Full Transcript for When a democratic process becomes a spam target

new world now with automation and AI changing the game. 00:02:13.360 --> 00:02:19.039 Regulations.gov is now grappling with AI-generated comments on top of mass comment campaigns. 00:02:19.280 --> 00:02:19.840 One U.S. 00:02:19.919 --> 00:02:28.159 government study found that from 5 to 30% of people whose emails were attached to public comments said they didn't actually make the comment. 00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:32.240 This is the exact problem our guest and his team were hired to address. 00:02:32.319 --> 00:02:37.120 So please welcome Aaron Myers, the chief data officer of Ishmael Interactive. 00:02:37.360 --> 00:02:37.599 Hello. 00:02:37.840 --> 00:02:38.000 Hi. 00:02:38.159 --> 00:02:39.199 Hey Aaron, how are you? 00:02:39.520 --> 00:02:40.000 Pretty good. 00:02:40.159 --> 00:02:40.560 Pretty good. 00:02:40.639 --> 00:02:41.280 Thanks for having me. 00:02:41.599 --> 00:02:45.680 Can you explain what regulations gov does and why it matters? 00:02:45.919 --> 00:02:49.680 As if you were explaining it to someone who's never interacted with government beyond paying taxes. 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:51.039 Excellent, excellent. 00:02:51.599 --> 00:03:04.719 So regulations.gov is the idea that as a law gets passed and they have to make rules and regulations to say here's how we follow the law, the government's not going to know everything. 00:03:04.879 --> 00:03:09.280 They usually don't, but there are very few places where the government's going to say that out loud. 00:03:09.599 --> 00:03:17.039 So they put up a draft and they say, here's my list of questions, which would help me make this rule much better. 00:03:17.199 --> 00:03:28.159 And they're hoping people will go there, find it, answer it, fill out the information that they're looking for, give them a little more completeness before that draft becomes final. 00:03:28.560 --> 00:03:35.599 When you first encountered regulations.gov, what was the experience like for an average person trying to do a comment on a proposed rule? 00:03:35.680 --> 00:03:37.360 Like what did they actually have to see and do? 00:03:37.599 --> 00:03:46.400 Well, it's it's a little bit chaos because it is uh very legalistic, very technical, sometimes by design. 00:03:47.039 --> 00:03:53.199 And very often the news cycle didn't follow the regulatory cycle. 00:03:53.439 --> 00:04:03.280 So you would find people who hear about a rule, then they go searching on Google to find what is this rule, how's it happening, and then they discover they can comment on it. 00:04:03.439 --> 00:04:09.599 But sometimes the news article passes, and that's five months after the drafted rule closed. 00:04:09.759 --> 00:04:16.079 So they'll just find any rule by the affected agency or who they think the affected agency will be. 00:04:16.560 --> 00:04:32.240 And whether you're for or against, they'll just go on there and start talking about guns, whether or not we need more or less regulation on guns, or uh something having to do with the retirement

age or health care. 00:04:32.639 --> 00:04:39.279 Doesn't matter what the topic is, there's always something, but um, they just sort of stuff the ballot wherever they want. 00:04:39.519 --> 00:04:45.040 And is this um once the law is created before the regulations come out, or is it when they're thinking about a law? 00:04:45.199 --> 00:04:47.199 Like where in the legislative process does this happen? 00:04:47.519 --> 00:04:49.120 Uh law happens. 00:04:49.920 --> 00:04:56.079 Then there's some bidding about to see what agency has the band-aid over that law. 00:04:56.319 --> 00:05:01.439 So, you know, they'll pass the Clean Air Act and there'll be some discussions. 00:05:01.600 --> 00:05:07.759 Yeah, of course the EPA is gonna get it, but there might be some work with the Department of Transportation. 00:05:07.920 --> 00:05:13.120 So there'll be some high-level discussions about what regulations are needed and who should come out. 00:05:13.199 --> 00:05:20.079 And that's this kind of underscores the gap between the idea of a law and then the implementation of that law. 00:05:20.319 --> 00:05:36.079 One of the things we see in digital government is the government will pass a law like uh the Fee Transparency Act in Canada, which requires that any government department that collects a fee has to track whether the government delivered the thing they were supposed to for that fee, and if they didn't, then basically refund some of that fee. 00:05:36.240 --> 00:05:44.399 Now you can pass that law, but it's someone's got to build the tools to actually make that law happen, um, which is where the devil's in the details. 00:05:44.720 --> 00:05:47.839 How close is a law to the regulation? 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:55.360 Do you have any sense of like the asymmetry between the law that gets passed and then the regulations that flow out from that, how many months it takes to do that? 00:05:55.680 --> 00:06:00.480 So I I almost heard you say years, and sometimes it can take years. 00:06:00.959 --> 00:06:02.879 Sometimes it takes days. 00:06:02.959 --> 00:06:08.319 It depends upon the relative awareness and importance of said law. 00:06:08.720 --> 00:06:17.279 Uh, in fact, if a thing is declared an emergency, I'd have to double check, but I think some of this might have happened in light of 9-11. 00:06:17.439 --> 00:06:20.240 You could skip the comment period altogether. 00:06:20.399 --> 00:06:25.680 Your justification into the politicians is just we need this now. 00:06:25.759 --> 00:06:26.800 There's no time for it. 00:06:27.040 --> 00:06:31.279 So you can actually intentionally bypass the entire regulations.gov process. 00:06:31.600 --> 00:06:36.160 As long as you're willing to justify it, which is usually a very high standard. 00:06:36.399 --> 00:06:36.879 For sure. 00:06:37.199 --> 00:06:43.920 But there is a comment period on most regulations that usually is about 60 to 90 days. 00:06:44.079 --> 00:06:56.720 So at the very least, the time between the draft and the final is so the system uses terms like docket and federal register notice, language that's like second nature inside government, but pretty alienating to anyone else. 00:06:57.279 --> 00:07:01.040 How much of a barrier was that jargon in practice when you started working on the system? 00:07:01.199 --> 00:07:04.399 Were you seeing patterns in like who could participate and who couldn't? 00:07:04.720 --> 00:07:17.519 Huge, huge barrier, big problem because of the language inside the law and the language of how the data and the information is structured, dockets, for example. 00:07:17.839 --> 00:07:40.879 Usually the comments that were being considered, and I separate that from submitted, were from either people who are lawyers, so they're professionals at this, they're from industry associations, they're from nonprofits, some sort of institutional or organizational backing. 00:07:41.120 --> 00:07:42.160 Or people who are just freely. 