Federal Regulations: Key Considerations for Agency Design and Enforcement Decisions
Released: 2017-11-20T00:00:00

Letter

Background

Statutory and Executive requirements assert broad principles and require agencies to consider alternative ways of regulating and preferred regulatory designs, such as performance standards rather than means- based design standards. Further, these requirements and directives urge agencies to consider alternative approaches to eliciting compliance, such as alternative reporting methods or delaying compliance dates.

The Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) requires federal agencies to examine the impact of proposed, final, and existing rules on small businesses, small organizations, and small governmental jurisdictions, and to solicit the ideas and comments of such entities for this purpose. Among other requirements, the RFA requires that agencies consider regulatory alternatives that accomplish the stated objectives of a proposed rule while minimizing any significant impact on small entities. However, the RFA does not mandate any particular outcome in rulemaking.

Executive Order 12866 (E.O. 12866), issued in 1993, promotes a regulatory philosophy and set of principles that, to the extent permitted by law and where applicable, encourages agencies to assess costs and benefits of their proposed and final regulations. It also directs agencies to consider available regulatory alternatives in all regulations, including the alternative of not regulating, and generally select those alternatives that maximize net benefits, to the extent permitted by statute. Alternatives to direct regulation include providing economic incentives to encourage the desired behavior (such as user fees or marketable permits) or providing information upon which choices can be made by the public. If an agency determines that direct regulation is necessary, the Executive Order directs the agency, to the extent feasible, to specify performance objectives, rather than specifying the behavior or manner of compliance that regulated entities must adopt. Subsequent executive orders across administrations have reaffirmed this philosophy and these principles.

Circular A-4, issued by OMB in 2003, provides guidance and best practices to federal agencies for determining the potential effects of new regulations. A-4 directs agencies to consider a number of regulatory alternatives, including market-oriented approaches rather than direct controls, performance standards rather than design standards, informational measures, and different compliance dates and enforcement methods, among others.

The RFA, specific statutes, and multiple executive orders have also emphasized the importance of regulatory lookbacks, also referred to as retrospective reviews, in which agencies evaluate how existing regulations work in practice:

Statutory requirements: The RFA’s Section 610 requires agencies to review all regulations that have or will have a significant impact on small entities within 10 years of the publication of the rule to determine whether such rules should be continued without change, or should be amended or rescinded, consistent with the stated objectives of applicable statutes, to minimize impacts on small entities. Congress also established other requirements for agencies to review the effects of regulations issued under specific statutes, such as the Clean Air Act.

Executive Order 13771, issued in January 2017, requires executive agencies to identify at least two existing regulations to be repealed whenever they publicly propose or otherwise promulgate a new regulation, unless prohibited by law. Agencies must also annually provide their best approximation of the total costs or savings associated with each new regulation or repealed regulation to OMB. Finally, the order requires that the total incremental cost of all new regulations, including the savings for regulations that have been repealed, be no greater than zero for fiscal year 2017, unless otherwise required by law or consistent with advice provided in writing by the OMB Director.

Executive Order 13777, issued in February 2017, requires agencies to designate an agency official as its Regulatory Reform Officer. Regulatory Reform Officers oversee the implementation of regulatory reform initiatives to ensure that agencies effectively carry out regulatory reforms, consistent with applicable law. Agencies must also establish Regulatory Reform Task Forces to evaluate existing regulations and make recommendations regarding their repeal, replacement, or modification, consistent with applicable law.

Selected Agencies Reported Using Statutory and Executive Requirements and Regulatory Objectives in Their Decision- Making Processes

Agencies Have Multiple Regulatory Design Options Available to Achieve Their Objectives Depending on Statutory Discretion

When agencies determine that they may need to regulate, they generally have multiple regulatory designs available to achieve their objectives. Agencies are directed by statute and Executive requirements to assess alternatives to regulatory action—including not issuing new regulations— and different ways of regulating. Available regulatory designs range from prescriptive regulations that specify the adoption of a certain technology or action to designs that generally provide regulated entities with more discretion and options for compliance, and in some instances hybrid designs that incorporate both prescriptive and less prescriptive elements. Alternatives to prescriptive regulations provide regulated entities with greater flexibility. For example, performance-based regulations require a certain outcome but allow regulated entities discretion to determine how they will achieve that outcome, while market-based regulations use tradeable permits or fees to influence behavior.

