Colombia’s First Best Regulatory Practices Competition
December 01, 2021
On November 16, the awards for the First Best Regulatory Practices Competition organized by CAF—development bank of Latin America—and the National Planning Department (DNP) of Colombia were granted. During the ceremony, the second edition of the award and the launch in 2022 of a community field practice was announced.
The competition was open between August 10 and September 10, 2021, and sought to recognize, highlight and share the good practices of Colombian government agencies that implement regulatory improvement tools. The purpose was to acknowledge successful experiences that show improvements in regulatory quality. For example, the proper application of the Regulatory Impact Analysis, or the advances that facilitate the relationship of the State with citizens and businesses through streamlined administrative procedures.
Alejandra Botero, general director of the DNP, referred to the contest as an opportunity to learn from the experiences of different agencies that participated in this first edition to continue strengthening the national government’s commitment to better regulatory quality in the national public administration.
In total, 52 initiatives were received in the seven categories:
(i) Institutional Policy Adoption
(ii) Regulatory Impact Analysis
(iii) Ex Post Evaluation
(iv) Public Consultation
(v) Administrative streamlining, vi) Regulatory debugging, and vii) Territorialization.
The Evaluation Committee was composed of Julián López Murcia (Ph.D in Political Studies from the University of Oxford), Indira Latorre (Ph.D in Law from Pompeu Fabra University) and Norman Maldonado (Ph.D in Development Economics from Ohio State University) all representing academia. Representing professional associations were María Cristina Camejo (FENALCO) and Rosmery Quintero (ACOPI). CAF was represented by Sebastián López Azumendi, responsible for the regulatory improvement agenda. The jury was also supported by DNP officials.
Carlos Santiso, CAF’s Director of Digital Innovation of the State, stressed that they are very happy to support DNP and Colombian regulators to take the quality leap necessary to reach OECD standards and, consequently, improve the living standards of the population. “Regulatory policy is probably the most powerful platform governments have today to promote (or avoid inhibiting) innovation while also thinking of citizens as the end users of innovation.” Hence, the relevance of the consultation and input generation processes as a way to help them make better decisions.
For more details of this first edition of the prize, see here the competition rules and results.