Managing Regulation, Enforcement and Compliance

As the world reels and recovers from the impacts of COVID-19, it has never been more important for regulators to develop a clearer understanding of how to deliver effective risk-control, solve important problems and manage compliance.

Join Harvard Kennedy School of Government Professor Malcolm Sparrow, a former senior British Police Officer, who will examine the distinctive managerial and operational challenges faced by government officials and other professionals who have regulatory, enforcement, security, compliance-management, or other risk-control responsibilities. These roles involve the provision of societal protections or the control of harms—a type of governmental work quite different than that of delivering services.

This one-of-a-kind online workshop emphasises the management and operations of such agencies (regulatory practice) as opposed to the reform of law (regulatory policy), and it is oriented more towards social regulation (provision of safety, health, security) rather than economic regulation (efficient functioning of specific markets).

“I hope in this course to honour the importance of the role that regulatory practitioners play, and to recognise the complexity of the choices they face as they design their regulatory operations and carry out their public duties,” says Professor Sparrow.

“Many participants leave the program excited to think of themselves as part of a community of professional regulators, experts in the art of risk-control and harm-reduction.”

This online workshop will provide you with an opportunity to be part of a stimulating, intellectually rigorous learning environment. Discussions and cases will span a variety of regulatory and enforcement domains, from the environment to public health to crime. Each case is chosen based on its ability to provoke, illuminate, and define ubiquitous dilemmas and emerging approaches.

A critical component of the program involves personal reflection upon your own professional experiences and sharing these examples in both small group and class sessions. You will leave the program with a better understanding of the pressures faced by regulators today and a broader appreciation of potential adaptations you might make in response.

The program is designed for career public servants destined for senior management and executive roles and provides them with an understanding of a broad range of opportunities to improve the value and effectiveness of agency operations.

What will you learn?

Professor Sparrow’s workshop will include plenary and small-group discussions, and a small number of special guest presentations. Managing regulation, enforcement and compliance will provide you with an opportunity to develop a clear understanding of the following core issues in regulatory practice:

• How success should be defined and best measured in a regulatory or risk-control setting.
• What taking a “risk-based approach” to regulation means in practice.
• What it means to be vigilant with respect to novel, emerging, or invisible risks.
• How to determine which parts of the risk-management task can be safely delegated to industry and third parties, and under what circumstances.
• What structural decisions are involved in choosing among various regulatory models, such as prescriptive regulation, performance-based regulation, responsive-regulation, self-regulation, etc. Why and when should one model be preferred over another.
• How executives can focus their agencies on specific harm-reduction objectives when the harms don't align with any established piece of the organisational structure.
• What types of discretion are involved as regulators pick and choose what to work on and what methods to use. And what values count in governing the choices that have to be made.
• What type of partnerships regulators can form with diverse stakeholder groups without compromising their regulatory missions.
• How should professional regulators respond to “de-regulatory” winds and other political pressures?

What do previous participants say?

• “Professor Sparrow is an outstanding teacher and facilitator of learning.”
• “Delivery was clear and the supporting exercises were relevant and made you think. Mixing the groups up also excellent way to meet more people in absence of face to face networking.”
• “The course provided a fabulous framework within which to think about regulatory choices and how to make better ones. It provided the concepts to make arguments to decision makers about how to solve problems. It also connected behaviour change thinking to classic regulatory work. Hooray!”
• “Because this course was online through Zoom, we had such a variety of people from different jurisdictions and geographical areas that it gave a very wide perspective of views, issues and topics. Listening to the "stories" was one of the best aspects of learning and take–away from this course.”
• “A huge thank you to the ANZSOG team for ensuring that everything ran so smoothly, and to Malcolm for his professional and capable approach to teaching – particularly given the virtual classroom environment.”
• “A very helpful course in providing a systematic way to understand and question regulatory practice and development. It provides a way to explain decision making."
• “Thank you for a great course, you all did very well to adapt it to a digital environment and keep it engaging and well structured. A big thank you to Malcolm for your passion and patience.”