Handling Comments

Kevin Drum is the latest to pick on the Bush administration for their procedures in handling comments on the regulations they want issued before January 20.

I never had to deal with anything like 200,000 comments, but I would give the EPA a break. 200,000 of anything can be sorted into categories. So reviewing the comments would be a relatively simple process:

1. take a random sample of comments, say 500 or so, and develop a set of categories, including a "further review" category
   
2. have your "reviewers" sort the remaining 199,500 comments into the categories
3. analyze each category and develop a response
   
4. analyze each "further review" comment and handle appropriately.

Simple, but it's a process I'd be comfortable defending against challenges.

I might challenge the Obama administration: what are you going to do with the input to your website? How will the process be better than what the EPA is doing?

[Note to self: Obama's been elected 3 days and I'm already challenging him?]