Table 2 highlights the regulatory designs identified through our literature review and corroborated by subject matter specialists and agency officials. The table includes selected examples of applicable regulations implemented by our case study agency subcomponents.

Statutes give agencies varying degrees of discretion to consider multiple designs as they develop regulations to meet their objectives. In some instances, Congress directs agencies by statute to implement specific regulatory designs. For example, the Occupational Safety and Health Act directs the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), when promulgating a standard, to either (1) adopt existing scientific and industry consensus standards for workplace health and safety, or (2) explain why the standard adopted by the agency better protects workers than the national consensus standard. In addition, requirements dealing with exposures to toxic materials must be formulated in the terms of “objective criteria and the performance desired” whenever practicable. The Clean Air Act provides EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation (OAR) with varying degrees of discretion to consider different regulatory designs when developing its regulatory programs. For example, the Clean Air Act gave the office broad authority to establish a tradable emissions allowance system—commonly referred to as cap and trade—with a market-based design for its Acid Rain Program, but to promulgate specific prescriptive regulations for the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Pollutants program.

Selected Agencies Stated a Preference for Less Prescriptive Designs to Achieve Regulatory Objectives

Officials at selected agencies reported a general preference for less prescriptive regulations in accordance with E.O. 12866, Circular A-4, and other Executive requirements, which encourage agencies to consider less prescriptive regulatory design options for achieving their objectives. For example, DOT officials told us that, when choosing among regulatory design options, they prefer performance-based regulations over means- based regulations. Officials from DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) told us that performance-based regulations—as implemented for classifying and packaging hazardous material—allow them to accommodate innovations among regulated entities, adapt to technological advances, and promote the competitiveness of U.S. firms in global markets without having to subsequently revise the regulations.

The following examples illustrate how some selected subcomponents have (1) encouraged the development of less prescriptive design options for new regulatory programs, and (2) updated or replaced existing regulations to incorporate more flexible designs.

Developing trainings to encourage less prescriptive designs: Two selected subcomponents produced training materials to promote the consideration of all options for designing effective regulation, including less prescriptive regulations where appropriate. EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance developed a workbook and supplemental training course that present principles and tools to help rule drafters consider the relative effectiveness of different designs for achieving regulatory objectives, including how the degree of prescriptiveness can either promote or hinder compliance. The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) “Performance-Based Regulations Training” course uses real world examples and team exercises to teach rule drafters (1) the concepts that inform performance-based designs, (2) the relationship between prescriptive and less prescriptive regulatory approaches, and (3) considerations for developing and assessing performance-based regulations.

Updating or replacing existing regulations to incorporate flexible designs: FAA’s 2016 airworthiness standards for small airplanes replaced some prescriptive design requirements with more flexible performance-based standards. Agency officials told us that they expect the new regulation will improve safety and cost-effectiveness (such as by reducing compliance costs) while facilitating future technological innovations. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) officials told us that increased international demand for cattle exports put pressure on their inspection infrastructure and prompted them to replace their formerly prescriptive standards with performance-based regulations that officials described as more flexible and easier to adapt to changing circumstances. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) officials told us that their Hazardous Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) Rule represented a shift from FSIS’s traditional means-based regulations (which mandated specific food production standards) to a mixed performance- and management-based regulatory program (which monitors food safety plans and production outcomes).

Agencies Reported that Regulatory Objectives May Require Prescriptive Designs or Use of Multiple Designs

Despite a general preference for less prescriptive designs among selected agencies, officials from nine selected subcomponents told us that their regulatory objectives sometimes required a prescriptive regulation or that in some instances regulated entities expressed a preference for prescriptiveness.

Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) officials told us that their regulations were often necessarily prescriptive to implement and enforce the mine health and safety standards required by statute. For example, based on data from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, MSHA determined that requiring more frequent respirable dust sampling for mining occupations known to have high dust levels and requiring the use of certain monitoring devices to measure respirable coal dust exposure are necessary to limit exposure to respirable coal mine dust and thus reduce occupational lung diseases.

Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) officials told us that their export licensing regulations are necessarily prescriptive to narrowly target specific items as unacceptable for export due to national security or commercial sanctions against certain countries.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials told us that, while they try to achieve a balance between prescriptive and less prescriptive regulatory designs, in some instances prescriptive regulations are the only means of ensuring public health and safety.

Officials from EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) told us that, when given non-prescriptive regulatory options, small businesses generally prefer prescriptive regulations with clear compliance requirements to minimize uncertainty.

An EPA OAR official told us that, during the update of a recent regulation on refrigerants, the agency considered including a provision allowing operators of pollutant-emitting facilities the option to either (1) set a corporate-wide budget for leaks covering all facilities, or (2) comply with a prescriptive regulation for individual appliances susceptible to leakage. Based on feedback from regulated entities and EPA enforcement officials, who voiced a need for predictability and ease of monitoring, EPA officials said that they ultimately chose to promulgate the more prescriptive regulation instead of the more flexible, but challenging to implement, corporate-wide approach.

Ten selected subcomponents incorporated multiple design elements into their regulations—what we refer to as hybrid designs—that offer more flexibility or, conversely, more clarity to meet the needs of different regulated entities.

PHMSA officials told us that their special permits programs for hazardous materials and pipelines allow regulated entities the flexibility to determine their own means of satisfying transportation safety requirements if they achieve the same level of safety prescribed by regulation.

FAA officials told us that most of their safety standards are necessarily prescriptive to ensure clarity and uniformity. However, they said that they often encourage the use of multiple designs in their rulemakings that allow for both performance-based and means-based regulations—as with the 2016 airworthiness standards for small airplanes.

OSHA officials told us that they provide employers with multiple options for achieving regulatory compliance that incorporate both prescriptive and less prescriptive design elements. For example, OSHA’s health standards regulating crystalline silica exposure among construction site workers provides employers both a performance- based option (which allows regulated entities discretion in determining how to meet permissible exposure limits), and a means-based option (in which regulated entities implement specified exposure mitigation measures for designated tasks).

FDA and FSIS have both implemented voluntary programs to promote the adoption of practices among regulated entities that align with the agencies’ regulatory objectives. FSIS encourages regulated food facilities to develop voluntary food defense plans as a means of mitigating potential health hazards and strengthening food safety. FDA officials told us they issued voluntary food labeling standards for raw fruits and vegetables to assist in establishing an industry standard, and achieved 80 percent compliance among regulated entities.

Selected Agency Processes Included Practices for Considering and Assessing Regulatory Design Options

All selected agencies told us their processes for drafting regulations incorporated internal discussions to consider available regulatory design options. For example, Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) officials told us that the agency’s process encourages rule drafters to solicit input from internal and external stakeholders to inform the consideration of all possible regulatory design options available to achieve statutory objectives. BIS officials told us that proposals for broadly applicable regulations—including available design options—are discussed and vetted with multiple stakeholders, including (1) BIS subcomponent officials, (2) Office of General Counsel staff, (3) agency engineers, and (4) external technical advisory committees.

However, some selected subcomponents’ processes for drafting proposed regulations also included documentation of identified design options for achieving objectives and assessments of risk or enforcement and compliance implications of identified design options. These practices for identifying and assessing regulatory designs are described in the following examples.

Documenting the assessment of design options for achieving regulatory objectives: EPA uses an Analytical Blueprint to identify the range of regulatory design options considered throughout the Action Development Process (ADP)—the agency’s process for developing and responding to public comments on new regulatory proposals. FSIS officials told us that rule drafters develop an “options paper” to identify and assess alternative approaches to achieving regulatory objectives based on multiple inputs, including (1) data analyses, (2) subject matter expertise, and (3) stakeholder feedback. FAA officials told us that rule-drafting groups discuss regulatory design options when developing a Rulemaking Action Plan and present these alternatives in briefing documents to the principal agency managers, referred to as “principals briefs.” FDA officials told us that rule-drafting groups generally develop a concept paper or other summary document to determine the optimal means of achieving a regulatory goal, including considerations of multiple design options.

