2024 Colborn Award Recipient
From left: Jill S. Ledbetter – ACR President presenting award, Chris Coffman – Director, Administrative Rules/Notary/Central Filing, Oklahoma Secretary of State, Kylie Cone, 2024 Awards Committee Chair
Congratulations to the Oklahoma Office of Administrative Rules on winning the 2024 Robert J. Colborn Jr. Innovative Award!
The Administrative Codes and Registers (ACR) Section of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) awarded the Oklahoma Office of Administrative Rules the 2024 Robert J. Colborn, Jr. Innovation Award at the association’s annual conference for their work developing an innovative filing and publishing system.
In January 2019, Governor Stitt was sworn into office with a stated goal of making Oklahoma a Top 10 state. An integral part of this mission included a call for state agencies to become more accountable to citizens while creating a government that is results oriented, transparent, and efficient. Based on this standard, the Oklahoma Office of Administrative Rules (OAR) conducted an internal review and determined their current filing and publishing system to be outdated and unable to meet these goals.
OAR’s outdated system was aging, with architecture dating from 1992. Components of this system were approaching end-of-life and represented difficult-to-maintain technologies. After researching best practices from states across the country, OAR developed a web-based publishing system that incorporates, and often improves upon, various elements of design and functionality for rule filing and publishing. The result is a rules portal that modernizes the filing and publishing of administrative rules, increases efficiency, and expands citizen participation and access to agency, board, and commission rulemaking.
Citizen Benefits – To increase citizen participation in the rulemaking process, a subscription application was added that allows citizens to subscribe to specific agencies (Titles) or specific topics (Chapter) under an agency. After subscribing, citizens receive every filing submitted during the rulemaking process, including full text drafts of proposed rules and codified rules, via email. This allows complete transparency during the rulemaking process, as citizens are fully aware and involved in the entirety of the process. To increase public comments during the initial notice stage, citizens are also notified via email that an agency is accepting comments on proposed rules.
State Agency Benefits – OAR created easy-to-use, web-based filings templates that allow agencies to quickly submit documents for publication. These templates automatically format and structure each filing upon submission and are instantly ready for publication in the Oklahoma Register. To maintain the integrity of the Administrative Code and proposed drafts, OAR added a web-based, drafting editor, which ensures agencies are drafting amendments based on effective rules and tracks any changes made by an agency. Upon completion of a draft, agencies can quickly tie their drafts to any required filing during the rulemaking process and can export drafts in PDF format.
Governor and Legislature Benefits – The Oklahoma Governor is responsible for reviewing proposed rules, approving emergency rules, and signing resolutions passed by the Legislature approving or disapproving permanent rules. Prior to the new system, this was accomplished in several inconsistent ways. To remedy this situation, the new system delivers all required filings and drafts via email. When an agency submits a Notice of Rulemaking Intent, the Governor receives the notice and proposed draft via email. When an agency submits an adopted rule for approval, the Governor receives this filing via email, along with the rule report, rule impact statement, and adopted draft.
The Oklahoma Legislature is responsible for reviewing adopted, permanent rules and passing joint resolutions approving or disapproving these rules. Like the Governor, uniformity needed to be added to the process. Upon submission of an adopted, permanent rule, the Legislature is emailed the draft, including the rule report and rule impact statement, for review.
Because of these innovative features, the Awards Committee has selected the Oklahoma Office of Administrative Rules as this year’s Colborn Award recipient for their work in developing an online system that not only streamlines rulemaking for government entities, but also allows citizen transparency and engagement throughout the process.
2024 ACR Awards Committee – Robert J. Colborn Jr. Innovation Award:
Awards Chair: Kylie Cone
Senior Business Analyst
State of Utah, Office of Administrative Rules
Awards Committee Member: Jack Ewing
Administrative Code Editor
State of Iowa, Legislative Services Agency
Awards Committee Member: Victor L. Reid
Administrator
District of Columbia, Office of Documents and Administrative Issuances
Awards Committee Member: Sunnie Burningham
Publications/Code Editor
State of Utah, Office of Administrative Rules