H.R. 7533 would require the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to issue guidance on the use of technology to conduct retrospective reviews of existing federal regulations. Under the bill, agencies would use that guidance to create and execute a strategy for reviewing their current regulations. The bill would require agencies to report to OIRA and the Congress on their retrospective review plans and would require OIRA to report to the Congress on the extent that existing federal regulations are available to the public in a machine-readable format.

Federal agencies issue regulations pursuant to statutory authority granted by the Congress and the Congressional Research Service has reported that 3,000 to 4,000 final rules are published each year. OIRA publishes the regulatory and deregulatory activities of each agency in the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. Recent administrations have initiated different regulatory retrospective review processes meant to reduce outdated and ineffective rules under Executive Orders 13563, 13610, and 13771. While those processes resulted in regulatory changes and deregulatory actions, they had no significant effect on the scope or scale of the regulatory process.