Identifying and evaluating regulation reforms

The Australian Government now has institutions and arrangements in place to identify areas of regulation that are unduly burdensome or ineffective and to develop appropriate reforms. However, in a report released today - Identifying and Evaluating Regulation Reform - the Productivity Commission said there was a need to improve how these operated in practice.

The Commission was asked by the Australian Government to assess current 'frameworks and approaches' for identifying areas for further regulation reform and methods forevaluating reform outcomes.

Productivity Commission Chairman, Gary Banks, said: 'Even regulations that have been rigorously vetted have a use-by date - and many regulatory proposals are not rigorously vetted. Ensuring that we can identify which regulations need removal or revision is important if policy objectives are to be met without imposing unnecessary costs or having unintended impacts.'

The Commission found that a range of approaches is required to ensure that the stock of regulation is fit for purpose and to deliver net benefits to the community. They range from 'good housekeeping' measures to in-depth reviews. For most of these, good governance and consultation are crucial to their cost-effectiveness.

Areas for wider systemic improvement include prioritising and sequencing reviews and reforms; providing more information on progress in implementing recommendations; the provision of advance information to achieve better focused consultations; incentives and mechanisms for good practice by regulators; and building up skills within government in evaluation and review.

• Preliminaries
  • Cover, Copyright, Foreword, Terms of reference and Contents.
• Overview - including key points
• Summary of Recommendations
• Chapter 1 What this study is about
  • 1.1 The scope of this study
  • 1.2 Regulation reform in Australia
  • 1.3 How the Commission has approached this study
  • 1.4 The structure of this report
• Chapter 2 Why reform the 'stock' of regulation?
  • 2.1 The importance of 'good' regulation
  • 2.2 Managing the stock of regulation
  • 2.3 Marshalling reform efforts
• Chapter 3 Approaches to reviewing and reforming the stock of regulation
  • 3.1 Three broad approaches
  • 3.2 Management approaches
  • 3.3 Programmed reviews
  • 3.4 Ad hoc reviews
• Chapter 4 Lessons from past reviews of regulation
  • 4.1 Different approaches target different burdens
  • 4.2 Stock management approaches
  • 4.3 Programmed review mechanisms
  • 4.4 Ad hoc reviews
  • 4.5 How cost-effective are the approaches?
• Chapter 5 Evaluation methods
  • 5.1 The role of evaluation
  • 5.2 Ex post evaluation methods
  • 5.3 Methods for quantifying the impacts of reform
• Chapter 6 Strengthening the framework for regulation reform
  • 6.1 The regulatory system
  • 6.2 Can the operation of Australia's regulatory system be enhanced?
• Appendix A Submissions and Consultations
• References

Please note: The following appendices are only available online (included in the downloadable report) and are not included in the printed report.

• Appendix B Public stocktake reviews
• Appendix C In-depth reviews
• Appendix D Principles-based reviews
• Appendix E Programmed reviews
• Appendix F Benchmarking
• Appendix G Stock management tools
• Appendix H Regulator performance
• Appendix I Ex post evaluation frameworks
• Appendix J Quantifying the impacts of regulation and reform
• Appendix K How do different countries manage regulation?