00:07:48.800 --> 00:07:49.040 Yeah. 00:07:49.120 --> 00:07:51.279 Yeah, it is definitely inside baseball. 00:07:51.360 --> 00:08:11.680 It's gotten a little bit better in the past, but because there's this lack of who really understands the context, I separate whose comments get really deeply considered from whose are submitted, because the average person who submits also doesn't know that it's not a vote. 00:08:11.839 --> 00:08:14.560 And that's usually where the mistake happens. 00:08:14.720 --> 00:08:25.920 So your example of the uh paid opposition eight point something million dollars to uh on on the FCC rule, most of that was actually wasted money. 00:08:26.160 --> 00:08:26.399 Right. 00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:32.559 Because unless it's a really valuable content, the comment that's useful, the reviewers don't they have to look at it, but they don't have to consider it, right? 00:08:32.879 --> 00:08:34.879 The first thing they say is it's not a vote. 00:08:35.039 --> 00:08:41.039 So they'll look at it, they'll say, Oh, this says blah, blah, blah, supports this, has no other information. 00:08:41.600 --> 00:08:41.840 Got it. 00:08:41.919 --> 00:08:46.399 So it doesn't actually provide new information on laws that have already been passed and presumably voted on. 00:08:46.639 --> 00:08:53.919 Or even not passed, it still has to provide new information about the law that they are intending, the regulation that they are intending to amp. 00:08:54.080 --> 00:08:54.320 Right. 00:08:54.480 --> 00:09:00.240 So on the other side, you got a bunch of reviewers, and they're legally required to read every single comment. 00:09:00.480 --> 00:09:00.720 Yes. 00:09:00.960 --> 00:09:05.759 Before you got involved, what did that workload look like when these kind of comment flooding campaigns hit? 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:08.080 Well, it's incredibly hard. 00:09:08.159 --> 00:09:09.360 Uh, still is. 00:09:09.759 --> 00:09:28.799 You know, this is a constant work in progress, but you would see some organizations who might go out

to their membership, and this is how some of the misattribution comments happen, and they'll say, We're doing a letter writing campaign to speak out for or against X. 00:09:29.360 --> 00:09:41.279 What they'll submit is an introductory paragraph about the organization, about 80% of it's the same, and then there's just a name change, and they'll do that a hundred thousand times. 00:09:41.440 --> 00:09:49.039 Sometimes it is six-figure submittals that are 80% it's the same, 20% customized, and a name change. 00:09:49.679 --> 00:09:54.879 And presumably that's about to change with AI when you can have a bunch of different responses, each of which looks unique. 00:09:55.120 --> 00:09:56.000 Right, right. 00:09:56.320 --> 00:09:58.399 Uh, that is very true. 00:09:58.639 --> 00:10:14.639 But the the I the the possibility of having to sort all these things and making sure that in the sorting there wasn't something critical in that 20% was costing agencies millions, tens of millions of dollars in some cases. 00:10:14.799 --> 00:10:15.120 Wow. 00:10:15.279 --> 00:10:16.639 In lawyer fees. 00:10:16.879 --> 00:10:20.000 Because you have to have a lawyer say, yes, this passes mustard. 00:10:20.159 --> 00:10:31.919 You could send it to the subject matter expert now who could actually consider whether Bob Davis's comment about gasoline is useful for the people who are putting in mileage regulations. 00:10:32.320 --> 00:10:38.960 So this sounds like a really great recipe for like a human denial of service attack where the law has already been passed. 00:10:39.120 --> 00:10:42.240 You're just talking about the interpretation of the law to the regulation. 00:10:42.720 --> 00:10:48.399 You flood the rink with a bunch of comments that say the same thing, even though the volume of comments doesn't help. 00:10:48.559 --> 00:10:48.720 Right. 00:10:48.879 --> 00:10:51.440 And then you wind up spending tens of millions more. 00:10:51.600 --> 00:10:59.679 And then, of course, people who want to attack your position can say, well, this regulator, this overregulation is costing us too much money, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. 00:10:59.919 --> 00:11:00.159 Yeah. 00:11:00.320 --> 00:11:10.639 And as you put it with AI, now being having the capacity to do that sort of denial of service attack is pretty cheap and accessible. 00:11:10.879 --> 00:11:12.960 So anybody could do it. 00:11:13.039 --> 00:11:17.200 It's going to be sort of a there's potential there for escalating warfare. 00:11:17.519 --> 00:11:26.720 So as I understand it, this is a system where you're legally barred from changing both the submission workflow and the language of the proposed regulations themselves. 00:11:27.200 --> 00:11:35.600 So, like when you show up and you're told day one, you can't touch the two most obvious things that would actually solve this problem. 00:11:35.759 --> 00:11:37.440 What's the reaction like in that room? 00:11:37.759 --> 00:11:42.960 In the case of the actual language of the rule, that that that seems obvious. 00:11:43.039 --> 00:11:43.679 Who am I? 00:11:43.840 --> 00:11:45.039 I'm I'm nobody. 00:11:45.120 --> 00:11:46.639 I'm not going to change rule language. 00:11:46.720 --> 00:11:48.159 That's that's crazy talk. 00:11:48.559 --> 00:11:54.080 But it does seem like the government is gonna have to deal with what has essentially become a denial of service attack surface. 00:11:54.320 --> 00:11:58.240 Yeah, the the workflow, a little more upsetting, a little more of a surprise. 00:11:58.399 --> 00:12:05.120 So the the attitude is really just we have a lot of work and a lot of human testing to do. 00:12:05.360 --> 00:12:12.480 Because if you can't change the two most obvious things, you have to optimize your change literally everywhere else. 00:12:12.720 --> 00:12:13.039 Wow. 00:12:13.200 --> 00:12:17.360 Had previous teams tried to modernize uh the system before you got there? 00:12:17.679 --> 00:12:31.360 To limited success, this system was created back when a lot of enterprise architecture and a lot of data standards work was uh not really a thing. 00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:35.440 So the system at the time had literally no data standards. 00:12:35.600 --> 00:12:42.240 And I it was by design because this is a shared service for over 200 federal agencies. 00:12:42.399 --> 00:12:47.519 So their idea was, oh, well, we're just keeping it flexible for all of these people. 00:12:47.759 --> 00:12:53.679 Yeah, I I later met the person who instituted that, and I wanted to grab a drink and just ask them why. 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:57.360 So, what was the trigger that caused them to like reach out to your team? 00:12:57.440 --> 00:12:59.200 And maybe you can talk a little about your team at the time. 00:12:59.360 --> 00:13:00.960 What was the trigger that got them to bring you in? 00:13:01.200 --> 00:13:03.519 Well, this was back in my federal service time. 00:13:03.679 --> 00:13:07.600 It was about eight years, I believe, that I spent with that team. 00:13:07.919 --> 00:13:16.399 And their trigger for modernizing at the time was they were on an edition of Drupal that was about to be deprecated. 