Development of a quality rating for regulatory impact assessment in municipalities

Abstract

The aim of the study is to elaborate an assessment methodology for local government authorities regarding the quality of implementation of Regulatory Impact Assessment. The compilation of such rating will allow the identification of bottlenecks in the activities of local government authorities as well as best practices in the sphere of regulatory impact assessment. The relevance of research, on the one hand, is contingent upon the lack of methodological insights in the area of regulatory impact assessments at the local level, and, on the other, upon the active introduction of evaluation into municipal administrative practices. The experience of organising regulatory impact assessment at the local level and different approaches to rating formation is analysed in the study. It is shown that borrowing the regional rating methodology is not appropriate for evaluating municipalities. Principles for analysing the quality of evaluations in municipalities that take the specific character of its implementation into account, particularly at the local level, are formulated by the author. In the course of the study, features of regulatory impact assessment application at the municipal level are identified and approaches for monitoring the results of introducing regulatory impact assessment in municipalities are formulated. A system of indicators for the analysis of quality evaluation and expert evaluation by the bodies of local self-government are substantiated by the author along with a set of corrective measures. A method is proposed for the collection of information and formation of a rating on the basis of monitoring data. The formation of a rating of regulatory impact assessment quality on the basis of the author’s original developments allows corrective solutions to be applied in a timely manner and best practices to be replicated at the same time as encouraging the local self-governing bodies to improve assessment quality. The presented approaches and principles can be used by the authorities to develop specific methods for the monitoring of assessment quality at the local level during the initial stage of introducing the institution. With the accumulation of practical experience, improved qualifications on the part of municipal employees and civil society activities, a refinement of the theses formulated by the author will be required as a part of future research.