RIA

According to a prescribed schedule, regulatory impact assessments have to include options and calculations of costs and benefits. Government agencies producing regulatory impact statements (RIS) are not required to recommend a preferred policy option.

The manual provided by the “Better Regulation Executive” explicitly states that users should analyze “a wide range of options, including the do-nothing option,” and provides a detailed quantified analysis of the costs and benefits of different alternatives to regulatory impact analysis itself.

RIAs are now a well-established procedure in the state and federal public services, and recent changes have strengthened the depth involved in the process. The Commonwealth government – and most of the state and territory governments– require RIAs to be robust and transparent. The RIAs do evaluate on an evidence basis the cost and benefits of alternative options, as well as the feasibility of non-legislative options so as to reduce the compliance costs.

The examination of various implementation alternatives is part of the legislative drafting process and closely connected to impact assessment. The impact assessment analyzes alternative process options with analytical depth and within the scope of effects, costs and benefits analyses.

Alternative options are usually identified, and assessed in varying degrees of depth. Cost-benefit analysis is a central feature of RIAs within the U.S. system. In a legislative context, the CBO will carry out analyses of major alternative proposals, provided they have significant sponsorship or political support (rank-and-file members can introduce bills, many of which do receive any consideration). However, Congress is under no obligation to consider any alternatives or act on the basis of analytical findings.

The Implementation Guidelines for Ex-Ante Evaluation of Regulations of August 2007 define “necessary” standard operating procedures for ex-ante policy evaluations. They explicitly include the need for comparisons with alternatives. If possible, this analysis should encompass non-regulatory means as well. As a caveat, the guidelines note that if a measure based on other laws or ordinances is evaluated, the underlying regulations are not to be questioned.

It should be noted in passing that Japan possesses another mechanism to evaluate alternative policy options, namely the experimental application of regulatory changes in specially designated regions, based on the Law on Special Zones for Structural Reform of 2002, revised in 2007. The new DPJ-led government intends to use this mechanism as a means to strengthen citizen input in reforming policies (based on a cabinet decision in December 2009).

RIAs highlight alternative options, including doing nothing, and also use international benchmarking to reinforce their investigations.

As mentioned under RIA Application, EIAs are obliged to mention one or several alternative options to the option chosen by an initiator. According to ACTAL guidelines, alternative options for ABRAs are investigated; the option involving the greates cost reduction ought to be selected, in principle. It is not known to what extent practice heeds theory.

The commissions and consultation processes are very effective in bringing up alternative options, because various interest groups have different views. This primarily includes a political assessment, looking at the feasibility of a proposal’s success (with reference to majority support in parliament, or the potential challenge posed by popular referendum, for example). Yet expert advice is also used, and practical knowledge about feasibility of implementation plays an important role.
In case of environmental protection, the law requires the ex-post evaluation of pros and cons.

The consideration of alternatives is part of the impact assessment process. An impact assessment is also executed for certain alternatives.

The official Instructions for Official Studies and Reports require that a sensitivity analysis must be made if any appreciable uncertainty exists, and that alternative instruments should be assessed, including instruments other than those of a regulatory nature (e.g., economic instruments). In practice, the extent to which alternative options are given careful consideration and submitted to a systematic cost-benefit analysis varies from case to case. Quantification of the costs and benefits of different alternatives is relatively rare.

In order to avoid over-regulation, RIA analysis includes the exploration of possible alternative methods for achieving the pursued objective.

Assessing the consequences of new or revised legislation or administrative regulations entails a detailed process. The process may start with a white paper which outlines options. A ministry or agency will also most likely consider the options at the screening stage, but they only concentrate on the specific measure that has already been chosen. When it deals with a proposed law going before the People’s Assembly, only the regulatory consequences of that law are assessed. However, this does not prevent MPs from discussing alternative options or asking the responsible minister about alternative options. Moreover, there is also certainly an element of searching for a satisfactory solution with the result that not all options are considered. RIAs do also involve cost-benefit analyses.

Following standard guidelines, RIAs are required to analyze alternative options (including “do nothing”) and quantify the costs and benefits of the different alternatives. It is not always clear how profound the analysis underlying these exercises is.

RIAs are focused on a cost-benefit analysis of proposed regulations. They do analyze alternative options and discuss potential pros and cons, but experts say that in practice these alternatives play little role in the drafting of final regulations.

