Does regulatory impact assessment lead to better policy?

Regulatory impact assessment systems bring evidence to bear on how to improve the quality of new or modified regulations. In the last 30 years they have become increasingly common in OECD countries. Regulatory proposals put forward by government agencies are now required to have a firm evidence base that clearly supports the new or modified regulation. However, in all jurisdictions actual practice has shown that the performance of the impact assessment systems has been very limited, with proposed regulation continuing to offer little in the way of a rigorous and convincing evidence base. This paper explores the reasons for the poor performance of evidence-based approaches. Reasons include the varying levels of ministerial and head of department/agency commitment, poor integration of impact assessment systems with existing policy development processes, variable capacity for rigorous, evidence-based policy in departments, and a lack of data on which evidence-based policy can be developed.