BREAKOUT SESSION 2: SUPPORTING OPEN REGULATORY POLICY 7th Expert Workshop on Measuring Regulatory Performance 18-19 June 2015 Daniel Trnka and Rebecca Schultz CONFIDENTIAL

RECOMMENDATION OF THE COUNCIL ON

REGULATORY POLICY AND

GOVERNANCE

“Members should regularly publish reports on the performance of regulatory policy and reform programmes and the public authorities applying the regulations. Such reports should also include information on how regulatory tools such as Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA), public consultation practices and reviews of existing regulations are functioning in practice.” Principle 6

RECOMMENDATION OF THE COUNCIL ON

REGULATORY POLICY AND

GOVERNANCE

“6.1 Review the effectiveness of programmes to improve the delivery of regulation inside government to ensure that they are effective and efficient and meet clearly identified objectives for public service delivery.” “6.2 Design and assess data collection and information management strategies to ensure that the necessary high-quality information is available for the preparation of reports while avoiding the imposition of unnecessary administrative burdens.”

Key practices identified by RPC

• Regularly publish reports on how public consultation practices are functioning in practice

• Documentation of the nature and results of consultation (e.g. by including in the RIA)

• Reporting to parliament, cabinet and the public

• Data collection and information management strategies put in place

• External review (e.g. by audit office)

Availability of information on

stakeholder engagement practices

Source: 2015 IReg Indicators of Regulatory Policy and Governance

Publicly available performance reports

and indicators

Source: OECD Framework for Regulatory Policy Evaluation (2014)

Existing evaluations of consultation

practices

• Switzerland - review of its consultation and hearing system – based on available documents, in-depth evaluations,

an online survey and interviews with officials

– identified weaknesses and led to a revision of the law on consultation

• Japan - report on the status of its public comment procedure – based on results of a survey of consultation practices

– Contains a number of indicators on the functioning of the consultation system

Existing evaluations of consultation

practices

• European Commission – evaluation of its consultation practices

– Based on international standards, a consultation with external stakeholders, data collected at the European Commission

– Contains different indicators of consultation practices as well as measures for improvement

Challenges of evaluation

• Why is evaluation crucial?

• Big ‘evaluation gap’

• What are the goals of SE? What should be the evaluation criteria?

• Process vs. outcome indicators

• The issue of proportionality

• Is perception/user satisfaction a useful indicator?

Some potential indicators (from the Hague)

• Percentage of draft regulations that were changed as a result of public consultations;

• Number of complaints on regulation after it was adopted;

• Number of participants in public consultation;

• Percentage of people/groups covered by consultation on which the regulation is expected to have a significant impact.

Questions for discussion

• What statistics and information are already available to track progress in implementing stakeholder engagement and what are the gaps that need to be filled?

• What are the benefits of collecting and using the information?

• What are the challenges in collecting the information and how can they be addressed? What are key good practices in evaluating government systems to implement stakeholder engagement in the regulatory policy cycle?

Further information

• OECD (forthcoming), Regulatory Policy Outlook.

• OECD (2014), Framework for Regulatory Policy Evaluation.

• OECD (2012), Measuring Regulatory Performance: A Practitioner’s Guide to Perception Surveys.

• OECD Measuring Regulatory Performance Programme: http://www.oecd.org/gov/regulatory-policy/measuring-regulatory-performance.htm