Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) need not be fully integrated into the regulatory policy processes from the beginning. Companies can start by undertaking RIA for certain key regulations which are likely to have a significant impact. The scope can then be expanded gradually until it becomes a mandatory part of the regulatory change control process.
Challenges in conducting RIA
Some of the major challenges in conducting RIA are:
- Lack of Defined process: Process is extremely crucial. The lack of process can hamper the success of the process. In companies, where RIA is not adopted in the decision making process, the greatest challenge is conduct real-time regulatory monitoring and a system to track full-cycle.
- Regulation Identification: Correct identification of the regulation and the underlying causes is essential to begin the RIA process. Further, in case of ex-post RIA, evaluation and selection of the most sub-optimal steps is crucial.
- Regulatory Data Collection: Data collection and analysis is the most critical aspect while conducting RIA. The accuracy of the results depends on the quality of data which is often a challenging task, especially when you don’t have right tools.
- Dealing with different types of data: Often, the data available is a mix of qualitative and quantitative data, which poses a challenge at the time of comparison as interpretation of qualitative data can differ from person to person.
- Stakeholder and product Mapping: Another demanding task is listing all the relevant stakeholders and products who are likely to be impacted, and then accounting for all the costs and benefits (direct and indirect) for each of these, and also estimating the impact on company.
- Dealing with biased results: Stakeholder interactions tend to be biased at times and the challenge is to limit these biases to obtain accurate data. Often another limitation is convincing stakeholders of the importance and benefits of RIA and further.
- Ascertaining Impact: When conducting, ex-post RIA, at times an impact is caused due to various reasons and it becomes difficult to account for the contribution of a single provision/ regulation.
- Customizing RIA: There is no one defined or established method to conduct RIA and the process is flexible. Thus, customizing the tool according to the company context and availability of data can sometimes be a formidable task.
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