Assessing the risk associated with identified regulatory design options: Three selected subcomponents incorporated assessments of risk into their rule-drafting procedures. DOT’s Rulemaking Requirements direct agency officials to “consider, to the extent reasonable, the degree and nature of the risks posed [by agency action]” and “how the agency action will reduce risks to public health, safety, and the environment” per Executive Order 12866. EPA’s ADP specifies that Analytic Blueprints identify, assess, and discuss the risk management implications of proposed regulatory design options. USDA’s Regulatory Decisionmaking Requirements direct rule drafters to conduct a comparison of risks for regulatory design options and provide a description of the level of uncertainty and unknowns associated with each design.

Assessing the enforcement and compliance implications of identified regulatory design options: An official from FSIS told us that representatives from its Office of Field Operations or Office of Investigation, Enforcement, and Audit often participate in rule-drafting groups to provide an enforcement perspective. A BIS official told us that rule drafters solicit informal feedback from enforcement officials to ensure the practicability of regulatory standards during both the development of prospective regulations and the initial implementation of new regulations.

EPA’s procedures require that enforcement officials participate in EPA’s ADP rule-drafting groups for rules involving “precedent-setting policy implications” and “extensive cross-agency participation,” and EPA officials told us that enforcement officials also are often involved in the drafting of other rules. Further, EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance’s training and guidance materials encourage rule drafters to incorporate compliance principles—such as clarity, consistency, and transparency—into their decision making and consider how regulatory design choices can influence later compliance and need for enforcement.

Considering compliance and enforcement implications while making regulatory design decisions is important because agency officials stated that different design choices have implications for future compliance and enforcement resources. For example, PHMSA officials told us they create an implementation plan for any proposed regulation with an expected impact on enforcement resources. Officials from OSHA and EPA Office of Land and Emergency Management (OLEM) told us that management-based regulations— such as OSHA’s Process Safety Management requirements for oil refineries and chemical facilities and OLEM’s Risk Management Program for facilities that use hazardous chemical substances—can be resource-intensive to enforce because of the greater technical expertise needed to review highly individual and technical plans among heterogeneous regulated entities to ensure compliance. An EPA OAR official told us that the design of its cap-and-trade system— tradeable allowances that require regulated entities to monitor and report their emissions to EPA—limits the need for enforcement resources to only those entities that do not comply with monitoring, reporting, and allowance-holding requirements.

Selected Agencies Reported Using Multiple Tools and Approaches for Allocating Resources to Elicit Compliance

To Elicit Compliance, Agencies Generally Have Flexibility to Use a Mix of Available Tools

When regulations are promulgated, agency officials must determine how they will promote compliance with their regulations and deter noncompliance. Agencies generally have the flexibility to tailor their compliance and enforcement strategies to encourage voluntary compliance and inform regulated entities of regulatory requirements. Agency officials decide on the appropriate mix of compliance assistance together with monitoring and enforcement efforts to achieve regulatory outcomes.

Based on our review of relevant academic literature, there are multiple tools available to agencies to elicit compliance, although agencies traditionally use two tools to achieve their objectives. The first, compliance assistance, helps regulated entities understand and meet regulatory requirements. For example, an agency may consider providing assistance through educational materials and outreach to promote compliance among regulated entities. The second, the use of monitoring, enforcement, and data reporting, ensures that regulations are followed and deters noncompliance. Agencies may also supplement these traditional approaches with options that provide more accommodating and flexible opportunities to promote compliance among regulated entities, such as developing cooperative programs or providing onsite consultation services. Table 3 identifies some of the options by which agency officials may accomplish their regulatory goals.

