G/TBT/GEN/367  
 
20 December  2023 
(23-8720) Page: 1/4 
Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade    
 
THEMATIC SESSION ON THE USE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES AND TOOLS  
IN GOOD REGULATORY PRACTICES  
7 NOVEMBER 2023, 10:00 -13:00  
Moderator's Report1 
At the Ninth Triennial Review, Members agreed to continue to hold thematic sessions in conjunction 
with the TBT Committee's regular meetings from 2022 to 2024 to further deepen the exchange of 
experiences on specific topics. On this basis, the Committee agreed to hold a thematic session on 
the use of digital technologies and tools in good re gulatory practices.2 Information about the 
speakers, presentations, and related materials is available on the WTO website.3  
 
1  GUIDING QUESTIONS  
• How can digital technologies and tools help in implementing Good Regulatory Practices 
including in terms of i mproving transparency, inclusiveness, and efficiency of 
regulatory  process?  
• How can Members cooperate in implementing digital tools and technologies in regulatory 
process?  
• What are the challenges and possible solutions to ensure developing countries, LDCs in 
particular, can make use of such digital tools and technologies in their regulatory processes?  
 
2  INTERVENTIONS  
2.1.  Mr Jordan Hatch  (Australia)4 presented on the use of digital tools in regulatory policy to 
ensure that it remains fit for purpose in the digital era. He provided three examples of how digital 
approaches can be applied to address  complex regulatory issues: (i) human -centred design, a 
methodology that envisages active engagement with users to identify challenges and opportunities 
in the context of regulatory process; (ii) system -wide mapping, an approach that helps identify 
overlapping regulatory processes across Australian Government a gencies or jurisdictions; 
and (iii) multi-disciplinary collaboration (e.g. policy and digital expertise).  
2.2.  Ms Bridget Dooling  (United States)5 presented on how digital tools and emerging 
technologies can be used in regulatory processes by different stakeh olders.  She provided examples 
on how these tools can and have been used by : (i) the public, (ii) government agencies, 
(iii) e-rulemaking programmes and (iv) the courts.  
2.3.  In the case of public stakeholders, she noted that they can take advantage of digital tools to 
become more aware of regulations that are pertinent to them, become aware of comment 
opportunities as well as receive support in drafting comments . She stated that the variability in 
structure and formatting of public comments may impact t heir usefulness and persuasiveness to 
agencies, so digital tools such as generative AI may help improve this. She also noted the potential 
risks these tools pose with regard to detecting mass and m alattributed comments and th at agencies 
 
1 Mr. Diego Franco (Paraguay). This Report is provided on the Moderator's own responsibility.  
2 G/TBT/46 . 
3 WTO | Thematic Session on good regulatory practice . 
4 Acting First Assistant Secretary, Regulatory Reform Division at the A ustralian Government Department 
of Finance, Australia.  
5 Assistant professor of law, Michael E. Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University, United States.  G/TBT/GEN/367  
 
