programs like Mosaic and WAIS, moving smoothly from the regulations of one jurisdiction to those of another. The application would provide linkages among these documents, based on the terms used within the regulations. A modern standard for storage of regulations—perhaps a publicly accessible base such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-funded Persistent Object Base—would be selected for use. Available search systems would be enhanced with thesauruses to span the application among terms and to

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Page 597 aid nonexperts in completing their searches. Important input to such thesauruses would be obtained by analyzing search strategies and failures from the initial phases. The ordinary text of regulations with formal logic representations would be augmented. Such an information structure, building on top of the linkages and thesauruses, would enable new, crucial services, such as topic-based retrieval of relevant regulations, automatic conformance checking, and automated determination of conflicts and overlaps among regulations. Such analysis tools would empower workers in their specific domains and allow cooperation without centralization. Demonstration Project Five:  Rural Government Testbed Project • Regulatory complexity: Low to Moderate • Technological complexity: Emerging to Advanced • Government units: Local, State, Federal Problem Definition Large metropolitan areas often have branches of federal and state government agencies, in addition to county and local government offices. Moreover, these offices are typically located in the same section of the city. Many of the offices that a citizen in a large metropolitan area needs to communicate with for life and business may at least be located near each other. However, in rural areas, there are rarely local branch offices of all the federal and state agencies with which rural citizens need to interact. The rural testbed demonstration project will develop mechanisms for citizens to interact with local, county, state, and federal government agencies seamlessly, utilizing emerging technologies. The regulatory complexity of this project will typically be either one to one, or one to two. Location for the Project—Champaign County, Illinois The rural testbed project will be conducted in Champaign County, Ill. The closest large cities to Champaign County are Chicago, St. Louis, and Indianapolis, each approximately 2-1/2 hours' driving distance, and too far to conduct daily business, even if a citizen were to brave visiting all agencies in person. More than 90 percent of Champaign County is farmland, with a university community at its center. Illinois has a large number of local governments (including city, county, township, and state), so the rural testbed is set in a particularly challenging region. A virtual regulatory environment will be useful only if the citizenry is knowledgeable enough about the technology to use it. Champaign County was selected for this project because it has been nationally recognized for its innovativeness and advances in the NII. Champaign County Network (CCNet) is a collaborative project between the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the University of Illinois, and the Champaign County Chamber of Commerce. The mission of CCNet is to create a supportive environment for Champaign County to cooperatively develop applications that use advanced communications technologies. This has been accomplished through the work of a technical committee and six applications task forces exploring applications of the NII in education, health care, agribusiness, government, and libraries. Since early 1993, over 300 community leaders have been working together to build both the human infrastructure and the technical infrastructure to achieve the goals of CCNet. Today, there are more than 15 sites in the community connected to the Internet at high speeds. Nine sites in the community—including schools, businesses, and a public library—receive data over the cable-TV at 2.5 Mbps and send data over the telephone line at 14.4 kbps Eight schools are connected to the Internet via ISDN connections sending and receiving data at 56 kbps or 128 kbps. In addition, Ameritech and CCNet recently announced a partnership through which Ameritech is offering an ISDN package connecting individual users to the Internet at 128 kbps. Wireless

