In some cases, there will be little published information relating to a regulation’s operations and impacts, such that reviewers may have to rely entirely on input from stakeholders. However consultation processes can bring other benefits as well and should be provided for as a matter of course.
All reviews should involve consultations with affected parties and, to the extent possible, be accessible to civil society.
Since the function of an ex post review is to evaluate how well a regulation has been performing in practice, it is important to consult at first hand with those directly affected. Also, engaging with civil society more generally can help to balance concerns raised about costs of regulation with a better appreciation of their wider benefits to society.
Reviews benefit from public/stakeholder participation in a number of ways.
First, and most obviously, they provide a means of obtaining more complete information about impacts and responses, as well as the opportunity to test preliminary analysis and findings.
Second, engaging stakeholders can help with targeting reviews at regulations or regulatory areas that might be problematic; namely, those that are the most burdensome or irritating for regulated subjects (e.g. the Red Tape Challenge). Likewise, mechanisms that enable more continuous engagement with stakeholders (e.g. the Danish Business Forum) can help identify problematic issues in a timely way.
Third, in giving the public the opportunity to express views and make an input to proceedings, it can build trust in the review process and even a sense of “ownership’ of the outcomes, making the implementation of any changes politically easier to manage than might otherwise have been the case. This is especially important for more sensitive or contentious areas of regulation.
The nature and coverage of consultations should be proportionate to the significance of the regulations and the degree of public interest or sensitivity entailed.
Consultations, done well, can be time-consuming and resource intensive. Given budgetary constraints, they need to be conducted in a manner that elicits necessary information at least cost (for a summary of current practices see Box 6.1).
This has implications for both the breadth and depth of consultation activity. Highly technical or complex regulatory areas (e.g. foreign trade regulations) or those with narrow impacts (e.g. related to a particular region) would permit more selectivity in consultation, for example, than regulatory regimes of wider public interest and impact.
More contentious areas of regulation, such as in relation to welfare entitlements or migration or taxation, may require formal proceedings and maximum transparency if they are to satisfy stakeholder expectations and achieve the political benefits noted.