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  will need to build tools in response  to help them be resilient against these challenges. With regard 
to regulatory agencies , some of the advantages to applying digital tools she noted include the ability 
to quickly synthesise large bodies of existing text, analyse comments a nd identify duplicative 
comments.  
2.4.  She then discussed how the e -Rulemaking programme in the United States has been able to 
use digital tools through a central platform that enables cross -agency analysis of complex and 
voluminous comments. Finally, she spok e on how the courts could potentially  benefit from the use 
of digital tools in statutory interpretation. An example of this is through the use of large language 
models to determine and discern statutory language through interpretive guides . These tools could 
also be used to help courts access previous determinations and analyses from earlier courts . Other 
important applications could be in the analysis of the regulatory record upon review, where courts 
could harness large language models to analyse these re cords as well as even drafting opinions.  
2.5.  Ms Thalita Antony de Souza Lima  (Brazil)6 presented on how t he Brazilian health regulatory 
agency (ANVISA) has used digital tools in their regulatory processes. She noted that in efforts to 
review and automate pro cesses to make operations faster and more efficient, the agency has 
employed several digital tools. She highlighted the work of the Regulatory Quality Improvement 
Assistance Office within the agency that has established solutions to use data for regulatory  
improvement. She noted three main areas where digital tools have been applied to contribute to 
more efficient performance and predictability, namely (i) regulatory planning, (ii) regulatory impact 
analysis and (iii) monitoring and evaluation.  
2.6.  She provide d three examples of digital tools ANVISA has developed to address these issues: 
(i) a regulatory observatory that charts data on all plans, projects and ongoing processes on the 
regulatory agenda, organized by subject theme and status, (ii) an ex -post eval uation chatbot that 
clarifies doubts on ex -post evaluation of regulations and (iii) a machine based learning tool that 
clusters public qualitative contributions for regulatory planning, reducing human efforts and saving 
time.  
2.7.  Mr Nikos Archontas  (European Union)7 presented on how the European Union is using digital 
tools in stakeholder engagement on regulatory processes. He highlighted four main tools used to 
support stakeholder engagement, namely: (i) a web portal ( Have Your Say ) that serves as  a 
multilingual, single entry point for all public consultation activities and feedback opportunities, (ii) a 
back-office internal tool ( Better Regulation Portal ) that supports the Have Your Say  web portal, 
(iii) an internal planning platform ( Decide ) that  facilitates approval of initiatives along the hierarchy, 
whether administrative or political and (iv) an external tool ( EU Survey ) to enable DGs to draft 
questionnaires to be published on the Have Your Say  web portal.  
2.8.  He noted that these tools support va rious stages of the regulatory cycle from policy preparation 
up to adoption of the policy preparation (including impact assessments) and evaluation. He also 
stressed that Have Your Say  web portal provide multiple opportunities for citizens and stakeholders  
to provide feedback (i.e., to Call Evidence documents, legislative proposals and draft secondary 
legislation acts) and also to contribute to public consultation questionnaires with the aim to influence 
the policymaking of the European Commission.  
2.9.  Ms Rosie  Rodgers  (Australia)8 presented on how digital tools are being used in regulatory 
impact analysis. She highlighted the work of Australia's Office of Impact Analysis  (OIA)  that 
administers its regulatory impact analysis, in particular their development of a case management 
system to track, organize and record assessments of regulatory impact analyses. The software OIA 
RIA Compliance Assessment (ORCA), was designed to monitor the RIA process, keep records of 
cross-agency correspondence, and provide data insi ghts such as how many proposals are sent by 
relevant agencies, how many RIAs are completed by agencies, and the quality of completed RIAs.  
2.10.  She noted that ORCA has helped contribute to better regulation and decision making through 
improvements in accountab ility, administration, assessments, and assistance. Through automation 
the agency has been able to increase record keeping, minimize human error , provide quicker 
 
6 Chief Advisor for Better Regulation at the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency – ANVISA, Brazil.  
7 Policy Officer - Evaluation, Impact Assessment & Stakeholder Consultation, Seconded National Expert, 
European Commission, European Union.  
8 Adviser, Australia n Office of Impact Analysis, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australia.  G/TBT/GEN/367  
 
