Document: Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA): A short guide

Regulatory Impact Assessment, commonly referred to as RIA, is a tool to test the practicality and feasibility of regulatory proposals. It can also be applied to existing laws and regulations to assess their economic, social and environmental impacts, costs and benefits. RIA focuses attention on the consequences of specific regulatory approaches. 

RIA is key instrument for better regulation and service delivery, to achieve targeted policy objectives more efficiently and more cost effectively. It can minimise negative impacts, uncover unintended consequences, and reduce risk. 

The RIA process begins with identification of a policy objective. How can that objective be achieved? RIA stresses the need to identify different options right at the outset - both regulatory and non-regulatory (such as self-regulation by an industry, for example). It then examines the broader impacts likely to be associated with the different options, and as far as possible assesses costs, benefits and practicalities associated with each option. Are proposals and their associated implementation and compliance costs justified in terms of the scale of the issue to be addressed and the likely scale of benefits to be achieved? How likely is it that there could be perverse consequences?