New Zealand has made substantive changes to its regulatory management policy as a result of introducing its regulatory stewardship approach. The expectation of regulatory stewardship applies to all regulatory agencies and involves adopting a whole-of-system, lifecycle view of regulation. It also includes an express expectation of an increased focus on international regulatory cooperation, which may help to reduce regulatory overlap and improve regulatory coherence, including with key partners such as Australia.
A revised Cabinet Manual provides that government agencies can adopt a more flexible approach in stakeholder consultation. It encourages them to develop and maintain close relationships with stakeholders throughout the regulatory policy cycle. It will be important to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the consultation system over time.
The Government’s Expectations for Good Regulatory Practice, include that regulatory agencies will monitor the performance of existing regulatory systems on an ongoing basis so as to determine whether they remain fit-for-purpose. However, in practice, relatively few formal ex post evaluations have actually been undertaken.
New gatekeeping processes are designed to strengthen incentives for regulatory agencies to adhere to the RIA process. A requirement for a Supplementary Analysis Report (SAR) is triggered in the event that regulatory proposal is agreed despite having no RIA and no valid exemption, or when the RIA was not quality assured, or was assessed as not meeting the quality assurance criteria. RIA still requires departments to specify how they will monitor and review the changes, preferably in the context of their ongoing monitoring of the wider regulatory system, once they are implemented.