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  responses to relevant agencies, improve engagement with other agencies, give agencies tailored  
information on past RIAs, determine if agencies require extra support and training, and provide 
greater consistency and accessibility to past assessments, among other benefits. She noted that 
Australia has shared the software with several countries and is  happy to share with other countries 
who may be interested.  
2.11.  Dr. Lu Ding  (China)9 presented on the digital transformation of standards and its practice in 
smart manufacturing. She noted that standards will play an important role in digital transformation 
but that traditional standards pose several challenges to promoting this transition, mainly with  
respect to efficiency, coordination, and interoperability. She remarked that standard digitalisation 
has featured in key strategy documents of standard setting bodies such as ISO, IEC, and 
CEN/CENELEC among others, to promote the transformation of standar ds. She highlighted some 
standard digitalisation activities at standard setting bodies  including a report on smart standards 
and a task force on smart standardization and conformity assessments at the IEC and an advisory 
group to establish a machine -readab le standards strategy at ISO, among others.  
2.12.  She presented the ISO/IEC smart standards utility model that demonstrates how standards 
progress through various levels from paper through to smart standards. To enable this process she 
highlighted the Digital S tandard Tool  that promotes digitalisation of standards. She then highlighted 
how these smart standards can be used in practice through th ree example s of pilot project s in China .  
2.13.  First, in the automotive industry , the use of a smart standard, the Common Da ta Dictionary 
standard, that describes different devices in a factory and their specifications, helped to provide 
support to the lifecycle workflow and supply chain. Another application she highlighted was the use 
of smart standards in a pilot project in t he power industry where a standard digital platform helped 
improve efficiency of standard review, reducing project construction risks as well as creating a 
streamlined and intelligent process for bidding and procurement. Third, she mentioned the use of 
smart standards in the aviation industry, where they have helped technicians with product 
innovation, increased automation in design, as well as increased the overall quality of work.  
2.14.  Mr Angus Barry  (UK)10 presented on the use of digital tools to develop  machine readable 
regulations  to help reduce compliance costs. He noted that while regulation can spur innovation it 
can also create compliance costs. These may be costs associated with searching across different 
regulators as well as the costs of understandin g the content of the regulation. He remarked that in 
the UK, close to 94% of businesses pay for support on this so it is important to bring these costs 
down. He noted that regulatory technology firms play an important role in bringing down these costs 
through regulatory technology products and content management however the more opaque and 
complex a regulation is the harder it is to do so, in addition to how labour intensive it is to track 
regulations.  
2.15.  To address this he noted that digital products and dat a standards can provide businesses with 
simplified lists of regulations they need to comply with. This may also help international trade 
negotiations where negotiators can be provided relevant information on regulation related to the 
negotiation.  
2.16.  He then discussed three ways of making regulation machine readable, primarily through 
(i) well-structured metadata, (ii) open document formats and (iii) marked up content. These have 
numerous benefits such as improving consistency across regulation, improv ing searchability, as well 
as better understanding regulatory landscapes in other countries. He concluded by stating that their 
agency is committed to open source and collaboration and urged interested parties to reach out.  
 
9 Deputy director of Standard & Test Centre of ITEI, Instrumentation Technology and Economy Institute 
of China.  
10 Head of Data Transformation at Better Regulation Executive, UK Government’s Better Regulation 
Executive, United Kingdom.  G/TBT/GEN/367  
 
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  3  COMMENT BY THE MODERATOR  
3.1.  I noted a number of key takeaways from the thematic session:  
• In terms of the implementation of GRP, we learned that digital tools are increasingly useful 
for effectively managing regulatory processes.  
• We heard from speakers that digital tools can help improve public awareness and accessibility 
of regulations. Tools such as generative AI have the potential to simplify public commenting 
processes on regulations and improve the quality and richness of thes e comments. This can 
be impactful as higher quality comments can be helpful and persuasive to regulatory agencies.  
• Digital tools can also be seen to be driving stakeholder engagement with regulatory processes 
as our speakers mentioned. Interesting example s were provided about how digital tools are 
helping regulators increase public participation through web portals for public consultations 
and feedback mechanisms as well as having a broad reach by translating into multiple 
languages.  
• It was however mentio ned that more regulatory engagement (enabled by these technologies) 
can also be a challenge. Regulators would need to make the best use possible of digital tools 
to address any negative effects other digital tools may be creating (for example, false yet 
credible comments, huge volume of comments). This will require regulators to have the proper 
physical as well as human infrastructure. In this latter respect, we heard that skills 
development will be crucial for implementing digital tools. Regulators will ne ed to adapt to this 
rapidly evolving environment and learn how to use these emerging tools by, for example, 
introducing training sessions for employees on various data tools.  
• Regulatory impact assessments are another area that have benefited from the appl ication of 
digital tools. It has been shown that such tools improve record keeping, reduce human error 
and generate better engagement and quicker responses.  
• It was also noted that standards development processes are changing, with standards 
becoming incre asingly digital. In order to meet the requirements of digital economy 
development, traditional standards will need to digitalize. We learned that new advancements 
such as machine -readable standards could enable uninterrupted data flow across the value 
chain thus reducing technical barriers to trade.  
• It was noted that digital tools can help reduce technical barriers to trade and compliance costs 
through the systemization and organization of large volumes of data and automation of 
labour -intensive tasks.   
• Regarding the use of these Digital Technologies and Tools in GRP by developing and 
least-developed countries, the lack of knowledge and access to these tools were mentioned 
as possible challenges.  
3.2.  I found the discussion to be informative and insightful and I  would like to express my 
appreciation to our speakers for their interventions. They have left us with a lot to reflect on for 
further work in the Committee on the topic of digital tools in the GRP context.  
 
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