행정입법에서 전자적 시민참여절차에 관한 연구 ― 미국의 전자행정입법(e-Rulemaking)을 중심으로 ―

The general purpose of the electronic participation in e-Rulemaking is to derive the direct participation of the citizens who have become interested in the administrative legislation through this system. However, the primary purpose of e-participation is to complement the democratic legitimacy of administrative rulemaking through the direct participation of the citizens that influences final rulemaking. And the fundamental purpose is to realize deliberative democracy through those procedures. The development of modern information and communications technology and the establishment of electronic administrative system provide a way to overcome the physical limitations inherent in existing public participation mechanisms and to activate e-participation. Therefore, the e-participation system was able to function as a complementary means to overcome the limitations of representative democracy by the participation of various ordinary people, rather than by limited participation, by expanding participants represented by some stockholders or interest groups to the general public. However, in our administrative reality, the public participation procedures being implemented as a response procedure to the notice of the informal rulemaking procedures are operating in a very formal and limited form. This calls for activating e-participation to seek ways to supplement democratic legitimacy in administrative legislation and realize the values of democracy and rule of law through meaningful comment procedures. Therefore, it should be analyzed and reviewed the e-Rulemkaing and electronic public participation procedures in the United States. Through the analysis, the main measures to activate our electronic public participation system as a meaningful system are as follows. First, the comments of the responses submitted by the people in the e-Rulemaking should be provided to the public who is the third party in the e-Rulemaking procedures. it should be provided as one of e-Rulemaking data. In the case of major comments, whether and how the comments are refeled in the final rule shall be provided to the public as a third party comments in the same way the e-Rulemkaing notice published. Secondly, we can see that the measures to control administrative rulemaking and to record related data of administrative rulemaking, which have been developed characteristically in the U.S., have had an important effect on realizing the electronic public participation system as a result of the application of e-Rulemaking system. In particular, in the case of recorded regulations, data from the administrative rulemaking procedures, which was recorded as data to improve transparency of administration and to determine the legitimacy of administrative legislation in the review of the legality of rule that could be brought forward later, played a role in making administrative legislation procedures meaningful due to digitalization. In administrative rulemaking, record-keeping regulations played a major role in consolidating the citizen participation system in a procedural manner by contributing to public participation. Third, the Federal Administrative Procedures Act of the United States is essentially silent in addition to the general provisions that the public participation procedure must be reflected in the administrative process. However, the Presidential Executive Order, which was enacted to institutionalize the e-Rulemaking, exerted force on the administration and contributed to the establishment of an electronic public participation system. On the other hand, factors that impede the activation of electronic citizen participation in e-Rulemaking include inadequate legal and technical systems, as well as lack of public awareness of the importance of rulemaking and lack of motivation for public participation. These factors serve as a major impediment to public participation as much as the absence of a legal system. The launch of technology has revealed the possibility of realizing participatory democracy in rulemaking through electronic citizen participation. Also, the technologies that are developing rapidly provide a way to overcome the limitations of current e-Rulemaking. However, in order for electronic civic participation to develop into a meaningful system, public participation by the general citizens must be activated to ensure diversity of participants. Therefore, in order to promote the comments of e-Ruelmaking as a public participation, various approaches should be developed along with the development of government programs related to public participation and the promotion of important e-Rulemaking.