00:13:16.480 --> 00:13:17.440 The the content manager. 00:13:17.840 --> 00:13:19.679 Drupal is a CMS for folks that don't know that. 00:13:19.759 --> 00:13:20.000 Yeah. 00:13:20.159 --> 00:13:20.320 Yeah. 00:13:20.480 --> 00:13:25.039 So they basically, the platform it was on, was old enough that it was about to be obsolete. 00:13:25.120 --> 00:13:32.399 And so they knew they had to rebuild something, and they thought, hey, it why if we're rebuilding it, maybe there are things we can fix, but don't touch the regulations and don't touch the process. 00:13:32.720 --> 00:13:32.879 Right. 00:13:32.960 --> 00:13:34.480 It's a great forcing event. 00:13:34.720 --> 00:13:35.440 Okay, fair. 00:13:35.679 --> 00:13:40.240 So can you put a number or at least some kind of shape on what the old system was costing? 00:13:40.399 -->

00:13:43.600 Not just in dollars, but like in democratic participation. 00:13:43.919 --> 00:13:51.440 Uh well, we took a sample of about a 17-month period, and it was just under three million comments at the time. 00:13:51.679 --> 00:14:01.840 Each one represents time put in, cost of just people caring about things and money, several millions of dollars in coordination cost. 00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:08.720 Once you count all of those federal agencies talking to each other, 200 federal agencies, the governance on that is a nightmare. 00:14:09.039 --> 00:14:22.399 But in democratic process, I don't think you can put a number on that because it's it's it's 200 federal agencies. 00:14:22.480 --> 00:14:26.799 It's every it's nearly every rulemaking the federal government has. 00:14:27.039 --> 00:14:34.799 And most people even today, even doing those kind of numbers, do not know that they have a right to add input. 00:14:35.120 --> 00:14:43.120 Yeah, and it seems like, I mean, I look at the feed, you know, the feed being like when you scroll Instagram or X or whatever you're scrolling, YouTube. 00:14:43.440 --> 00:14:46.879 A feed is like a system for curating things at scale. 00:14:47.120 --> 00:14:54.399 You can upvote something, you can retweet something or repost it, you can block it, you can DM the person to narrow the communication. 00:14:54.559 --> 00:14:59.440 But a feed is like a tool for millions of people to decide what's interesting and important. 00:14:59.679 --> 00:15:00.639 Even Reddit, right? 00:15:00.720 --> 00:15:06.879 You just upvote, downvote things that bubble to the top divided by how long they've been there, kind of gives you a sense of what's interesting. 00:15:07.039 --> 00:15:13.840 These are all mechanisms for processing information at scale that are at least somewhat resilient to attack. 00:15:14.159 --> 00:15:14.559 Right. 00:15:14.799 --> 00:15:17.279 But and they're much more accessible to the average person. 00:15:17.440 --> 00:15:27.919 You can imagine that you would go in and you know, say, these are the things I care about and see the laws that are related to what you're doing and you know, retweet or upvote or downvote the comments you like and add your own comments. 00:15:28.320 --> 00:15:31.600 Like we have a mechanism for this stuff that's far more participatory. 00:15:31.759 --> 00:15:35.600 Otherwise, without that kind of system, comment flooding is this crazy anti-pattern. 00:15:35.759 --> 00:15:39.279 People are weaponizing a democratic process specifically to slow it down. 00:15:39.759 --> 00:15:40.720 Absolutely. 00:15:41.039 --> 00:15:43.120 And sometimes it it works. 00:15:43.440 --> 00:15:45.919 So does it actually change outcomes or is it just friction? 00:15:46.240 --> 00:15:48.960 Sometimes it changes outcomes. 00:15:49.120 --> 00:15:50.960 It's not very common. 00:15:51.200 --> 00:16:08.639 Usually you'll see small things like extensions on rulemakings due to uh in a few in a few rare instances, it's been because something didn't publish on time, or they weren't able to put an update out on time, or there was downtime in the system. 00:16:08.799 --> 00:16:12.879 In the history of the system, it's been up maybe 99.9% of the time. 00:16:12.960 --> 00:16:16.879 But when it goes down, you have to legally extend the rulemaking period. 00:16:17.200 --> 00:16:17.679 Interesting. 00:16:17.919 --> 00:16:18.080 Yeah. 00:16:18.240 --> 00:16:28.639 And so your team, you were at like 18F uh government service administration stuff in the federal government in the US, had a particular way of working really focused on like human-centered design in a government context. 00:16:28.799 --> 00:16:28.960 Yes. 00:16:29.200 --> 00:16:37.919 How did that help you uh to figure out ways that you might fix it without changing either the wording, the legislation, or the process? 00:16:38.240 --> 00:16:47.919 So the thing that I did was I literally took my laptop and went to the food court and started going up to people. 00:16:48.080 --> 00:16:50.000 Hey, I'm testing this. 00:16:50.159 --> 00:16:52.000 I want more information about that. 00:16:52.159 --> 00:16:52.960 Can you tell me about it? 00:16:53.200 --> 00:16:57.279 Usually feds, because you can only bother so many public citizens with the same thing. 00:16:57.440 --> 00:17:02.000 I was gonna say, it's like Jonathan Haidt used to say that all psychological research was weird. 00:17:02.240 --> 00:17:09.279 Western, educated, independent, democratic, and rich, because all of the studies done at universities were done on university campuses. 00:17:09.359 --> 00:17:14.079 So he would like try and reproduce a study at a McDonald's three miles from campus and get a very different result. 00:17:14.720 --> 00:17:18.720 Your first round of sampling, you're already talking to people who are like inside the beltway. 00:17:18.799 --> 00:17:21.440 They're already baseball players in your inside baseball game, right? 00:17:21.680 --> 00:17:22.000 Yes. 00:17:22.240 --> 00:17:23.759 That happened a few times. 00:17:23.920 --> 00:17:30.160 Then I would go to conferences and sort of walk out from the hotel there and try to meet people. 00:17:30.400 --> 00:17:38.240 But the other part of that is when you talk about federal employees and other people you could test with, it doesn't have to all be beltway people. 00:17:38.400 --> 00:17:40.079 Make sure you get the security guard. 00:17:40.160 --> 00:17:44.480 Make sure you get the lady who's literally at the register of the food court. 00:17:44.640 --> 00:17:51.519 Still counts, still good information, still the exact kind of demo that has every right to use this tool. 00:17:51.759 --> 00:17:57.599 And so you would you would walk up and like open your laptop and say, hey, here's a potential regulation on something. 00:17:57.839 --> 00:17:59.039 How would you like to comment? 00:17:59.119 --> 00:18:00.160 Is that is that the approach? 00:18:00.480 --> 00:18:11.920 I would give them

