Archive for March, 2019
Can AI Be a Fair Judge in Court? Estonia Thinks So
Mar 25th
From: Wired
Eric Niiler
Government usually isn’t the place to look for innovation in IT or new technologies like artificial intelligence. But Ott Velsberg might change your mind. As Estonia’s chief data officer, the 28-year-old graduate student is overseeing the tiny Baltic nation’s push to insert artificial intelligence and machine learning into services provided to its 1.3 million citizens.
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Engstrom and a team of law school and computer science students at Stanford are studying how AI can be better used in US government agencies. They will soon report their findings to the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent federal agency charged with recommending improvements to administrative processes.
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs: Myths and Realities
Mar 25th
From: Harvard Law Review
One-In, X-Out: Regulatory offsetting in selected OECD countries
Mar 22nd
From: OECD Regulatory Policy Working Papers
Daniel Trnka, Yola Thuerer
Governments are increasingly trying to limit the costs of regulatory compliance. One of the approaches that has been gaining ground in the last five years is the “one-in, x-out rule”, or the offsetting of regulatory costs stemming from new regulations by reducing the existing regulatory stock. This paper presents examples of regulatory offsetting approaches in selected OECD countries. By comparing the different approaches and discussing their key features, the paper provides guidance to countries considering introducing regulatory offsetting. This paper finds that there are many methodological and implementation issues that need to be resolved before a government decides to use a one-in, x-out approach as part of its regulatory policy. Key suggestions for countries introducing regulatory offsetting include i) ensuring a solid methodology for calculating regulatory costs; ii) linking the responsibility for finding offsets to the “owners” of regulation; iii) setting up quality oversight mechanisms; iv) securing strong political commitment and support and v) implementing regulatory offsetting as a complement to other regulatory management tools.
Deregulation, Reagan-Style
Mar 19th
From: The Regulatory Review
Presidents Reagan and Trump differ on approaches to social and economic regulation.
History can help explain the politics of regulation, but only if we first understand that there are different kinds of regulation out there. For example, one might usefully—if imperfectly—distinguish economic regulation—that is, the intensive regulation of specific industries in ways that often manage the supply or price of certain goods or both—from social regulation—that is, the protection of the public from general social harms, such as pollution or unsafe workplaces.
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Regulatory Reforms and Counter-Reformations
Mar 13th
From: The Regulatory Review
Some of President Trump’s deregulatory actions are innovations, others build on his predecessors’ work.
To be sure, the Trump Administration has continued the slow refinement and modernization of cost-benefit analysis. But by and large, the work of OIRA reflects the work of the Reagan Administration, the Clinton Administration, and the rest. The Reagan Administration’s formal codification and extension of practices that had arisen organically from the Nixon Administration onward succeeded in entrenching OIRA as a major institution of governance, and the Trump Administration is simply the latest Administration to maintain its inheritance.
Benefit-Cost Analyses and the Regulatory Budget
Mar 12th
From: Notice & Comment | A Blog from the Yale Journal on Regulation and the ABA Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice
by Jim Tozzi
Arguments are frequently made to the effect that if the benefits of a regulation exceed its costs, the regulation should promulgated. Here is a succinct statement as to why the aforementioned statement is flawed.
A Brief History of Regulation and Deregulation
Mar 11th
From: The Regulatory Review
The history of regulatory policy in the United States is rich, but its future remains unclear.
Ever since Congress created the first federal regulatory body more than 130 years ago, people have debated the proper role for what has been called the “fourth branch” of government. This essay provides a brief history of regulation and deregulation, reviewing the key milestones that have shaped regulatory practices in the United States from the mid-1900s to the presidency of Donald J. Trump.