RIAs in Canada do consider some alternative options, but this task is not a priority.

Regulatory impact assessment (RIA) reports do not tend to analyze alternative options.

The official RIA guidelines call for a consideration of alternatives, and the analysis of alternative options has gradually become a common practice. In practice, however, this analysis is often treated as a pure formality. Most RIA studies still focus on assessing a course already proposed by a ministry.

Under the terms of a Council of Ministers resolution (Resolução do Conselho de Ministros No. 198/2008), legislative proposals are required to include an analysis of alternatives. Thus, Article 17, No. 1 indicates that ministers submitting legislation to the Council of Ministers must include an assessment of their proposal’s impact “with reference to the analysis of alternatives.”
While this is a positive step, it is not clear whether alternative options are in fact systematically assessed when legislation is developed. Indeed, the previous lack of such systematic analysis was been evident in several major decisions. An example of this was the process of choosing the location for a new airport to service the Lisbon region. The government’s initial decision, on a site north of Lisbon, was widely criticized for its lack of alternative options. A vigorous public debate as to the impact of alternative locations emerged. Indeed, this lack of analysis of alternatives, and the perception that other locations might be more effective, led a number of organizations (notably business groups) to call for their own studies on the airport’s location. The ensuing public pressure – from sources including the president of the republic and the opposition – ultimately led the government to ask the National Laboratory of Civil Engineering for an assessment of different locations, notably including one south of Lisbon. The ensuing report found in favor of this new location, and the government finally revised its decision in 2008, with the Council of Ministers resolution (Resolução do Conselho de Ministros No. 85/2008) of May 8, 2008.

RIA is not fully and systematically implemented in Sweden. Regulatory assessment appears to be done more systematically in other forms, for instance the aforementioned “Simplex” project.

The evaluations available for RIA in France have stressed the lack of critical analysis and the search for alternatives, which seem linked to the fact that RIA is realized by the administration concerned and that there is no counter expertise. Recently, impact studies have gained in influence. In 2006, a provisional Prime Minister’s Office guideline for RIA procedures advised systematic research for alternative options. These options are often discussed within expert committee meetings or sometimes in legislative committees. But in most cases it is not a rational, systematic analysis offering alternatives and options with respective advantages and drawbacks.

Although the RIA guidelines published in 2006 by the Ministry of Justice and Public Order have called for a comprehensive analysis of alternative options, the consideration of alternatives has long been limited. Draft bills usually mention such options, but do not elaborate upon them. Under the Bajnai government, the situation improved. Major draft bills, for example in the field of taxation or labor market policy reform, included a detailed examination of the pros and cons of different reform options.

In theory, RIAs should assess alternative options and measure their costs and benefits. However, these requirements are largely irrelevant, as RIAs are only sporadically implemented

The new RIA guidelines adopted in 2006 failed to make the analysis of alternative options mandatory. Until recently, most assessments have not explored alternative options.

Officially, RIA must include a comprehensive analysis of alternative options. In practice, however, alternatives are rarely considered in a systematic fashion.

RIA has just been introduced in Spain, and it is not yet possible to assess the extent to which it effectively considers alternative options.

There are few examples of RIA being performed Turkey. Therefore, it is hard to say whether it is carried out fully, partially or poorly. In the past, feasibility reports have been prepared by experts for large-scale public administration projects, and some of these included alternative policy solutions in the form of cost-benefit analysis. It is expected that with the introduction of RIA, the Turkish public administration will help to develop an understanding of alternative policy options’ pros and cons.
The official RIA template calls for the analysis of various options including “do nothing.” However, the application of RIA is still in its infancy, and nothing can yet be said with respect to how comprehensively RIA will be applied in the near future.

The RIA system remained largely undeveloped in Greece through most of the period under review. Government resources and practices have not been able to sustain a process of evaluating alternative policy options to any substantive degree, save for the appointment of external ad hoc committees.
Thus, even though RIAs are somewhat known and to an extent practiced by the Papandreou government, the effort to produce alternative options and to quantify the costs and benefits of alternative options has not come to fruition.

Does not apply, as there are no formal regulatory impact assessments

Since there is no tradition of RIA in Iceland, the analysis of alternative options is not a habitual practice.

Does not apply.