The OECD Regulatory Enforcement and Inspections Toolkit is based on the OECD Best Practice Principles for Regulatory Enforcement and Inspections (OECD, 2014[1]). The purpose of the Toolkit is to build on the Principles to offer government officials, regulators, stakeholders and experts as well as the OECD Secretariat itself a simple tool that allows assessing the level of development of the inspection and enforcement system in a given jurisdiction, or of a particular institution or structure, to identify strengths and weaknesses, and potential areas for improvement.
The Toolkit is not be in any way binding for OECD countries. We acknowledge that there are significant differences between jurisdictions in how regulatory enforcement is organised. In many jurisdictions, there are shared competences in enforcing regulations between the centre and the sub-national levels of the government, sometimes semi- or fully autonomous from the central level. When evaluating enforcement and inspection systems using the Toolkit, such differences and specifics must be taken into account. The Toolkit should, however, form a universal and sufficiently flexible basis for evaluation and self-assessment.1 We hope that during the process of testing the Toolkit in practice, it will be enriched by examples of good practices in meeting selected sub-criteria.
The document presents a “checklist” composed of 12 criteria that correspond to the 11 OECD Best Practice Principles for Regulatory Enforcement and Inspections, and a twelfth criterion for a “reality check” of actual performance. These criteria are themselves divided into sub-criteria to make them easier to use.
Assessing inspection and enforcement institutions and systems is complex: it involves looking at legislation, institutional structures, staff and practices, across a number of regulatory areas, sectors etc. Many criteria are not easily translated into directly measurable indicators, and even when they can be, data is not always readily available. The use of such a “check-list” and of its different indicators thus involves a significant degree of expert judgment, and is more “qualitative” than “quantitative”. To make it easier to use and more reliable, the sub-criteria are as precisely defined as possible, and are clarified through guidance on how to understand and assess them.
A good inspection and enforcement system should simultaneously aim at delivering the best possible outcomes in terms of risk prevention or mitigation and promoting economic prosperity, enhancing welfare and pursuing the public interest (OECD, 2012[2]) (such as, for example, improving the quality of the environment, public safety and health, quality of education, etc.), doing so without exceedingly increasing costs for the state and burden for regulated subjects, and ensure trust and satisfaction from different stakeholders, whose perspectives are often conflicting (businesses, civil society organisations etc.). This is not only challenging to achieve, but also difficult to measure. First, because data is often unavailable, or not necessarily reliable, due to limitations in measurement methods. Second, because even if data is available and trusted, inspections and enforcement only have very indirect effects on the indicators that would be most relevant to the regulatory goals.
For instance, food safety regulations aim at reducing deaths and diseases due to food-borne illnesses – but regulations, inspections and enforcement are only one of the many factors affecting whether food is safe. Inspectors neither prepare, nor consume the food – safety is in the hands of all stakeholders, including producers, distributors and consumers. Inspections and enforcement can only attempt to influence behaviours that themselves will contribute to the desired goals. Thus, changes in key public welfare indicators are difficult to attribute directly to changes in inspections and enforcement.
For all these reasons, it is important to use the different criteria and sub-criteria together, and not in isolation. Good results in one area may not be fully meaningful if performance in other areas is poor. High efficiency may not be a good thing if it means reduced effectiveness – and high effectiveness without regard to the costs will be unsustainable.
In considering whether a system or an institution fulfils a given sub-criterion, users of this check-list should consider a gradation of ratings rather than a binary answer. If the sub-criterion is met only very rarely, or to a very small extent, or by a small minority of inspection and enforcement structures, the rating is overall negative. If the sub-criterion is fulfilled by a fair share of institutions but far from all, or important parts of it are met but significant shortcomings still exist, the rating can be considered as “intermediate”. If it is met by the overwhelming majority of institutions or in most cases, or most of its points are met (even if some areas exist for improvement), the rating will be positive. We do not offer here a specific rating system, but depending on the level of detail sought there could be at least 3 ratings (poor, average, good) or (offering more nuance) 5 ratings (from very poor to very good).