Open Regulation Platform
Organisations: Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, Better Regulations Executive
Strategy and product development
Better Regulation Executive. 26 May 2023
The Open Regulation Platform (ORP) is a digital product which seeks to provide a collated repository of UK regulation. The user interface will publish an enriched machine-readable dataset that can be used by businesses, government, regulators and third parties to develop products to reduce the cost of compliance with regulation in smarter, less burdensome ways. End users can use the service to research UK regulation in one convenient central repository.
Through providing this open access and informative data, the ORP hopes to catalyse innovation by spurring the development of new regulatory tools using ORP data.
The ORP’s Vision
We believe better regulation data is an enabler that will unlock benefits for businesses that will support longer-term economic growth through reducing compliance costs, making it easier for foreign businesses to operate in the UK and to stimulate the emerging RegTech market.
The ORP's vision comprises three critical components:
1 - Increased compliance & smarter regulation:
The first component of the ORP’s vision is to increase compliance through smarter regulation. Regulation data is currently dispersed and published at different levels of machine readability. With an enriched and dynamic dataset of regulators, business can easily understand and adhere to regulatory requirements, while regulators can access all regulations in one place. This integration of regulatory data will simplify the process for legal, policy, and other teams to find the information they need for their work, reducing non-compliance.
2 - A single point of entry increasing regulatory efficiency:
The second component of the ORP’s vision is to provide a single point of entry to increase regulatory efficiency. By creating a single entry-point for regulatory material, including guidance and market data, the ORP will promote an open, transparent, and symbiotic relationship between Government, regulators, RegTech and businesses.
Our vision is to work with regulators in making regulation more machine readable (through metadata and mark up standards) and more connected (through ORP). The platform will simplify the process of managing regulatory requirements and in turn promote regulatory efficiency.
3 - Stimulate nascent industries using accessible and structured datasets:
The third and final component of the ORP’s vision is to stimulate nascent industries using accessible and structured datasets. The platform will enable a new market in third-party applications and tools. Access to this data will unlock innovation from third-party software services and new in-house solutions. The benefits of this will be reduced costs of compliance and enabling the development of new RegTech tools.
The ORP Strategy
To achieve the vision outlined above, we are focussing on driving user adoption through a robust data supply strategy. The data we are focussing on is the regulatory material that is drafted and published by UK regulators.
To have a significant impact, the ORP vision implies that the platform must hold all up-to-date regulatory data and ensure that it is enriched to allow users to build tools and improve regulatory compliance. To secure a critical supply of data, we will increase user adoption, particularly by regulators who are the data owners, to achieve a high level of data enrichment.
Adoption by regulators will allow the ORP to achieve a data supply and a critical mass of data that will unlock the benefits outlined in the vision statements. Therefore, we have developed the product to align with three key factors that drive user adoption. Firstly, we will focus on marketing and advertising the benefits of the product, identifying early adopters of the product and engaging with wider user networks. Secondly, we will increase the ORP’s value proposition by improving the product through product iteration, making it increasingly useful to early adopters and attracting new users. Finally, we will embed the product in publishing processes and standards, closely linking it to ongoing digital strategies, needs, and priorities across regulatory entities and HMG.
By focussing on these drivers in unison, the ORP will promote adoption amongst regulators and create a valuable product, unlocking the benefits outlined in the vision and business case.
Development of the ORP
In the current stage of product development, we have achieved significant progress towards these goals:
- We have identified regulators that could become early adopters of the product and started exploratory conversations with them.
- We have developed and tested the initial iteration of the ORP platform, making improvements and enhancements based on user feedback such as improving the end of the upload journey, setting filters by frequency of use, and refining data enrichment features.
- We have identified integration opportunities with government entities to promote adoption amongst regulators.
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