What happens to a consultation response
When a regulator opens a consultation, the responses are usually published, read by the officials writing the rules, and sometimes answered one by one.
A consultation (sometimes called a call for evidence, a request for comment or a docket) is a regulator or committee asking in public what people think before it decides. It has an opening date and a closing date, and after the close it stops listening.
Responses are usually published under the author's name. In the United States, federal agencies post comments on regulations.gov; the FDA's docket on AI-enabled medical devices (FDA-2026-N-7874) is one example, and the agency routinely publishes an analysis of the comments it received. State regulators do the same: Colorado's Attorney General posts every comment on its automated-decision-making rules in a public repository.
Officials read responses when they write the final rules and reports, and they quote from them. Volume matters less than people expect. A response that says who you are, why the issue affects you, and what you want changed — in two or three short paragraphs — is useful to the person writing the rule. A long, technical response is not required, and a copied form letter is usually counted once.
Open consultations are listed on this site as "windows", with their closing dates. When a window closes it moves to the archive automatically.
Who can act on this
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — Center for Devices and Radiological Health / Digital Health Center of Excellence
- Colorado Attorney General — Automated Decision-Making Technology Act and Chatbot Safety Act rulemaking