Tech Being Tested to Bar Bots From Making Rulemaking ‘Comments’

The federal government is in the final stages of testing a year-long redesign of the Regulations.gov website, the central digital portal for agencies to post regulations and notices and for the public to file comments during the rulemaking process.

The new site is slated for launch in October. All visitors to Regulations.gov late last week were redirected to a beta site to test a mechanism designed to block bots from tainting the public comment process. A verification tool from Google, known as reCAPTCHA technology, was added to the beta site to improve system integrity by ensuring that comments can ...