scenarios that are more along the lines of you just watched a news report and it mentions this regulation that is going to happen. 00:18:12.160 --> 00:18:16.400 You get curious, you want to add your input to it, you start off at Google. 00:18:16.480 --> 00:18:18.480 Sometimes I would start from the search engine. 00:18:18.640 --> 00:18:22.000 Find out where to comment, how you want to comment. 00:18:22.160 --> 00:18:23.440 Let me watch what you're doing. 00:18:23.759 --> 00:18:28.960 So you're even starting at the long funnel of just I care about how many guns there are, one way or another. 00:18:29.359 --> 00:18:30.960 And then what do you do about it? 00:18:31.039 --> 00:18:32.640 Did you know there's a thing you could do about it? 00:18:32.960 --> 00:18:34.000 I would vary it up. 00:18:34.160 --> 00:18:38.480 Sometimes it would be at the long funnel, sometimes it would be at the webpage itself. 00:18:38.720 --> 00:18:41.599 I want to mix the data, but that that would be the general idea. 00:18:41.920 --> 00:18:48.319 So let's talk about your two fixes because they're both pretty clever workarounds that fit within these tight legal constraints. 00:18:48.559 --> 00:18:48.799 Yes. 00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:52.480 You said your first one was bulk comment downloads for reviewers. 00:18:52.720 --> 00:18:53.200 Yes. 00:18:54.079 --> 00:18:54.960 Sounds pretty simple. 00:18:55.119 --> 00:18:57.839 Like, like, what does it take to ship that inside a federal system? 00:18:57.920 --> 00:19:00.240 Because bulk downloads sounds like a couple lines of code. 00:19:00.480 --> 00:19:00.720 Yeah. 00:19:00.880 --> 00:19:03.839 Uh ordinarily, it would be pretty simple. 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:06.480 I I don't want to take sole credit for this idea. 00:19:06.720 --> 00:19:11.519 It was an idea that a lot of people needed and a lot of people requested. 00:19:11.599 --> 00:19:17.599 And at a certain critical depth, you just say, if this many people are asking for it, it must be for a reason. 00:19:17.759 --> 00:19:24.559 And the the bulk download of comments during the Drupal modernization is a little more difficult. 00:19:24.880 --> 00:19:25.920 So let me understand. 00:19:26.079 --> 00:19:32.640 The reviewer had to be on the system, look at one thing, then like click close or save or whatever, go to the next one. 00:19:32.720 --> 00:19:35.839 They couldn't look at them outside of the original system. 00:19:35.920 --> 00:19:36.400 Is that right? 00:19:36.559 --> 00:19:37.200 Uh yes. 00:19:37.519 --> 00:19:39.119 How did that affect their productivity? 00:19:39.359 --> 00:19:40.640 Oh, it's it's horrible. 00:19:40.799 --> 00:19:46.000 It's horrible, especially because very often you have related regulations. 00:19:46.160 --> 00:19:52.799 And within one regulation, you can have dozens of documents itself all in that one docket. 00:19:53.440 --> 00:19:58.799 And usually you have the majority of comments on one document, but not necessarily. 00:19:58.960 --> 00:20:04.799 So you have this separation of data where you're trying to find all the comments about rulemaking. 00:20:04.960 --> 00:20:08.480 You might have to go to another rulemaking, you might have to go to multiple documents. 00:20:08.640 --> 00:20:10.720 It becomes sort of a mapping make. 00:20:11.039 --> 00:20:19.839 So it sounds like the tool was made to let you review an individual comment, but not for the analysis of feedback across comments or synthesis of any kind. 00:20:20.160 --> 00:20:30.559 There are some tools that were and are used that help you find the highly copied comments, the ones that are 80% similar. 00:20:30.720 --> 00:20:39.039 You you put a sort of move a slider to 80%, it shows you that 80% language, then it highlights the 20% as you go through it. 00:20:39.200 --> 00:20:48.880 But in terms of getting mass sentiment analysis or breaking things up by topic or categorization, largely weren't there. 00:20:49.119 --> 00:20:56.240 It does seem to me like one opportunity to do this would be, you know, if you can't replace the existing system, create a parallel system. 00:20:56.480 --> 00:21:03.200 And I've seen tools like polis that are sort of designed for at-scale commenting where you pick your position on something or whatever. 00:21:03.359 --> 00:21:08.880 Or uh the Society Library has a thing where they take a topic and they break it apart into all of the different debate structures. 00:21:09.039 --> 00:21:21.359 Did anybody talk about building a parallel system to this one so that you were still respecting the letter of the law with regulations.gov, but then building another more analyzable system to kind of get the zeitgeist or the vibes from people? 00:21:21.599 --> 00:21:23.039 It's been talked about. 00:21:23.200 --> 00:21:27.119 I wouldn't be surprised if even today it was still worked on. 00:21:27.359 --> 00:21:30.720 This is something that's sort of always been in the background of the discussion. 00:21:30.799 --> 00:21:36.000 I'm sure they probably are still at the very least considering it, if not actively building it. 00:21:36.240 --> 00:21:38.799 There's a few difficulties there. 00:21:39.039 --> 00:21:44.640 One difficulty is the fee structure with how they pay for the service. 00:21:44.799 --> 00:21:52.720 There's 200 federal agencies, but the ones who really produce the majority of regulations are very top heavy. 00:21:52.960 --> 00:22:01.680 And when you have a shared service where there's only a few who do most of the demand, and everybody else who might produce One or two regulations. 00:22:02.400 --> 00:22:08.319 Paying for any sort of thing like that always raises the debate of, well, why isn't EPA covering? 00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:08.880 Got it. 00:22:08.960 --> 00:22:17.519 So you have to bill people according to usage, and there are a few big users that get to dictate the roadmap and stuff because that's the service they're paying for. 00:22:17.759 --> 00:22:27.279 Yeah, you either bill them according to usage

