Distributed information organization and management framework for regulation compliance

Regulation compliance is one of the critical services to citizens and businesses for e-government, as identified by the U. S. Office of Management and Budget. Regulation compliance is a complex process and offers many challenges in the design and implementation of a regulatory information management system that is able to support the regulation compliance process. It is important to first gain an understanding of the information flow in the regulation and compliance process, and to develop appropriate IT tools for building such a system. Focusing on environmental regulations related to hazardous waste management, we investigate the issues towards building an information infrastructure for a compliance assistance framework. This paper describes a prototype distributive regulation framework for: (1) the management of regulations and related information to support compliance assistance; (2) an Internet-based information management system; and (3) supporting the interoperability among the parties (regulatory agencies, businesses and third party waste handling facilitators), who are involved in the environmental regulation compliance process.