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Page 598 connections are being tested. Champaign County also has a freenet called PrairieNet, which has more than 8,000 registered users and is rapidly growing. The county recently announced that, thanks to information available online, courts outside the county seat will be able to serve local residents. The remarkable thing about all the CCNet connections is that they have been community initiated. CCNet serves as a catalyst, bringing sophisticated technologies and Internet connections to Champaign County much sooner than they will be available in comparable communities. Although the community leadership has been building an electronically connected community in Champaign County, the entire citizenry has become educated about the Internet and tools electronic mail and data exchange. Numerous newspaper and television news stories have covered the local efforts and successes, and there have been countless public presentations and demonstrations to special interest groups. Participants in the CCNet project have been using electronic mail for nearly 2 years and have been exploring the WWW using NCSA Mosaic. Through the rural government testbed project, the citizens of Champaign County will be able to use the technology for specific purposes and realize the benefits of technology for interacting with multiple government agencies. The level of awareness and of current electronic connectivity in Champaign County optimizes our chances of success in the rural government testbed. Project Concept and Dimensions The rural government testbed project will develop a system whereby citizens can use one technology to interact with a variety of governmental agencies at various levels. The goal is to eliminate frustration with government bureaucracy and to return power and independence to individuals. Though the tools developed may be applied to a nearly endless number of situations, we will focus on two primary applications. Both applications can be one to one or one to two, involve a range of governmental agencies, and are a cross between the emerging and complex categories of technology complexity. The second application may lend itself to a one-to-many regulatory complexity. The basic concept is to allow a citizen to access relevant regulations via an online system (the Internet) and to electronically file forms required for specific real-life taks. This can be accomplished by providing government information on the WWW, with citizens using a WWW browser or navigator such as NCSA Mosaic. Theoretically, all forms submitted by citizens would be processed automatically and government databases would be maintained automatically. But, for the testbed, individual persons at the government agency will intervene by updating their database with forms and information received from the citizens. Collaborative tools will be built into the browser so that citizens can have advisors helping them to make decisions in regulatory environments, if they wish. In addition, text searching capabilities developed as part of the Digital Library Initiative at the University of Illinois will be incorporated into the tools for ease of use. Rural Government Testbed: Application 1 Changing residence is one of the most stressful life situations. The stress of moving is exacerbated by the multitudes of contacts that the individual has to maintain separately with different government agencies. For the most part, the individual is responsible for updating the various agencies about his or her whereabouts. With the rural government testbed we will build an environment where interacting with levels of government before and after a change of residence is drastically simplified. Currently, when a citizen moves, he or she has to communicate with the following agencies at different levels: • Local/city: register children in school, notify water and power services; • County: register to vote with county clerk, pay real estate tax with county assessor; • State: renew driver's license at the Secretary of State, replace license plates, update vehicle registration; and • Federal: leave forwarding address with Postmaster, send address change to Internal Revenue Service.

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Page 599 In addition to these government agencies, the citizen must also update his or her address with various private organizations such as magazine publications, newspapers, insurance carriers, telephone services, and even online services. If the rural government testbed works to smooth residential transitions, these private organizations could connect to the same system in the future. Rural Government Testbed: Application 2 A person who wants to establish a small business today has to learn about and comply with an almost unbearable number of zoning, environmental, employment, and other regulations. The time it takes to learn all the regulations to ensure compliance and to fill out all accompanying forms can be daunting, if not completely stifling. Large corporations have in-house attorneys and other experts to handle interactions with government agencies and to keep educated about the most recent relevant regulations. Some potential small business owners have almost no choice but to franchise with one of the large corporations. This difficulty dramatically reduces opportunities for innovation in American business. For example, a person who wants to open a particular type of business—for instance, a dry cleaner—has to interact with a large set of government agencies in order to set up the business: • Local/city: zoning and sign permit, sales tax regulations; • County: "Doing Business As" (DBA) name registration; • State: State Department of Revenue for a retail license; and • Federal: OSHA for compliance with regulations, the Department of Immigration and Naturalization for each employee, and EPA for an environmental impact statement. It turns out that many of the state and federal regulations, at least, already exist in digital format. They will need to be reformatted to fit into the testbed project. Even if all the regulations and forms necessary to establish a new small business were available online through the rural government testbed, there would still be two problems: finding relevant sections of regulations, and dealing with the vast amount of information and legal ramifications. To solve these problems, we will include two additional features in the rural government testbed project: 1. A text-search mechanism developed as part of the Digital Library Initiative (DLI) at the University of Illinois so that users and potential small business owners could search lengthy regulations for the relevant portions, based on proximity and keywords. Since many of the regulations are already in digital format, the search indexes would be generated and available to expedite the search process. 2. A potential small business owner may want to fill out forms and read through regulations with the assistance of professional counsel such as an attorney or an accountant. We will therefore experiment with collaborative features in WWW browsers, including collaborative visualization as well as video conferencing. HyperNews features can be built into the testbed to encourage small business owners to learn from each other. Rural Government Testbed Technology Each of the government agencies identified in the applications above will be connected to the Internet at high enough speeds to serve information on the WWW. Some of them are already connected (the local schools). In addition, the public library in Champaign County is connected to the Internet, providing public access, and two other libraries will be connected to provide further public access. One hundred community members will be connected via the Ameritech ISDN solution. These 100 will be selected based on factors that indicate their potential for using the testbed, such as their skill with Internet tools, whether they own a small business, and whether they are located in an area where the service is available.

