98 – 3 – SUPREME AUDIT INSTITUTIONS’ INPUT INTO POLICY IMPLEMENTATION An increasing number of OECD countries are realising the importance of the policy enforcement phase for ensuring compliance and the quality and effectiveness of regulatory policy. With previous focus largely placed on the design of regulatory policy, OECD countries are calling for assistance in the implementation and enforcement of regulations, which is considered the weakest link in the regulatory governance cycle (OECD, 2014c). Regulatory agencies play a key role in this stage. There is potential to improve regulatory inspections and enforcement processes to foster better compliance and to reassess the burdens and costs they impose. The OECD’s Regulatory Policy Committee has outlined key principles on which effective and efficient regulatory enforcement and inspections should be based.2 Although these principles fall mainly outside of the realm of “regulating inside government”, they may lend guidance to the processes of enforcing internal controls, particularly the concept of proportionality. The adoption of processes that use proportionality to weigh the allocation of resources to the level of risk can help to justify, and potentially reduce, costs and burdens.
SAI activities that assess and support: Regulatory coherence (Table 3.3, key element C) In addition to assessing regulatory policy tools, SAIs look at the application and management of tools that oversee and implement reforms. Half of SAIs report looking into these areas, but this is noticeably less than the activity of SAIs in implementing the budget and implementing controls. The role of SAIs in evaluating regulations ex post is discussed in Chapter 4. Examples of SAI work in this area include:
Korea’s audits in the realm of regulatory policy have aimed to support the success of the government’s regulatory reform. BAI has examined the appropriateness of the regulation management system and the execution of regulation reforms. BAI’s 2007 Implementation of Economic Regulatory Reform assessed the performance of 12 central government agencies and 8 local governments. It examined the overall execution status of economic regulation reforms. It focused on the downstream implementation of regulatory reform, including the management system of regulatory reform, the registration and management system of regulations, financial oversight, and the appropriateness of the regulation on factory establishment. Another example is BAI’s 2009 The Implementation of Regulatory Reform in the fields of Education, Health Services and Tourism, which examined the overall regulation management system and the execution of regulation reforms, and recommended improvement by areas of four central government agencies and five local governments.
SUPREME AUDIT INSTITUTIONS AND GOOD GOVERNANCE: OVERSIGHT, INSIGHT AND FORESIGHT © OECD 2016
