5. Conclusions and Future Steps
Overall, the assessment of the RIAs and the quality of RISs show up similar results. Overall around 60% of these outputs were not satisfactory. The main areas of weakness tended to be around problem definition and the size of the issue, and the analysis of cost and benefits.
Consultation seems to be an area of strength. Another silver lining is that our assessment of the RIA process identified that in some cases there was more analytical substance behind the proposals than was being communicated in the RIS.
We conclude with our suggestions for using these findings to improve the quality of RIA/RISs.
RIAU
The key weaknesses that we identified are issues for departments to work through and address. However, beyond promulgating the findings, the RIAU should also consider the following:
- Clarify the purpose of the RIS and how it is different from a Cabinet paper. This would include explaining that the RIS has an audience beyond Cabinet, and that it should have the ability to be a stand-alone document. A number of agencies struggled with the distinction between the two documents.
- Rationalise the guidance material. While the information in each document is reasonably helpful, there are too many cross-referenced statements of requirements and "help" documents. We suggest all the requirements are summarised in a single short document – preferably one page – with some brief explanatory notes or guidance material attached; the greater the volume the least likely analysts are going to wade through it
- Make the adequacy certification more meaningful. There is a sense that it is simply not feasible to submit a paper that states that the RIA is inadequate. Hence agencies certify the RIA is adequate even when timelines limited consultation or analysis. One agency is trialling carefully worded statements to overcome this issue, and the RIAU could consider promulgating those; but there may be other options, such as self-assessment categories that communicate the degree to which adequacy standards are met.
We also suggest that future evaluations of compliance with the RIA/RIS requirements could be based primarily on a document-based analysis of RIS statements and associated Cabinet papers. The more in-depth interview-based process yielded some additional insights but it is relatively costly; it could be scaled-back or undertaken only every few years without loss of much information.
Agencies
We have identified a need for agencies to pay more attention to providing a clear statement of problem definition, a sense of scale, and costs and benefits. Looking beyond that we suggest the following actions:
- Raise own expectations of the RIA/RIS quality. The predominant culture appears to be that the RIA/RIS requirements are an add-on or afterthought. There are different approaches to change that culture. Some agencies have reflected the importance they place on the quality of the RIA/RIS in their processes (special committees, explicit performance expectations).
- Provide support for those with no or little experience. Our interviews uncovered that the task of undertaking the RIA and writing Cabinet papers and RISs were sometimes left to topic experts who only infrequently write policy papers.
Back to Top