Regulatory Affairs – Structure and Governance Survey

I 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”

Goal

Understand the various corporate structures and governance of regulatory functions throughout agencies and departments within the government of Canada.

Methodology Overview

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:

• How the regulatory function situated, what aspects are handled by the policy area versus a dedicated regulatory affairs function?
• How do you handle Letters of Concurrence and Co-Signatures?
• How regulatory proposals are tracked?
• How do you assess priority for new proposed regulatory amendments?
• What are the irritants in your process that should be eliminated?

Next Steps

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?