New CFPB site could be a model for other agencies
"Regulation E" site is an open-source, one-stop resource for compliance officers and others tracking rules on electronic fund transfers.
CFPB developed the eRegulations site as an alternative to paper editions of regulations, guidebooks, multiple websites and paid subscription services.
A new website from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lays out the agency's written regulations in a single, navigable interface. The site is aimed at compliance officers, attorneys and CFPB employees. But the creation of the one-stop, open-source platform could have implications for other agencies looking to make their information more accessible.
For interested parties, eRegulations offers an alternative to clunky paper editions of regulations, guidebooks, multiple websites and paid subscription services. The agency maintains rules on consumer-facing financial products and services, and regulations on topics ranging from required disclosures for automatic teller machine transactions to rules for overdraft services at banks.
Especially for smaller or rural institutions, keeping up with the law can be a time consuming and expensive proposition.
"A compliance officer at a small community bank shouldn't have to sign up for a service to find out what the regulations are," said Matt Burton, acting CIO in the Technology Innovation office at CFPB.
The process started about a year ago, when the regulations office asked the technology team to work on a product that would streamline the experience of reading regulations. But the real story of eRegulations could be the opportunities opened up to other agencies looking to publish their rules online. Underneath the site, said Burton, "is an [application programming interface] that will ingest a body of regulations and spit them out as structured data."
There's a built in structure to a regulatory code, with chapters, paragraphs, and subparagraphs. The CFPB's tool parses the text of regulations a machine-readable collection of data that can be displayed in web form with each subparagraph having its own unique URL for handy reference, and with individual regulations strung together in order so a user can page through. There are links to supporting material, including interpretations of rules and supporting statutes.
"Our hope is that other agencies will see this and use it as their own regulations platform," Burton said. Because the eRegulations is open source, independent developers could draw on it as the basis for tools displaying government information. No agency has expressed an interest yet, but the site and the underlying API were only released this week.