On January 14, 2025, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) announced that it is seeking researchers to serve as consultants on five new projects directed towards the development of formal recommendations to agencies, Congress, and the President.

The consultant(s) selected for each project will, among other things, prepare a report, work with a committee of ACUS members to produce proposed recommendations, and participate in a plenary session of the ACUS Assembly in 2026.

Read on to learn more about each new project and how to submit a proposal. Proposals must be received by 5 p.m. ET on February 16, 2024, to be guaranteed consideration.

Agreements Between Agencies with Shared Regulatory Responsibilities

In contexts ranging from border security to food safety and financial regulation, many federal agencies operate in a shared regulatory space with other agencies. To avoid duplication and facilitate coordination, agencies with shared or overlapping regulatory responsibilities often employ memoranda of understanding (MOUs) to structure and formalize their relationships. Indeed, hundreds of such MOUs are in effect today.

Through this project, ACUS will survey how agencies use, develop, manage, and publicly disclose MOUs that involve the exercise of regulatory authority—for example, in licensing and permitting, ratemaking, the granting of waivers and exemptions, and the investigation and prosecution of regulated entities.

Among other relevant topics, the project will address the goals that agencies seek to achieve through MOUs; the processes for initiating, negotiating, drafting, and structuring MOUs; how agencies implement and resolve conflicts that may arise under MOUs; the practices for monitoring the performance of MOUs; and the standards for making MOUs publicly available.

For additional information on this project—including how to submit a proposal, tentative project deadlines, and consultant compensation—please refer to the request for proposals or reach out Staff Counsel Becaja Caldwell at bcaldwell@acus.gov.

Collection, Use, and Availability of Agency Adjudication Data

ACUS has long recommended that agencies employ statistical and nonstatistical techniques to evaluate the quality, timeliness, fairness, and efficiency of their adjudications, particularly given recent developments in electronic case management and other digital processes (see, e.g., Recs. 2021-10, 2018-3).

Building upon this body of prior work, ACUS is now undertaking a project to study what adjudication data agencies collect, how agencies ensure and maintain data quality, what agencies use adjudication data for, and the extent to which such data is made publicly available.

Among other relevant topics, the project will assess how agencies identify data elements that are essential for improving the fairness, timeliness, efficiency, and quality of their adjudicatory processes; build the capacity to identify those data elements; integrate or are planning to integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning in their data collection and analysis processes; retain and secure collected data; and how and when agencies should make the data they collect publicly available.

For additional information on this project, please refer to the request for proposals. Readers should contact Staff Counsel Eyal Lurie-Pardes at eluriepardes@acus.gov with any questions about the project.

Drafting Rulemaking Preambles

Over the last decade, ACUS has undertaken several projects—and issued several recommendations based thereon (see, e.g., Recs. 2017-3, 2018-2, & 2021-3)—that identify best practices to assist agencies with discrete aspects of the regulatory drafting process, addressing matters ranging from how to use plain language to improve understandability, to when, where, and how agencies should incorporate severability clauses into their regulations.

Now, following the Court’s decisions in Loper Bright and West Virginia v. EPA, ACUS is undertaking a project to assist agencies with drafting regulatory preambles in light of the shifting administrative law landscape. To promote improved understanding of agency decision making by the public, courts, and Congress, the project will identify best practices to help agencies explain, in the preambles to proposed and final rules, how they determined their legal authority, evaluated the rulemaking record, and reached policy decisions. The project will focus solely on best practices for agencies.

For additional information on this project, please refer to the request for proposals or contact Staff Counsel Kazia Nowacki at knowacki@acus.gov.

Frontline Decision Making in the Adjudication of Applications

Many federal programs involve the adjudication of applications for benefits, loans, grants, and licenses. In many of these programs, applicants are legally entitled to an evidentiary hearing before an agency adjudicator, such as an administrative law judge (ALJ) or an administrative judge (AJ). Before proceeding to such an evidentiary hearing, however, many agencies first attempt to adjudicate applications through processes—sometimes referred to as “frontline” decision making—that are more characteristically bureaucratic than quasi-judicial in form.

These “frontline” decision makers, who are neither AJs nor ALJs, often render initial decisions based on a review of the application and any supplemental or supporting documents submitted by the applicant.

Given the prevalence of this arrangement, ACUS is undertaking a project to examine and identify best practices to improve the efficiency, adequacy, fairness, and effectiveness of agency frontline decision making in systems where there exists a later opportunity for an evidentiary hearing before an agency AJ or ALJ.

Among other topics, the project will address the personnel involved in agency frontline decision making processes; the processes used to develop records and decide cases prior to the hearing stage; the relationship between frontline and hearing-level proceedings, including how evidence obtained and findings made in frontline proceedings may be used at the hearing level; the development and communication of relevant policies to frontline staff and applicants; quality assurance and other strategies for promoting timeliness in frontline decisions; and interactions between frontline components and other agency components, including those responsible for more formal adjudication and policy development.

For additional information on the project, please refer to the request for proposals. Readers should contact Staff Counsel Lea Robbins at lrobbins@acus.gov with any questions about the project.

Interagency Communication in Rulemaking

Agencies frequently communicate with each other during the rulemaking process by sharing information in advance of developing rules, providing input on drafted or published rules, or cooperating while pursuing joint rulemaking and other coordinated actions. This interagency communication is especially important where agencies share regulatory responsibilities or operate within a shared regulatory space.

Recognizing the important role that this interagency communication plays in regulatory policymaking, ACUS is undertaking a new project to examine how agencies communicate with each other throughout the rulemaking process—especially outside the formal interagency review processes administered by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Based on that study, it will identify best practices to assist agencies in promoting accuracy, efficiency, and transparency in their interagency rulemaking communications.

The project will address, among other relevant topics, when and on what matters agencies should proactively seek input from other agencies; how agencies should engage with other agencies; how agencies should consider and use input received from other agencies; how communications outside the formal interagency review process relate to the OIRA-administered process; and what interagency communications agencies should make part of the public rulemaking docket and administrative record.

For additional information on the project—including how to submit a proposal, tentative project deadlines, and consultant compensation—please refer to the request for proposals. Readers should contact Staff Counsel Adam Cline at acline@acus.gov with any questions.

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This post is part of the Administrative Conference Update series, which highlights new and continuing projects, upcoming committee meetings, proposed and recently adopted recommendations, and other news about the Administrative Conference of the United States. The series is further explained here, and all prior posts in the series can be found here.

Conrad Dryland serves as Attorney Advisor, Congressional Liaison & Special Counsel to the Chair at the Administrative Conference of the United States. Any views expressed belong to the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Administrative Conference, its members, or the federal government.