consider the Office of Advocacy's written comments on proposed rules and publish a response with the final rule. E.O. 13272 also requires the Office of Advocacy to provide notification as well as training to all agencies on how to comply with the RFA. These additional requirements permit the Office of Advocacy to work closely with federal agencies in considering the impacts of proposed regulations on small entities. Implementation To comply with E.O. 13272, the Office of Advocacy began providing reports to the Office of Management and Budget in September 2003. The Office also instituted an email address (notify.advocacy@sba.gov) for agencies to rapidly transmit their notifications about regulations, and published an RFA compliance guide for agencies. Subsequently, the Office of Advocacy prepared agency training materials, and began training agency personnel throughout the government. Nearly all of the cabinet agencies complied with the E.O. by submitting written plans for compliance to the Office of Advocacy and by making their RFA procedures publicly available. Advocacy, in turn, developed a Regulatory Alerts webpage at http://www.sba.gov/advo/laws/law_regalerts.html to call attention to important pending regulations that may affect small entities. Legislation has been introduced to further enhance the RFA. As agencies adjust their regulatory development processes to accommodate the RFA and E.O. 13272's requirements, the benefits will accrue to small entities. Agencies are making strides in that direction. Since the RFA became law, more than forty state governments have enacted similar requirements through statutes and executive orders. Both the SBA Office of Advocacy and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an association of state and federal legislators, have drafted "model" state laws paralleling the RFA. International regulatory flexibility initiatives Other nations have drawn upon, and in some cases more fully developed, various elements of the RFA. Multilateral efforts. In 2000, both the European Union (EU) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) adopted broad policy statements in support of small and mid-sized enterprises (SME's) that included provisions on the regulatory treatment of SME's. This subject is also being discussed within the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The World Bank has contributed significantly to the global dialogue on SME regulatory burdens through its annual "Doing Business" surveys. EU. The EU's Charter to Support Europe's Small Firms called for "better legislation and regulation – assessing regulation for its impact on small firms, and where possible simplifying or