NRC has a long history of, and commitment to, openness with the public and transparency in its regulatory process
- By Mark McFadden -
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is strengthening its commitment to openness and transparency through a variety of new and ongoing initiatives to help the public understand and participate in its processes. The White House is highlighting one new NRC initiative with a video on its Open Government Innovation Web page.
“The NRC has a long history of, and commitment to, openness with the public and transparency in its regulatory process,” said NRC Chairman Gregory B. Jaczko. “As an independent regulatory agency that prides itself on openness, we are pleased to be included in the President’s focus on open accountable and accessible government. I look forward to working with my Commission colleagues to make our decision-making activities even more open.”
The newly unveiled two-minute video, available at www.whitehouse.gov/open/innovations , explains the NRC’s use of Web conferencing to bring meetings about possible changes to emergency preparedness regulations to more people. As part of the agency’s outreach efforts, public meetings were held in venues throughout the country. At each meeting, anyone with a computer could log on to an internet-based conference center and participate from any location – both hearing the content and asking questions and providing comments.
Another new initiative is also aimed at enhancing public outreach and openness related to meetings. The NRC has created a program to train 14 staff members to facilitate public NRC meetings, in addition to their regular duties. They will help ensure meetings are effective, inclusive and fair, and increase the NRC's capacity to collaborate and solve problems with interested stakeholders. The facilitators serve as consultants to the staff members who run the meetings and help ensure that best practices are used appropriately to make meetings more effective.
Recognizing the important role of the Web in openness and outreach to the public, the NRC commissioned a number of surveys and reviews of usability and content and is now undergoing a major redesign of its public Web site. The redesign, scheduled for implementation in 2010, will improve navigation, appearance, content, usability and accessibility. Part of the redesign will include a significant upgrade to ADAMS, the agency’s online document management system, which will make it more user-friendly, with an improved search capacity.
The NRC is using technology in a number of other public outreach initiatives, including transitioning to a Web-based distribution of agency correspondence related to operating reactors. This new distribution method allows the public to receive correspondence on a facility-by-facility basis through an interactive Web site. This new method greatly increases the ease and speed by which the public can access information. In a recent 30-day period, more than 17,000 distributions, totaling more than 200,000 papers, were made to recipients in 16 different countries.