or you try to spread it out, but you're going to have the complaints there of why am I floating the bill? 00:22:27.359 --> 00:22:29.440 Because EPA produces so many rules. 00:22:29.599 --> 00:22:32.880 I keep mentioning EPA only because they do produce a lot of rules. 00:22:33.039 --> 00:22:35.279 That's an observable fact. 00:22:35.519 --> 00:22:49.759 Um but either way, it makes trying to get additional funding for any fix, any parallel system that isn't going to be shared equally a major debate topic and something that is very often hard to approve. 00:22:50.240 --> 00:22:59.279 So the second fix that you had is a little more subtle: restructuring the underlying data to reduce the exposure to jargon without actually rewriting the regulations themselves. 00:22:59.359 --> 00:23:00.640 So you're not violating the law. 00:23:00.799 --> 00:23:02.079 Can you unpack that a little? 00:23:02.160 --> 00:23:04.559 Like what does restructuring the data mean in plain terms? 00:23:04.880 --> 00:23:07.440 Uh de-emphasizing the word docket. 00:23:07.599 --> 00:23:09.200 That that was a big start. 00:23:09.359 --> 00:23:16.960 Once again, if you don't get involved with court or cases or the legal system too often, you don't know what a docket is. 00:23:17.039 --> 00:23:18.079 It's a folder. 00:23:18.880 --> 00:23:25.279 And really, if I had the magic wand for a day, I would have just called it a folder myself. 00:23:25.519 --> 00:23:31.599 But we have government people who also use the system and they get attached to their vocabulary, so it becomes a big to-do. 00:23:31.839 --> 00:23:34.319 But it's a folder that you put documents in. 00:23:34.559 --> 00:23:36.319 That's more or less it. 00:23:36.880 --> 00:24:02.319 So doing that, making sure that the search is indexed so it's primarily by document and looking up the keywords and the subjects and the metadata of the document as opposed to the docket first is a big step in that direction because it means when you get a search result and you go there, you're in a document, you're in that area, that level of data that you understand. 00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:06.400 And you might not know what a docket is, but you'll understand the UX of it. 00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:08.000 And that'll help you navigate with it. 00:24:08.319 --> 00:24:12.480 You still got to keep the words there, but you can show people something they'll understand and connect with first. 00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:12.960 Yes. 00:24:13.200 --> 00:24:19.519 And you can make it easier for the reviewers to pull down many things at once and analyze them themselves. 00:24:19.599 --> 00:24:22.319 Although it does seem like the analysis tools are kind of far behind. 00:24:22.480 --> 00:24:30.559 There's like an asymmetry here where the commenters are allowed to use whatever automation they want, and the the reviewers have to, you know, pull out a piece of paper and read it. 00:24:30.720 --> 00:24:32.559 So it seems like you're pretty stuck there. 00:24:32.960 --> 00:24:34.640 They're they're behind, but they're getting better. 00:24:34.960 --> 00:24:37.200 Then there's the API layer for outside groups. 00:24:37.279 --> 00:24:39.759 You you have this data is public, right? 00:24:39.920 --> 00:24:45.680 And so while your hands are tied, the hands of civic organizations that care about these things are not. 00:24:45.839 --> 00:24:51.680 So you basically said we can't simplify the language, but we can make it easier for other people to simplify it for their communities. 00:24:51.920 --> 00:24:56.960 Was that something you framed as a workaround from the start, or did it kind of emerge as you were designing this stuff? 00:24:57.359 --> 00:25:06.160 It emerged because we were already getting a lot of headless browser submittals, people who were just sort of automating mass submittals. 00:25:06.480 --> 00:25:08.799 So can you clarify what a headless browser submittal is? 00:25:08.880 --> 00:25:09.119 Uh yeah. 00:25:09.440 --> 00:25:11.440 Because you're doing the inside baseball language there. 00:25:11.599 --> 00:25:12.160 Yes, you're right. 00:25:12.240 --> 00:25:12.559 You're right. 00:25:12.640 --> 00:25:13.440 Sorry about that. 00:25:13.680 --> 00:25:28.079 Uh so basically it is people who would send all of these comments over to us in a very automated and packaged fashion in such a way that it didn't even go over across a browser. 00:25:28.240 --> 00:25:30.079 It's just sort of computer to computer. 00:25:30.480 --> 00:25:35.599 It's a script that's just sending the messages and that that it knows it are needed to connect to the page and do it. 00:25:35.839 --> 00:25:44.079 Just kind of like what we see today with Cloud and Chrome, where Cloud can take over your browser, or just running Python commands that send web requests to a server. 00:25:44.160 --> 00:25:45.599 That stuff's even easier now than it was then. 00:25:45.839 --> 00:25:48.640 Yeah, just an automated script says push it over. 00:25:48.880 --> 00:25:49.200 Wow. 00:25:49.440 --> 00:25:51.279 We were already getting a lot of those. 00:25:51.440 --> 00:25:57.599 So many that you could see the dip in the system's performance or its traffic at times when there's a lot of different things. 00:25:57.759 --> 00:26:02.240 Oh, because they're using a web server that's designed for humans, but they're hammering it with a machine. 00:26:02.319 --> 00:26:02.559 Okay. 00:26:02.799 --> 00:26:03.440 Yes. 00:26:03.839 --> 00:26:11.200 Uh and when you we looked at who was doing it, there's some very legitimate organizations who are doing this. 00:26:11.359 --> 00:26:15.119 They have a legitimate business need to send over many at a time. 00:26:15.359 --> 00:26:16.480 So can you give me an example of that? 00:26:16.559 --> 00:26:21.200 Is like there's that like Ducks Unlimited had a thing on its website and now it wants to upload all those comments to you? 00:26:21.279 --> 00:26:21.920 Or what is that? 00:26:22.240 --> 00:26:22.960 Uh yeah, yeah.

00:26:23.039 --> 00:26:26.079 So we would get a veteran service organization. 00:26:26.319 --> 00:26:38.079 So somebody who's trying to represent veterans uh from the military across the country to make sure that a regulation establishes their correct benefits for healthcare. 00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:49.839 I don't want to name specific names or anything like that, but what they would do is they would collect information from their membership, which is tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people. 00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:52.960 And they would say, okay, we're gonna send you out this form. 00:26:53.839 --> 00:26:59.119 They're going to change your prescription costs, throwing out hypotheticals here. 00:26:59.359 --> 00:27:04.160 Fill out this information in this form, add your name, we'll push it forward. 00:27:04.319 --> 00:27:12.480 And they want to make sure these people have a maximum amount of time to fill everything out, to put in the data that's required and to send it to them. 00:27:12.640 --> 00:27:21.119 And if they're gonna squeeze as much time out of that as they can, they need the quickest and most automated way to then send it to regulation stuff. 00:27:21.680 --> 00:27:27.200 I think the normal reaction would be hey, I've got this website, machines are using it, it's designed for humans. 00:27:27.359 --> 00:27:29.920 Let's make it as hard as possible for machines to use it. 00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:38.160 And websites today have these things like the robots.txt file that are basically instructions that say, hey, you're a computer, you're a Google crawler or whatever, you're not a human. 00:27:38.240 --> 00:27:40.400 You may not use this website in the way a human would. 00:27:40.640 --> 00:27:42.319 So there's a bit of an arms race, right? 