Constraints On The Regulatory Process

The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics asked RAND to evaluate the cost of compliance with acquisition-related statutes and regulations at the program office level. This report identifies the areas considered most burdensome and describes the study's methodology, focus, and data collection process, including the development of a Web-based data collection tool for use by program office personnel.

Acts and regulations are among a government's most powerful tools for fulfilling its democratic mandate. The steps involved in making them have evolved over centuries and reflect the attention and care required to ensure that they operate effectively and fairly. This guide provides a comprehensive description of how Acts are made at the federal level in Canada and answers questions about particular aspects of how they are made and the people involved. It also outlines the main steps involved in making federal regulations.

Whether striving to protect citizens from financial risks, climate change, inadequate health care, or the uncertainties of the emerging “sharing” economy, regulators must routinely make difficult judgment calls in an effort to meet the conflicting demands that society places on them. Operating within a political climate of competing demands, regulators need a lodestar to help them define and evaluate success. Achieving Regulatory Excellence provides that direction by offering new insights from law, public administration, political science, sociology, and policy sciences on what regulators need to do to improve their performance. Achieving Regulatory Excellence offers guidance from leading international experts about how regulators can set appropriate priorities and make sound, evidence-based decisions through processes that are transparent and participatory. With increasing demands for smarter but leaner government, the need for sound regulatory capacity—for regulatory excellence—has never been stronger.