When he announced his administration’s regulatory “lookback” initiative in 2011, President Obama rightly called on government agencies to establish ongoing routines for reviewing existing regulations to determine if they need modification or repeal. In subsequent years, the Obama Administration’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (Oira) oversaw a major initiative that prompted dozens of federal agencies to review hundreds of regulations. The Obama Administration’s regulatory initiative represented a good first step toward increasing the retrospective review of regulation, but by itself it was able to do little to build a lasting culture of serious regulatory evaluation. After all, past administrations have made similar review efforts, but these ad hoc exercises also never took root. To get serious about institutionalizing the practice of retrospective review, the federal government will need to take further steps in the coming years. This essay offers three feasible actions — guidelines, plans, and prompts — that an Oira Administrator should take to move forward with regulatory lookback and improve both the regularity and rigor of regulatory evaluation.
Real Time Impact Factor:
Pending
Author Name: Cary Coglianese
URL: View PDF
Keywords: regulatory lookback; policy evaluation; retrospective review; benefit-cost analysis; impact analysis
ISSN: 0034-8007
EISSN: 2238-5177
EOI/DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12660/rda
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