Product Roadmap
PDF version of Roadmap for zooming in
The goal for this quarter is to develop and test the initial versions of docket management, comment management, and commenting. These three capabilities make up our service’s core functions; by the end of the quarter we aim to demonstrate the end-to-end functionality of creating/managing a docket on the agency side, writing and submitting a comment on the public side, and performing initial reviews and processing of the comments back on the agency side. To support these capabilities, we will be continuing to build out our platform enabling tech and working on user access and management.
Docket management forms the core of our product's service to agencies - the ability to manage and create dockets for rulemaking actions or other nonrulemaking activities. This initial version will be the first iteration of core features and will lay the basic foundation and structures for dockets and documents.
Current scope includes:
- Creating a docket
- Set and edit docket type, details, metadata, phase
- Adding a Federal Register document
- Search for an FR document and add it to a docket
- Add document details and metadata
- Uploading supporting materials and other document types
- Managing docket phase
Likely future scope/in research:
- Assigning dockets and documents
- Flagging and favoriting dockets
- Bulk/batch changes to metadata
- Export/download docket/document content and metadata_
- Inherit structured metadata from OFR/GPO
We know that a significant amount of agency users' time and effort in the rulemaking process is spent reviewing and analyzing public comments. This is a top priority in modernization, as the new architecture will enable us to deliver on functionality that increases efficiency and utility for agency customers. This 0.1 version will focus primarily on comment processing and the identification of mass mail campaigns.
Current scope includes:
- Foundational comment management & processing
- Viewing comments and statuses
- Changing statuses
- Uploading comments
- Identify mass mail campaigns - (f.k.a deduplication)
- Cluster comments based on text similarity and matching
Build the foundational features of public commenting including:
- Select and view a docket and documents
- Write and submit a comment on a document open for comment
- Have those comments received on the agency side
0.1 and 0.X versions are meant to be pre-production, pre-alpha/beta releases. So that means they will not be in a production environment, and not using live production data. These versions will be bundles of related functionality that we intend to be demo-able and testable by our team, users, and stakeholders in a testing environment to get iterative feedback on what's working, what can be improved, and what's missing and should be considered for subsequent versions. These 0.X releases will help us get into the practice of quicker design, development, and user feedback cycles so that we can hone in on needs and requirements in an iterative way as we march towards eventual alpha, beta, and production releases, while sharing our progress and journey with our users along the way.
Iterating on learnings and feedback from 0.1, this version will likely focus on assignments, bulk actions, and structuring metadata. Scope may consider the following:
- Assignments at the docket and document level
- Exporting/downloading docket and metadata (f.k.a bulk extract)
- Batch/bulk changes to metadata
- Metadata connections with OFR and GPO
Iterating on learnings and feedback from 0.1, this version will likely focus on topic-tagging and categorization of comments and more detailed comment management workflows. Scope may consider the following:
- Topic-tagging and sorting - we will likely approach this by scaffolding our capabilities from a manual to a more automated process:
- User manually sets topics and sorts comments into those topics
- Potential next iteration: Topics are suggested/generated by the product
- Potential next iteration: Product makes suggestions on comments that match the topics (whether topics are user-defined or model-defined)
- Assign comments
- Approve comments
- Post comments
- Download comments
Build the foundational features of being able to efficiently search and find relevant dockets, documents, and comments
- Docket & Document Management 0.3+ (Workflow Management)
- Comment Analysis 0.3+ (more advanced features)
- Search, Browse, Filter 0.2+ (more advanced search)
- Public Commenting 0.2+
- Custom Reporting & Analytics 0.1
- Product Knowledge Base and Training Plans