00:27:42.480 --> 00:27:42.720 Yes. 00:27:42.880 --> 00:27:56.880 Um, I know that Cloudflare, one of the big content delivery companies that protects sites, has a thing they call a bot labyrinth, which is quite literally when it thinks you're a bot, it sends you into a bunch of generated pages full of nonsense to confuse you, right? 00:27:57.039 --> 00:28:02.880 So there's this very adversarial relationship between websites intended for humans and machines. 00:28:03.359 --> 00:28:12.559 You showed up and said counterintuitively, we think we should make it easier for machines to use this because they're gonna do it anyway, and this will solve some of our performance and load problems. 00:28:12.640 --> 00:28:13.039 Is that right? 00:28:13.279 --> 00:28:14.960 They're gonna do it anyways. 00:28:15.279 --> 00:28:19.119 For most of these anti-bot steps you can take. 00:28:19.279 --> 00:28:24.160 There's very publicly searchable and findable ways to beat them. 00:28:24.319 --> 00:28:38.079 So if we start implementing, you know, some sort of scheme to capture, click on all of these buses in this picture or something like that, we add accessibility problems and we only put up a problem that the cheaters could solve. 00:28:38.319 --> 00:28:38.559 Interesting. 00:28:38.640 --> 00:28:38.880 Yeah. 00:28:38.960 --> 00:28:42.640 So you put up you make it so hard for a machine that you've made it hard for humans. 00:28:42.880 --> 00:28:44.160 So let's skip that. 00:28:44.240 --> 00:28:44.559 Yeah. 00:28:44.640 --> 00:28:44.720 Yeah. 00:28:44.960 --> 00:28:45.519 How did that? 00:28:45.599 --> 00:28:46.880 I mean, that sounds counterintuitive. 00:28:46.960 --> 00:28:51.440 What was the initial reaction to please let's welcome our robot overlords to the conversation? 00:28:51.759 --> 00:29:07.519 Well, once we started getting the data on who was doing this and pointing to legitimate business need, legitimate need, these people who are representing real people with real problems and a real right to speak up, it starts to get a little more reasonable. 00:29:07.759 --> 00:29:12.400 Then when we started pointing out it there is a middle ground, you create a whitelist. 00:29:12.799 --> 00:29:23.519 You say, okay, you you advertise it, you say if you want access to this API, you sign up with us, we write down your name, we give you the API, the key, and we track you. 00:29:23.680 --> 00:29:30.960 We know exactly what you're doing, what quantities you're doing it in, and we can tell if it's a denial of shivers attack or content through that way. 00:29:31.279 --> 00:29:39.039 So you're you're giving people the right to register legitimate bots that should then allow that have a username and a password for a machine. 00:29:39.279 --> 00:29:39.680 Yes. 00:29:39.920 --> 00:29:40.079 Yeah. 00:29:40.400 --> 00:29:49.839 This seems like this is some serious foreshadowing for what we're going to need as people start to deploy like clawed code or claw or open open claw and things like that, right? 00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:50.319 Yeah. 00:29:50.640 --> 00:29:55.519 So uh how long did all this take from your first conversation to when it was live in production? 00:29:55.839 --> 00:29:56.480 Years. 00:29:57.680 --> 00:29:59.440 It took years. 00:29:59.680 --> 00:30:06.559 There's a lot of things happening in the middle of the modernization, a lot of budgetary problems. 00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:14.880 And then there was the FCC rule, which created a title shift in how this entire process is seen. 00:30:15.039 --> 00:30:20.880 Because when net neutrality came out, there were people who were not just sending automated comments. 00:30:21.039 --> 00:30:28.319 They were sending automated comments posing as other people in numbers that the government had probably never seen before. 00:30:28.480 --> 00:30:32.480 In some cases, even pretending to be congressmen who were sending in comments. 00:30:32.799 --> 00:30:36.000 I guess when you make a law that nerds care about, nerds are gonna nerd, right? 00:30:36.240 --> 00:30:36.559 Yes. 00:30:36.799 --> 00:30:37.039 Yeah. 00:30:37.279 --> 00:30:37.920 Big time. 00:30:38.079 --> 00:30:38.400 Big time. 00:30:38.880 --> 00:30:41.680

After you change shipped these changes, what did you see in the data? 00:30:41.839 --> 00:30:45.680 Did it change the diversity of commenters or the review cycle speed? 00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:48.640 In some cases, it changed the review cycle speed. 00:30:48.799 --> 00:30:52.720 I think this is still very much a work in progress. 00:30:53.599 --> 00:30:59.599 Uh, in some cases, it made life easier for those organizations who are using the API. 00:30:59.839 --> 00:31:09.279 And in a very non-political way, I can't emphasize that enough because you can't you can't play winners or losers with your API when you're the government. 00:31:09.440 --> 00:31:14.400 You have to make sure you give it to anybody who's just basically not completely misrepresenting the law. 00:31:14.720 --> 00:31:15.599 That's a great line. 00:31:15.759 --> 00:31:19.039 You can't um play winners or losers with API and you can't play politics. 00:31:19.200 --> 00:31:28.960 You know, the data, especially when it's data that's mandated for publication is part of the democratic process, that data and those those uh platforms, you have to be okay with your worst political enemy using this. 00:31:29.279 --> 00:31:30.799 Yes, absolutely. 00:31:31.039 --> 00:31:50.319 Um but putting it out there, making their life easier on both sides of the aisle, on everybody else, it's it's a continuation of that original idea behind regulations.gov, which is the government isn't gonna have all the answers or all parts of the solution. 00:31:50.960 --> 00:32:04.240 If I want to do a law and uh regulation and sub-nonprofit out there is gonna make 200,000 people more aware of this regulation, at some point the government should just say thank you. 00:32:04.480 --> 00:32:04.720 Yeah. 00:32:04.799 --> 00:32:11.680 I mean, it really is the democratic process in the digital age, but it's obviously been used in a way that is devastating for a lot of these systems. 00:32:11.839 --> 00:32:12.079 Yeah. 00:32:12.160 --> 00:32:12.400 Yeah. 00:32:12.640 --> 00:32:12.960 Okay. 00:32:13.119 --> 00:32:19.759 So uh for the nonprofit and advocacy groups that did use the API, did it actually change their participation? 00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:23.200 Do you see a rise in the proportion of comments that came from those groups? 00:32:23.519 --> 00:32:26.480 I believe so, but that is very hard to validate. 00:32:26.559 --> 00:32:34.559 It needs a long timeline because this is also subject to what laws and regulations that happen to be coming out. 00:32:35.359 --> 00:32:45.839 So uh a net neutrality is going to cause uh an ups it an uptick in that contribution of comments, irregardless. 00:32:46.160 --> 00:32:46.319 Sure. 00:32:46.559 --> 00:32:49.680 Anything that surprised you about the results and the impact? 00:32:50.079 --> 00:33:05.039 I think the thing that surprised me most is and I think you latched onto this very quickly, is the need for some sort of parallel system or better analysis tool to keep going. 