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Page 600 The first 6 months of the project will be devoted to recruiting individual and agency participants, identifying connection solutions, adapting the browser software to include searching and collaborative tools, and putting relevant information from government agencies online. Extensive training will be conducted for the participants and for the general public during months 5 through 7. The connections will be in place for 1 year for the testbed, and usage will be monitored. The efficiency will be evaluated by examining usage statistics and eliciting continual feedback from participants online, via public forums, and through individual communications. The software will be revised as further needs are identified. Note that, although the rural government testbed will be developed for two applications, the system could be migrated to another application if the proper agency were involved. For instance, an agribusiness application might be developed by working with county farm bureaus, and with the USDA. Conclusions The proposed projects, the planning, and the demonstrations will work together to create a synergistic plan with proven capability for the nation. Although the projects' focus will be to empower the rural and tribal communities to function within the intergovernmental system that surrounds them, the results will automatically extend to the other city, state, and federal governments that also must function in the new environment. Information technology is one of the major ways that the current structure of regulatory control can be simplified and made useful to citizens trying to function in the NII. This project will also work with, and solicit resources from, international organizations to include the results of a reinvented regulatory government in a growing GII. The deployment and use of high-performance computing, communications, and information technology and the NII are essential to meeting national goals and objectives in the global marketplace. Statutes and Executive Orders With the plan proposed here, modified by the lessons learned from the implementation of the demonstration projects also proposed here, future intergovernmental regulatory projects can be developed in such a way that they more effectively support the national goals and objectives and national challenge applications. These goals and applications are found in a series of statutes and executive orders: • The High Performance Computing Act of 1991, Public Law 102-194, December 9, 1991, and subsequent legislation in support of advances in computer science and technology that are vital to the nation's prosperity, national and economic security, industrial production, engineering, and scientific advancement; • High Performance Computing and Communications: Technology for the National Information Infrastructure, a supplement to the President's Fiscal Year 1995 Budget; Science in the National Interest, President William J. Clinton, Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., August 1994, Executive Office of the President Office of Science and Technology Policy; • Future Scenarios, National Challenge Applications, including: Public Access to Government Information, Health Care, Education and Training, Digital Libraries, Electronic Commerce, Advanced Manufacturing, Environmental Monitoring and Crisis Management, High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC), Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications, National Coordination Office for HPCC, Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy, February 1994; • The Clinton Administration's development of an advanced national information infrastructure (NII) and the global information infrastructure (GII) as top U.S. priorities; see Global Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Cooperation, Al Gore, Vice President of the United States, Ronald H. Brown, Secretary of Commerce and Chairman, Information Infrastructure Task Force, February 1995; • Executive Order 12866, Regulatory Planning and Review, September 30, 1993; • Executive Order 12839, Reduction of 100,000 Federal Positions, February 10, 1993;

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Page 601 • Executive Order 12861, Elimination of One-half of Executive Branch Internal Regulations, September 11, 1993; • Executive Order 12864, United States Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure, September 15, 1993; and • Executive Order 12875, Enhancing the Intergovernmental Partnership, October 26, 1993. Note 1. "Technology for America's Growth: A New Direction to Build Economic Strength," p. 20. References 1. The High Performance Computing Act of 1991, Public Law 102-194, December 9, 1991. 2. High Performance Computing and Communications: Technology for the National Information Infrastructure, supplement to the President's Fiscal Year 1995 Budget; Science in the National Interest, President William J. Clinton, Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., August 1994, Executive Office of the President Office of Science and Technology Policy. 3. Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications, National Coordination Office for HPCC, Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy, February 1994. 4. Global Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Cooperation, Al Gore, Vice President of the United States, Ronald H. Brown, Secretary of Commerce and Chairman, Information Infrastructure Task Force, February 1995. 5. Virtual GIS: A Real-Time 3-D Geographic Information System, David Koller, Peter Lindstrom, William Ribarsky, Larry Hodges, Nick Faust, and Gregory Turner, Graphics, Visualization & Usability Center, Georgia Institute of Technology, Tech Report GIT-GVU-95-14, 1995, submitted to IEEE Visualization 1995. 6. The Simple Virtual Environment Library, Version 1.4, User's Guide, G.D. Kessler, R. Kooper, J.C. Verlinden, and L. Hodges, Graphics, Visualization & Usability Center, Georgia Institute of Technology, Tech Report GIT-GVU-94-34, 1994. 7. Graphics Library Programming Guide, Silicon Graphics Computer Systems, Mountain View, California, 1991. 8. Level-of-detail Management for Real-time Rendering of Phototextured Terrain, P. Lindstrom, D. Koller, L.F. Hodges, W. Ribarsky, N. Faust, and G. Turner, Graphics, Visualization & Usability Center, Georgia Institute of Technology, Tech Report GIT-GVU-95-06 (1995), submitted to Presence. 9. The Virtual Annotation System, Reid Harmon, Walter Patterson, William Ribarsky, and Jay Bolter, Georgia Institute of Technology, Tech Report GIT-GVU-95-20. 10. Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less: Status Report September 1994, Report of the National Performance Review (NPR) CD-ROM, Vice President Al Gore, 1994. 11. Uniform Resource Locator http://www.npr.gov/, NPR home page. 12. Uniform Resource Locator http://nuke.WestLab.com/RegNet.Industry/, RegNet Industry home page. 13. Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, Turner Press, 1994–1995. 14. The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America, Philip K. Howard, Random House, 1994. 15. Executive Order 12291, Federal Regulation, February 17, 1981. 16. Executive Order 12498, Regulatory Planning Process, January 4, 1985. 17. Executive Order 12612, Federalism, October 26, 1987. 18. Executive Order 12637, Productivity Improvement Program for the Federal Government, April 27, 1988. 19. Executive Order 12839, Reduction of 100,000 Federal Positions, February 10, 1993. 20. Executive Order 12861, Elimination of One-half of Executive Branch Internal Regulations, September 11, 1993. 21. Executive Order 12864, United States Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure, September 15, 1993. 22. Executive Order 12866, Regulatory Planning and Review, September 30, 1993. 23. Executive Order 12875, Enhancing the Intergovernmental Partnership, October 26, 1993.

