I'm Cary Coglianese, and I am the Edward B Shils Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, United States.
I also direct the Penn program on regulation, and I have spent my career focused on regulation.
When, I was asked, by a Canadian regulator to help them assess where they are on the path toward being what they call the best-in-class regulator. I began to see that regulators around the world, have a common challenge of pursuing excellence. And one of the, the biggest, first steps is to define what excellence means.
So as part of this project for the Alberta Energy Regulator, we, went around the world actually, and talked with regulators, academic experts, industry representatives, members of the public, activist groups to tell us what it is that you see as making an excellent regulator.
Well, they told us hundreds of qualities that they want to see in a, in a regulator. It's hard to manage an organisation with hundreds of qualities in mind. And in fact, when we looked more carefully, we could boil all of those, qualities that we heard down to three essential components, which make up what we call the atoms of the regx molecule. And those three core components are the utmost integrity, stellar competence and empathic engagement. And I think most regulators have understood that they need to have integrity. They can't have corruption. Most regulators recognise that they need to have competence. The third atom of the molecule, the empathic engagement may be the newest one for a lot of regulators to recognise that in this changing world of the internet and social media, it's imperative as much, today as ever to be engaging with not only the industry but the broader public that is affected by the work that the regulators are doing.
How can regulators, build or sustain trust in what they're doing? It's a big challenge today where, members of the public have a declining trust in government overall and in many countries, even a declining trust in other private sector institutions. That makes it seems to me, all the more imperative that regulators seek regulatory excellence. And in particular, engage in and, and empathic outreach and communication to the public. The public is less trusting of work and activity by regulators that they don't understand or not aware of.
The last thing we can really, is see, regulators do in a in an era of declining trust is just simply announce rules and expect that the public will follow them. There needs to be an ongoing relationship. I think the regulators are, in an enterprise where they're trying to shape human behaviour. And that means that they are engaging in a relationship with others. Part of that relationship, of course, is in interaction with the industry that they're overseeing. But it's just as important to engage with all of the others who are affected by the work that the regulators are doing. So, clarity about, communication, transparency and engagement are as important as ever today in a low trust environment.
I've said that regulatory excellence is ultimately people excellence. To remind regulators that it's more than just the rules on the books. It's more than just the technical knowledge and capacity that regulators might need. And today, regulators do need to be exploring the best uses of advanced information technology to be at the top of their game. But they need people, people who understand that technology, people who understand the industry, people who are committed to regulatory excellence. It's not, just something that will magically happen. To be able to say we've reached a state of excellence and, somehow, we can declare victory and move on. But rather a regulatory organisation is an organisation of people, and every person in that organisation needs to, I think, be as committed as they possibly can to, the utmost integrity, stellar competence and empathic engagement with respect to the mission and mandate of that regulatory agency. That's people excellence. Regulatory organisations will be at different stages on a path toward regulatory excellence.
So, what are three things that regulators in Victoria might do to pursue regulatory excellence will vary depending upon the regulator and its, age. It's stage, its funding, it's controversy. It's challenges. If I were to generalise, I would offer three big lessons for any regulator.
One is to build out the model of their regulatory performance. What do I mean by that? What is it that you're doing? What are the ultimate outcomes of concern that you're aiming for? A lot of times, regulators maybe have grown too, path dependent and focusing on just, some kind of technical mission and losing sight of the real impacts on people and people's lives that they're affecting, whether it's through the delivery of, of safer transit or more reliable electricity or safer and sound, banking institutions or, or freedom from consumer fraud or discrimination, thinking about that ultimate outcome of concern and then building out a model of how is it that the regulator is working to achieve that? That's number one.
Second, number two is then using that model, scoping out how well at each stage of the model from the regulatory organisation, the actions that it's taking, the way those actions are shaping the behaviour of industry and the extent to which outcomes are being achieved. That's the regulatory model at each step along the way. How well is the regulator exemplifying in the three core facets of regulatory excellence utmost integrity, stellar competence and empathic engagement. So, scope that out. See how well you're doing. This can be done even in a in a stop light fashion. And there's some checklists that we have available on our website at the Penn Program on Regulation that they can, refer to in that scoping process, again, with the model as has been adapted and customised for their particular, organisation and their particular outcomes of concern. So that's number two.
The number three thing would be then once you've done the building out your model and scoping how you're doing generally, on each step of that model, then identify strategic priorities for where to improve. You can't do everything all at once. So, target those that are going to be most important. Obviously, if I were to go beyond that, I would say, it's more than just identifying the priorities, but then it's identifying actions to take, to strengthen the organisation's excellence.
With respect to those priorities. To be able to assess and continuously improve and ultimately adapt those priorities as, some areas are strengthened and new areas then can be identified and pursued.
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