00:33:05.759 --> 00:33:09.440 That this isn't this is by far not a solved or done problem. 00:33:09.759 --> 00:33:10.559 Well, it used to be Mr. 00:33:10.640 --> 00:33:12.160 Smith was going to go to Washington, right? 00:33:12.240 --> 00:33:16.640 Or Ottawa or wherever he's going, and now it's everyone is in their phones doing it. 00:33:16.880 --> 00:33:24.880 So much of government was created with this idea that the citizen would connect to a government person on an individual basis. 00:33:25.039 --> 00:33:31.680 There was never a sense of scale, there was another sense of automation, there was never a sense that the citizen would have access to these things themselves. 00:33:31.839 --> 00:33:46.480 I mean, it seems like this is the kind of thing where in a in a reasonably advanced democracy, if you cared about, for example, childcare, you could set an alert to find out about any time that any legislation was being passed where the regulations around childcare might change, and then you could go and comment on them, right? 00:33:46.640 --> 00:33:47.440 Yeah, yeah. 00:33:48.319 --> 00:34:01.519 And what really sort of then surprises me what fell out of this when we started taking a critical look at what goes into the system, what people are submitting for is also the federal land. 00:34:02.799 --> 00:34:15.840 And there's very often a disconnect between the laws and the regulations that come up and the stock of infrastructure that a government has. 00:34:16.159 --> 00:34:16.480 Right. 00:34:16.719 --> 00:34:22.719 So you'll see a lot of laws and regulations that say, oh, you have to notify the people. 00:34:22.880 --> 00:34:34.719 So there's a bunch of things that end up in the system that are not necessarily in the scope of a regulatory making, but it's a system and it counts as technically notifying the people. 00:34:35.039 --> 00:34:36.239 So it's more of an ass covering. 00:34:36.320 --> 00:34:37.599 You're like, hey, I did, I told them. 00:34:37.679 --> 00:34:37.760 Yeah. 00:34:38.960 --> 00:34:39.119 Yeah. 00:34:39.199 --> 00:34:39.360 Okay. 00:34:39.679 --> 00:34:40.000 Yes. 00:34:40.079 --> 00:34:48.400 And so separating the notification that something is happening from the I want to have a reason debate and see if I've missed anything intense is kind of huge. 00:34:48.880 --> 00:34:49.679 Enormous. 00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:50.559 Enormous. 00:34:50.639 --> 00:34:50.880 Yeah. 00:34:51.199 --> 00:35:18.079 It does seem to me like it would be fairly easy, given that you have an API, for someone to register as a legitimate connector via the API, for them to create a website where any person could go and say, I'm interested in these things, for them to scrape the dockets, match them to things people are interested in, send those people a message, have them click to the website, show them just the things they want, maybe even translate it out of jargon, fill in the stuff, and then send it back to your website. 00:35:18.320 --> 00:35:20.320 Like

we don't have to wait for the government to do that. 00:35:20.480 --> 00:35:26.079 I wrote a thing a couple of weeks ago called the Machine Fights Back about how humans used to have to grind up against the machinery government. 00:35:26.159 --> 00:35:34.639 It seems like it'd be pretty easy to build a publish and subscribe model for people that just made these things transparent and let you comment on them. 00:35:34.880 --> 00:35:35.519 Yes. 00:35:35.840 --> 00:35:37.760 Uh 100% agreed. 00:35:37.920 --> 00:35:39.440 It's a good business model. 00:35:39.760 --> 00:35:40.239 Business model. 00:35:40.559 --> 00:35:41.599 These days you can just do it for free. 00:35:41.679 --> 00:35:42.960 Like I don't want to make money from it. 00:35:43.280 --> 00:35:51.280 Well, it's a good when I say business model, it's more in terms of it's a good thing you can do to drive a result, money or not. 00:35:51.440 --> 00:36:04.079 I know people who have been looking at doing things like that, lobbyist organizations, nonprofits, who really just want to have a better dashboard of government things that their people can care about. 00:36:04.320 --> 00:36:07.599 And there's no way for me to find out what happened to my comment, right? 00:36:07.920 --> 00:36:20.239 Uh usually what will happen is they produce a final rule and it will to some degree address the comments received. 00:36:20.559 --> 00:36:24.000 Sometimes it'll just say, oh, we got comments and we considered them. 00:36:24.159 --> 00:36:26.480 Sometimes it'll break it out by the individual comment. 00:36:26.639 --> 00:36:29.119 It really depends upon who the rule writer is. 00:36:29.440 --> 00:36:29.599 Okay. 00:36:29.760 --> 00:36:33.360 Let's switch selfishly to Canada now, because we have a similar system here. 00:36:33.440 --> 00:36:35.519 Obviously, the here the Canada Gazette. 00:36:35.599 --> 00:36:40.480 It's where proposed regulations are published and public comment is supposed to be part of the process. 00:36:40.639 --> 00:36:43.199 But in our case, participation is vanishingly small. 00:36:43.360 --> 00:36:43.519 Yes. 00:36:43.760 --> 00:36:48.480 If you were advising a Canadian team facing similar constraints, what's the first thing you'd tell them? 00:36:48.880 --> 00:36:58.000 Uh it it participation in the system is small, but there are a lot of ways to participate in providing input. 00:36:58.159 --> 00:37:00.320 Is it happening somewhere? 00:37:01.199 --> 00:37:03.280 That that's the first thing I would want to know. 00:37:03.440 --> 00:37:13.039 You know, if there's more public meetings that get publicized in the newspaper or the news, or just through an email. 00:37:13.599 --> 00:37:16.000 I don't care how the participation is happening. 00:37:16.079 --> 00:37:22.400 The tool doesn't justify itself unless that unless people gravitate towards participation in that. 00:37:22.800 --> 00:37:23.119 Got it. 00:37:23.280 --> 00:37:33.840 So you spent a decade at the EPA, you spent years at GSA, and now you're at Ishmael Interactive, which was a firm that was built by Ford Former ATF people after Doge shut things down. 00:37:34.000 --> 00:37:39.679 What's been lost with the dismantling of those kinds of human-centered design institutions within government? 00:37:40.079 --> 00:37:41.440 Uh the context. 00:37:41.840 --> 00:37:50.559 The people who would go out and get the context of what government is doing to the people who it's supposed to serve. 00:37:50.719 --> 00:38:02.400 You know, 18F, great office, love their work, but when they made a fix for paying your taxes, they started off by talking to people who were paying their taxes. 00:38:02.559 --> 00:38:02.880 Yeah. 00:38:03.039 --> 00:38:05.519 You can't get that out of just an AI. 00:38:06.079 --> 00:38:07.360 Quite the same. 00:38:07.519 --> 00:38:10.000 Not only that, but just the talent pool. 00:38:10.159 --> 00:38:12.639 You just an incredible talent pool. 00:38:12.800 --> 00:38:14.639 I don't know how they're going to restock. 