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Page 602 Appendix John P. Ziebarth, Ph.D., Associate Director National Center for Supercomputing Applications CAB261 605 E. Springfield Champaign, IL 61820 217/244-1961 voice 217/244-1987 fax ziebarth@ncsa.uiuc.edu W. Neil Thompson, NPR RegNet. Gov, Coordinator Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards Rotational Assignment U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, DC 20555 301/415-5858 voice wnt@nrc.gov nthompso@tmn.com J.D. Nyhart, Professor of Management and Ocean Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management 50 Memorial Drive, E52542 Cambridge, MA 02142-1437 617/253-1582 voice 617/253-2660 fax jdnyhart@mit.edu Kenneth Kaplan, Principal Research Scientist Department of Architecture and Research Laboratory for Electronics Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA 02139 617/258-9122 voice 617/258-7231 fax kkap@mit.edu Bill Ribarsky, Associate Director for Service Georgia Institute of Technology OIT/Educational Technologies Graphic Visualization and Usability Center Room 229 Himan Atlanta, GA 30332-0710 404/894-6148 voice 404/894-9548 fax bill.ribarsky@oit.gatech.edu

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Page 603 Gio Wiederhold, Ph.D., Professor Computer Science Department (also, by courtesy, Electrical Engineering and Medicine) Gates Building 4A, Room 433 Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-9040 415/725-8363 voice 415/725-2588 fax siroker@cs.stanford.edu Michael R. Genesereth, Professor Computer Science Department Gates Building Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-9040 415/725-8363 voice 415/725-2588/7411 fax genesereth@cs.stanford.edu Kenneth Gilpatric, Esq. National Performance Review NetResults.RegNet, Consultant Administrative Conference of the United States (formerly) 1615 Manchester Lane, NW Washington, DC 20011 202/882-7204 voice 202/882-9487 fax ken.gilpatric@npr.gsa.gov Tim E. Roxey National Performance Review RegNet.Industry, Lead Baltimore Gas and Electric, Project Manager Regulatory Projects 1650 Calvert Cliffs Parkway Lusby, MD 20656 Council for Excellence in Government (CEG), Principal Investigator Suite 859 1620 L Street, NW Washington, DC 20036 410/495-2065 voice 410/586-4928 pager timr@access.digex.net William J. Olmstead, Associate General Counsel for Licensing and Regulation Office of General Counsel Commission Staff Office U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, DC 20555 301/415-1740 voice wjo@nrc.gov olmstead@tmn.com

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Page 604 Ben Slone, President Finite Matters Ltd. 2694 Fairground Road Goochland, VA 23063 804/556-6631 voice sloneb@nuke.westlab.com Jim Acklin, CEO Regulatory Information Alliance 8806 Sleepy Hollow Lane Potomac, MD 20854 301/983-2029 voice acklinj@aol.com