NOTE: This survey is on hold until the results of a similar survey started by Finance are available.
About a month ago, I wrote about wanting to get a better idea of how the regulatory functions throughout the federal government are structured and governed.
In this post, I hope to layout a draft of the proposed survey.
Question 1: Where do you work?
Dropdown of federal departments and agencies with a write-in option for other.
Question 2: Which group in your department or agency is responsible or “holds the pen” for developing the Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement (RIAS)?
Question 3: Which group in your department or agency communicate with your analyst at Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat – Regulatory Affairs Sector (TBS-RAS)?
Question 4: Which group in your department or agency performs Cost-Benefit Analysis for regulatory proposals?
Question 5: If you have a centralized unit responsible for regulatory development, what is it called?
Question 6: Is there anything else about the structure and/or seperation of responsibilities within your department or agency that you’d like to share?
Question 7: How many levels of management exist between the analyst responsible for a regulatory proposal and the Minister responsible for sign-off (do not include the Minister in this count)
Question 8: How many approvals are required for a regulatory proposal before it is approve for drop off at the Privy Council Office (do not include the Minister’s approval or any TBS-RAS approvals in this count)
Question 9: How do you track regulatory development (select all that apply)
Question 10:Is there anything else you’d like to add about the governance of regulatory development within your department or agency (best practices, irritants, etc)
Conclusion: Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey. Would you be willing to meet and discuss the structure and governance of your department or agencies regulatory function?
I’d like to keep the survey short to encourage as many analysts as possible to take a few moments to complete it. I believe these ten questions will offer a broad overview of the various corporate structures and governance models in use within the public service. Let me know if you have any comments or questions on the proposed draft. Once I have incorporated any comments I receive, I will have it translated and publish a link to the completed survey for people to complete.
Leave a CommentPonomarenko, M., & Friedman, B. (2017). Benefit-Cost Analysis of Public Safety: Facing the Methodological Challenges. Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, 8(3), 305-329. doi:10.1017/bca.2017.28
Although more than 100 billion dollars is spent each year on policing, we know very little about what works, and still less about whether the benefits of various policing policies and practices outweigh the costs. In particular, although there has been some important work done to assess the effects of various practices, and even to monetize some of the benefits of reducing crime, there has been virtually no attention paid to the other side of the benefit-cost equation: the social costs that particular policing practices potentially can impose. In February 2017, the Policing Project at NYU School of Law held a conference aimed at jumpstarting the use of benefit-cost analysis to assess policing practices, and to begin to tackle the many methodological challenges to doing so. Here, we provide an overview of the existing literature, identify the serious gaps that remain, and sketch out a research agenda for moving forward.
While focussed largely on policing actions, I believe much of the discussion around alternative pricing models for costing and realisation of benefits could be used or adapted for national security and other public safety fields.
For anyone attending this years Society of Benefit-Cost Analysis’s Annual Conference, this is a pre-conference workshop entitled “Putting Benefit Cost Analysis into Practice: Creating a Criminal Justice BCA Model” which seems to cover similar ground, again with an emphasis on policing models. If you attend this workshop, let me know what you thought.
Leave a CommentI tweeted a couple of days about my interest in “… conducting a meta-analysis of the regulatory development corporate structures and processes across the government. I would like to start with a short survey followed up with brief clarification interviews. I’d like to send the callout through the @CFR_CRF”
Understand the various corporate structures and governance of regulatory functions throughout agencies and departments within the government of Canada.
Short bilingual survey distribute as widely as possible through GCConnex, the Community of Federal Regulators, and Twitter seeking to determine the following:
Is the regulatory function centralized, or distributed throughout the policy areas?
If the function is distributed, is there a centralized regulatory function for coordinating with Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat – Regulatory Affairs Sector (TBS-RAS) and other central agencies?
If the function is centralized, how are the functions split between the policy areas and the regulatory affairs analyst.
How many approval levels exist between the regulatory affairs function and the responsible Minister?
What systems are in use for tracking regulatory proposals?
Additionally, I would like to follow up with a series of clarification interviews with a range of small, medium, and large regulators with various corporate structures and reporting relationships to determine in more detail:
I will prepare a draft of the survey for comment with the aim of distributing the survey widely by the end of February. Results will be published and follow-up interviews will be scheduled with any groups that indicated a desire. Let me know what you think. Am I missing something major that you’d like to know about regulatory function structure and process?
1 CommentThe OECD released the OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook 2018 in October of this year, and I thought it would be an interested exercise to go through the major points and provide my views as well as my take on Canada’s place among our OECD peers. Over a series of posts, I will discuss the observations within the report in the context of Canada’s regulatory regime.
Legislation, including subordinate legislation like regulations, need to be supported by sound evidence, developed within a framework of broad consultations, and, most importantly be accomplish policy objectives effectively.
As regulators, we are constantly up against the perception that all regulation stifles economic activity and should be minimized, if not eliminated.
The OECD report defines regulatory quality as having regulations and regulatory processes “in line with the principles of consultation, transparency, accountability, and evidence … [and] whether regulations are effective.” They provide nine practical indicators of regulatory quality:
With the release of the Cabinet Directive on Regulation (CDR), which came into effect September 1, 2018 in Canada and the associated guidance, contain a significant number of improvements designed at increasing the quality of regulatory proposals.
Examples of improvements which should increase the quality of regulations:
As a result of these changes, the OECD now ranks Canada’s regulatory regime’s stakeholder engagement, regulatory impact assessment, and ex post facto evaluation of regulations higher than 2015 and higher than the systems in place for primary legislation.
My only thoughts relate to the need to ensure a balance between significant analysis at the Triage and RIAS stages and the burgeoning time horizon to implement Governor-in-Council regulations. We need to ensure that impacts are understood while still ensuring that subordinate legislation such as regulations can occur within a timeframe to allow the government to keep up with the accelerating growht of progress.
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