00:38:15.039 --> 00:38:23.440 I a lot of those changes are also scary just because they did it to such a degree all at once. 00:38:24.320 --> 00:38:35.679 Even if you cut the right people, which personally I think is highly debatable, if you cut X percent of them all at once, it's going to create problems that you have to learn how to bounce back. 00:38:36.079 --> 00:38:39.039 You lose that sort of organizational muscle mass and memory, right? 00:38:39.360 --> 00:38:40.159 Yeah, absolutely. 00:38:40.480 --> 00:38:48.559 So regulations.gov is a case where you couldn't change the law, you couldn't change the language, and you still found a way to, in theory, make democracy more accessible. 00:38:48.800 --> 00:38:52.320 What's the lesson here for people who feel like government is too big and too broken to fix? 00:38:52.559 --> 00:38:53.920 You have a part in it. 00:38:54.079 --> 00:38:57.360 And that's the thing I love about regulations.gov. 00:38:57.679 --> 00:39:08.559 And that's the thing I love about the human testing, is there's usually somebody you could get involved with and relay your experience to. 00:39:08.800 --> 00:39:11.760 If it is going on the gazette, great. 00:39:11.920 --> 00:39:21.840 If it is calling your mayor and saying, I want five minutes of your time, it all starts with transmitting what your personal context is. 00:39:22.000 --> 00:39:23.199 How does this affect me? 00:39:23.519 --> 00:39:30.239 We talked a little bit about AI and automation, and obviously that's something that's happening on a weekly or even daily basis. 00:39:31.119 --> 00:39:40.320 Um, what are your thoughts about what happens when it becomes obvious that the citizens have their own machines and they can point it at government if they don't want it, don't like what it's doing? 00:39:40.800 --> 00:39:42.239 Well, there's two different thoughts. 00:39:42.400 --> 00:39:47.519 One is I'm trying to separate oppositional content from denial of service. 00:39:47.760

--> 00:39:50.639 Denial of service, bad oppositional content. 00:39:50.800 --> 00:39:53.119 As long as it's true, I don't care. 00:39:53.360 --> 00:39:58.320 I'm not supposed to pick sides, government's not supposed to pick sides, that is fine. 00:39:58.559 --> 00:40:08.320 If it is creating a substantive comment or substantive input with actual facts that can be researched, this is no different than using a keyboard instead of a pen. 00:40:08.639 --> 00:40:14.880 The tools that allow scale are separate from the legitimacy of the underlying message or goal. 00:40:15.199 --> 00:40:15.440 That's right. 00:40:15.920 --> 00:40:16.800 It's content first. 00:40:17.119 --> 00:40:27.679 And you also push back against this idea that the website was a reliable source of friction that forced humans to do this firsthand, both as reviewers and as submitters, right? 00:40:27.840 --> 00:40:29.440 Because it was already being circumvented. 00:40:29.599 --> 00:40:32.559 Do you see governments having a similar thought about AI? 00:40:32.639 --> 00:40:33.760 Are they not even thinking about it? 00:40:33.920 --> 00:40:36.079 Are they trying to send bots into labyrinths? 00:40:36.159 --> 00:40:42.239 Or are they now saying, no, we need a skill for the federal government that you can tell Claude about so it knows how to respond? 00:40:42.559 --> 00:40:58.480 I think that this is one of the things the current administration is getting right, is that they're paying more attention to automation and AI in a way that is trying to put it in the workflow, whether they do that successfully or not, it's my government. 00:40:58.559 --> 00:40:59.519 So I hope they do. 00:40:59.760 --> 00:41:02.960 But I think that there's still some fear. 00:41:03.119 --> 00:41:14.480 And I'll I'll I'll take you back to the FCC rule again and the ability to impersonate another person and put your comment onto somebody else's name. 00:41:14.639 --> 00:41:21.920 If you talk to most of the rule writers at the time, the people who actually make the regulations, they didn't care whose name was on it. 00:41:22.079 --> 00:41:25.760 You were committing fraud for something that had no effect. 00:41:26.159 --> 00:41:28.480 Was it part of the consideration set? 00:41:28.719 --> 00:41:29.760 It's the content. 00:41:29.840 --> 00:41:31.679 It can have any name on it. 00:41:31.760 --> 00:41:32.480 It doesn't matter. 00:41:32.800 --> 00:41:33.519 Yeah, it's interesting. 00:41:33.599 --> 00:41:35.840 It wasn't a vote, so there was no question of legitimacy. 00:41:36.000 --> 00:41:36.239 Exactly. 00:41:36.480 --> 00:41:39.840 It was a comment, and that comment stands on its own regardless of who made it. 00:41:40.079 --> 00:41:40.400 Yeah. 00:41:40.639 --> 00:41:45.519 Well, you know, Canada's just launched online commenting in September 2022. 00:41:45.599 --> 00:41:53.519 We're pretty far behind where the US was, but we're not seeing anywhere near the numbers you saw, you know, around 1,500 people for an open government debate. 00:41:53.760 --> 00:41:57.760 What do you think it is that's gonna make Canadians realize they too have a voice? 00:41:58.159 --> 00:42:00.559 So I'm not sure that they don't realize this. 00:42:00.719 --> 00:42:05.440 They might be getting their civic participation and their civic input somewhere else. 00:42:05.679 --> 00:42:10.800 So the first thing I would do is get a Canadian sit down and say, How do you participate? 00:42:12.159 --> 00:42:16.559 If they're not participating through the Gazette, I don't know what it might be. 00:42:16.719 --> 00:42:29.599 Usually it is, but usually when I see a bump up in people who start to then comment to an agency or a group of agencies or on a topic, it takes one big law. 00:42:30.320 --> 00:42:46.480 One big earth-shattering law that gets in the news, gets on your talk shows, then people come in, they find it, they comment, and then the week after they remember, oh wait, there might be other rules and other regulations about this stuff. 00:42:46.719 --> 00:42:48.239 So I'm just gonna go once a week. 00:42:48.480 --> 00:42:52.320 Well, you've kind of made me want to go build the social network for the Canada Gazette now. 00:42:52.400 --> 00:42:55.039 So uh maybe when I have a week off, I'll go try and build that. 00:42:55.280 --> 00:42:57.440 Aaron, thank you so much for sharing this story with us. 00:42:57.599 --> 00:43:08.639 It's uh it's a fascinating example of something that is like you're trying to make this thing work, but your hands are tied in the ways that most people would see are obvious. 00:43:08.800 --> 00:43:19.840 So you're like doing what you can, but my my developer brain just gets furious at the at how outdated this system is when we, you know, Reddit is better at handling comments than this system. 00:43:20.079 --> 00:43:20.880 Yeah, excellent. 00:43:20.960 --> 00:43:21.199 Thank you. 00:43:21.440 --> 00:43:22.159 Thanks a lot, Aaron. 00:43:22.320 --> 00:43:22.639 Awesome. 00:43:22.800 --> 00:43:25.920 Thanks for joining us on the Functional Government Podcast.