While putting good regulatory practices in place is essential, ensuring their implementation is often a larger challenge for governments. A central coordinating body which governs accountability and consistency in the regulatory process is the most effective mechanism for implementing regulatory oversight and improving regulation.
In the same way that businesses implement quality control and management systems for their operations, products and services, a Central Regulatory Coordination Body is the quality control and management system for a country’s regulatory process and regulations.
The benefits to a central coordinating body include:
Enhancing regulatory coordination
A central coordinating body provides regulators, which have focused missions, with an objective, cross-cutting perspective that enhances coordination between different ministries involved in the regulatory process. This helps to avoid the negative effects that arise under a fragmented administrative system.
Ensuring political accountability and regulatory credibility
A central coordinating body ensures that individual regulations support a government’s policy priorities, while maintaining the credibility of regulatory review through its independence and expertise. On the one hand, it can ensure proposed regulations serve a government’s policy goals by reviewing individual regulations and their RIAs, while also issuing agency guidelines based on privileged knowledge of the government’s agenda. On the other hand, when expert advice differs from a government’s priorities, the oversight body can explain the impacts and tradeoffs of political decisions over technical analysis to decision makers. “A central coordinating body…is increasingly seen as the most effective mechanism for implementing regulatory oversight and improving regulation.”
Improving regulatory consistency
A central coordinating body improves the quality of regulation by applying consistent and coherent quality control, as well as providing regulatory analysis, guidelines and support. It not only ensures the use of consistent and coherent criteria during the regulatory review process, but can also assist regulators in improving the quality of regulation by issuing guidance for sound analysis and consistent regulatory process.
Raising public awareness on regulation
A central coordinating body raises public awareness of regulatory quality and improvement. It is well positioned to engage in external communication, calling for stakeholder participation and aggregating diverse input to shape better regulation.
Facilitating international regulatory cooperation
With appropriate authority, a central coordinating body can facilitate and enhance international engagement by eliminating unnecessary regulatory divergences and barriers, while achieving the coordination of regulatory objectives across countries.
For a list of Central Regulatory Coordination Bodies click here.