Participants will discuss the arrangements in place in Parliaments in OECD countries to use evidence, the institutional structures to evaluate the impact of legislation ex-ante and ex-post and ways to ensure that parliamentarians understand and use RIAs for decisions on draft laws.
The workshop is part of a workstream on the role of three key actors in implementing the 2012 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Regulatory Poliy and Governance (Recommendation): Parliaments, regulatory agencies and audit offices. The Recommendation sets out the measures that Governments can and should take to support the implementation and advancement of systemic regulatory reform to deliver regulations that meet public policy objectives and will have a positive impact on the economy and society. These measures are integrated in a comprehensive policy cycle in which regulations are designed, assessed and evaluated ex ante and ex post, revised and enforced at all levels of government, supported by appropriate institutions.

Nick Malyshev
Nick Malyshev is Head of the OECD Regulatory Policy Division where he directs country reviews of regulatory reform in OECD and non-OECD countries. He was responsible for updating the OECD recommendations on regulatory reform, now the 2012 Recommendation on Regulatory Policy and Governance. He was a co-author of the 2011 publication, ?Regulatory Policy and Governance, Supporting Economic Growth and Serving the Public Interest?. He has worked extensively on the topic of risk and regulation which resulted in the 2010 publication ?Risk and Regulatory Policy, Improving the Governance of Risk?.

He has also been directing a programme of co-operation on regulatory policy to enhance competitiveness in Mexico. While at the OECD he has also worked extensively on the economic transition in Russia and China, including analytical and advisory work on a range of topics including regulatory policy and institutional reforms. Prior to joining the OECD, Mr. Malyshev worked as a financial analyst at GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceuticals company, and as a securities trader at Wall Street West, an investment bank. Mr. Malyshev, a US national, holds degrees in economics from Duke University and Colorado College.

Elke Ballon
Elke Ballon studied Law at the K.U. Leuven (Lic.Jur. 1994) and European and Comparative Law at the University of Oxford (M.Jur. 1995). She was a member of the Leuven Bar and worked as a research assistant at the K.U. Leuven Faculty of Law (Centre for European Economic Law and Centre for Consumer Law) from 1995 until 2003.

Since 2003, she is an administrator in the Secretariat of the European Parliament, working in committee secretariats and in the Parliament‘s Policy Department. She is currently Head of the Impact Assessment Unit in the recently created Directorate for Impact Assessment and European Added Value.

Summary:
The mission of the European Parliament‘s IA Unit is to help develop and implement, in close cooperation with the Parliament‘s committees, a more uniform and integrated approach to the concepts of impact assessment, with a view to enhancing the quality and coherence of policy formation and enable the Parliament to make the best possible case for its positions, both to other EU institutions and to the public at large, at the same time supporting the overall objective of better law-making within the European Union. At the request of committees, it evaluates the quality and independence of the European Commission‘s impact assessments, provides complementary or alternative impact assessments to those of the Commission, and organises the provision of the Parliament‘s own impact assessments on substantive amendments.

Andrea Wicklein
Andrea Wicklein studied at the University of Leipzig and graduated in economics. In the German Democratic Republic, she worked at the Handelsorganisation (state retail business), later becoming an instructor. After the changes of 1989/1990, she worked as a salesperson and, from 1991 onwards, as a citizens advice worker at the SPD‘s Brandenburg headquarters. From 1992 to 1999, she was employed as a research assistant for a Member of the German Bundestag and then as public relations officer for the SPD parliamentary group in the Brandenburg Parliament.

In 2002, 2005 and 2009, the voters in her constituency elected her directly to the German Bundestag. She is a member of the Committee on Economics and Technology, and a substitute member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment.

Summary:
The word “bureaucracy” has negative connotations. By definition, it means “rule by officialdom”, and in practice people often find it to be an uncontrollable behemoth. This makes it necessary for politics to point out as well: laws, directives and regulations provide on the one hand for legal and planning security and are thus an important competitive advantage for Germany. On the other hand, an excessive bureaucracy in a modern state is superfluous. It burdens the public and businesses and interferes with equal opportunities. So when we talk about reducing bureaucracy, we mean a process of Parliament and Government working together to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy. Our goal is a bureaucracy which is responsive to the public’s needs, business-friendly, transparent and modern. Parliament’s task must therefore be to make legislation better, simpler and cheaper to implement.

Christer Aström
Christer Åström is a senior evaluator at the Parliamentary Evaluation and Research Unit at the Swedish Riksdag.
He gained a BA in political science and economics from Uppsala University in Sweden and continued with studies in political science and German at Heidelberg University in Germany and at the University of Stockholm.

From 1987 to 1994, Mr Åström was performance auditor at the Swedish National Audit Bureau. From 1994 to 1995, he worked as an expert at the Ministry of Finance and continued as an executive officer at the Ministry of Culture until 2000. From 2000 to 2002, he joined the Committee on the Swedish Language at the Government Offices. Since 2002 supporting and developing the evaluation activities of the parliamentary committees.

Summary:
The Parliaments are a crucial link in the democratic chain of governance. Since 2001, follow-up and evaluation of decisions taken by Parliament are one of the tasks of the parliamentary committees in Sweden. The idea is that the committee that has prepared a decision on a new law is responsible for evaluating whether the output and the outcome of the law are in line with the Parliament’s intentions. The ex post-evaluations should have a forward-looking orientation and be used to provide a basis for solidly based positions in committee deliberations. Evaluation is a way of obtaining information about results and creating more robust links with the Parliament’s legislative decisions. Among other things, it should be used as an instrument for assessing legislative adjustments that may be needed. In the Riksdag, evaluations are carried out by evaluation groups comprising Members of Parliament from the different parties. These groups are supported by technical staff.

Sebastián Soto
Sebastián Soto holds a degree in law from the Catholic University of Chile and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from Columbia University. He also is a Ph.D. candidate in Law at the University of Chile. Currently Mr Soto is the Head of the Legal and Legislative Division at the Ministry of the Presidency in Chile. Before joining the Ministry he was Director of the Legislative Program at Libertad y Desarrollo, a Chilean think tank, where he was also a researcher. He has extensive legislative experience, both national and international. In 2006 he served as a Fulbright Fellow at the Congressional Office of Senator Norman Coleman (MN), in the Congress of United States of America. He has published several articles in books and journals and has taught at various universities, at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He currently teaches at the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University.

Summary:
Chile and Latin America have presidential regimes where Congress and the President, head of the executive power, share roles in the lawmaking process. For that reason, the analysis of Parliaments in the regulatory process must consider the permanent interaction between both Congress and Executive. From this perspective the speaker will focus in Chilean and other Latin American countries’ strengths and weaknesses in the law making process, not only in Congress but in the pre legislative stage too. Special attention will be given to the role of some institutions like the Library of Congress, the Budget Office and the financial reports elaborated there, and the tradition of hearings in Congress, among others.

This workshop has been realized in cooperation with: