Functionality

Brief outline of eRegulations features as of September 2024.

Meet fundamental expectations for web applications

• Site meets CMS accessibility requirements
• Site works or gracefully degrades on browsers CMS staff use
• Site is responsive for various sizes of screen CMS staff use
• Site has helpful pages for errors (404, 500, etc)
• There's a way for people using this to give us suggestions, report bugs, request demos, etc.
• There's an "about" page that provides concise explanations of how the information on the site is compiled and updated
• Mobile view works for reading regulation text (not full features)
• Regulation content pages are printable
• Content is available via API
• Site has sitemap that can enable high-quality search engine indexing (when permitted)
• Sitewide navigation shows where people are and gives them a correct understanding of what will happen if they click something

Regulation content that people read and trust

• Uses content versions directly from eCFR, updated approximately once a day
• Displays complete regulation content (including Federal Register citations, Authority, Scope, and Editorial Note information from the CFR)
• Footnotes, formulas, tables, and other pieces of special text are readable
• Nested paragraphs are indented
• Always tells you when the regulation content was last updated
• Always displays appropriate disclaimer about the content

Usable navigation of parts, subparts, and sections

• Default view of regulation content is by subpart, with full part view as a fallback when needed (such as sections that aren't within a subpart)
• Within a part, you can jump to another section or another part
• In any content view, you can find out where you are by seeing location information (including both the part number and the part name)
• You can get more room to read regulation text by collapsing the table of contents sidebar
• Each paragraph can be independently referenced by an anchor link in the URL
• Each regulation part homepage has a table of contents for the latest version, marked with the version/date of the content
• There's a way to copy the URL for any subpart, section, or paragraph (that's not just copying the URL bar)
• There's a way to copy the citation
• When you receive a link to a specific section or paragraph, the text you were linked to is highlighted (in an unobtrusive way)

Integration of resources in context with regulations

• Display public, and internal, if authorized, resources (with a link, a title, a description, a category, and one or many section associations) adjacent to relevant regulation text
• Policy SMEs can write content in a structured way that the system can incorporate
• Categories of public, and internal, if authorized, resources have names, weight, and descriptions
• Automated lists of related rules and NPRMs for each part
• It's intuitive for signed in users to tell which resources are public and which are internal
• It's intuitive for users who are not signed in to tell how they can sign in

Usable keyword search

• Global search is available from every page
• Keyword search returns relevant results
• Search results include both plural and singular versions of search terms
• Searching for a citation, such as 433.112, returns that section as a top result
• Searching for a quoted phrase returns results with those keywords in the specified order
• Keywords in search results are highlighted
• Search results include suggestions for synonyms of search terms, defined by policy SMEs, including expansions of abbreviations and acronyms
• Users can filter the search in useful ways

Usable subject taxonomy

• Users can tell what subjects are and which ones are relevant to the research they're doing
• Users can easily naviate and filter the list of subjects
• Selecting a subject displays public, and internal, if authorized, resources that are relevant to that subject
• It's intuitive for signed in users to tell which resources are public and which are internal
• It's intuitive for users who are not signed in to tell how they can sign in
• Users can filter subject resources in useful ways

Helpful site homepage

• The homepage enables the reader to immediately jump to a part or section
• The homepage has brief context for new visitors
• The homepage displays a list of parts that are within eRegulations
• The homepage displays an automated list of recent subregulatory guidance affecting the in-scope parts
• The homepage displays an automated list of recent Final Rules and Notices of Proposed Rulemaking affecting the in-scope parts

Helpful and accurate cross-reference links

• In end-of-section citations, Federal Register citations link you to the Federal Register web page for that final rule

Usable navigation of regulation lifecycle

• Ability to view a past version of a regulation, within the past few years