As described in table 3, agencies use compliance assistance tools, such as education and consultation, to ensure that regulated entities understand regulatory requirements and provide examples of how to comply. One way that agencies do this is by providing regulatory guidance to regulated entities in the forms of Frequently Asked Questions, tools, or factsheets. We reported in 2015 that agencies used a wide variety of guidance to interpret new regulations and clarify policies in response to questions or compliance findings. However, we have also recommended that selected agencies could further help regulated entities comply, and agencies have implemented those recommendations by offering further clarifications and guidance. The selected subcomponents that we reviewed employed a variety of compliance assistance activities. For example:

FSIS provides compliance guidance and makes training materials available to its regulated entities, such as meat, poultry, and egg product plants, and maintains help desks to provide technical assistance to its regulated community.

BIS holds domestic and international seminars, provides online and in-person trainings, responds to inquiries submitted online, issues industry advisory opinions, and works with other federal agencies to provide immediate error alerts to filers using their Automated Export System.

FDA provides web-based, in-person, and telephone education and outreach; hosts webinars, public meetings, and stakeholder meetings; and posts training videos and blogs. For example, the agency established a central source of information for questions related to its 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act rules, programs, and implementation strategies.

Regulatory agencies also engage in enforcement activities such as inspections, monitoring reported data, and issuing fines when noncompliance is identified. The selected agencies we reviewed reported using criteria such as data, compliance history, and trends in noncompliance to identify risks and more efficiently target enforcement activities. For example:

OSHA conducts two types of inspections—“un-programmed” and “programmed”—to target resources for the 8 million workplaces it regulates. Un-programmed inspections respond to specific complaints or injuries, while programmed inspections target resources towards specific high-risk industries and employers.

FSIS officials analyze noncompliance trends for its food safety process control regulations at meat, poultry, and egg processing facilities and send inspection officials “early warning” alerts when the establishments they inspect reach certain noncompliance rates.

APHIS’s Animal Care program uses its Risk Based Inspection System to conduct more frequent and in-depth inspections at facilities with a higher risk of animal welfare concerns, and fewer at those that are consistently compliant. The system uses criteria, such as past compliance history and the seriousness of documented noncompliance, to determine minimum inspection frequencies for licensed and registered facilities.

The selected agencies also reported supplementing traditional compliance assistance and enforcement approaches with other tools, including:

Cooperative programs: OSHA uses multiple cooperative programs to recognize employers who have introduced health and safety initiatives at their worksites that exceed requirements. OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program rewards employers that exceed worker safety requirements through an exemption from routine inspections while they maintain their status in the program. Participating employers are reevaluated every 3 to 5 years. OSHA uses its Challenge Program to partner successful employers as mentors for employers who are attempting to improve their safety and health programs. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Skilled Nursing Home Facilities Value Based Purchasing Program is authorized to use incentive payments to recognize nursing homes that exceed minimum standards of quality.

Onsite consultation services: OSHA works with state governments to provide onsite consultation services to small- and medium-sized businesses. These consultations assist employers to identify potential hazards and improve their injury and illness prevention programs. MSHA offers compliance assistance and outreach through “walk and talks” during which MSHA inspectors and education outreach staff provide mine operators and miners with information on hazardous tasks and conditions, as well as offer best practices to prevent accidents, injuries, and fatalities.

Voluntary disclosures: FAA implements a number of voluntary reporting programs. For example, its Flight Operational Quality Assurance program allows commercial airlines and their employees to anonymously report incident information. The agency then uses this information to monitor trends and target resources. BIS encourages parties who believe they may have violated its export regulation to self-disclose. Officials then review the disclosure to determine if a violation has occurred and to identify the appropriate corrective action. BIS views a self-disclosure as an indicator of a party’s intent to comply with its requirements. EBSA’s Voluntary Fiduciary Correction Program and Delinquent Filer Voluntary Correction Program encourage voluntary compliance by allowing plans and plan fiduciaries to self-correct certain violations and by offering relief from higher civil penalty assessments.

Third-party certification: EPA OCSPP’s formaldehyde emissions rules require foreign and domestic wood mills to receive a third party certification that certain wood products meet defined standards. EPA must approve the third parties that certify the products.

Selected Agencies Reported Considering Multiple Factors and Take Different Approaches to Allocating Resources to a Mix of Compliance and Enforcement Tools

Agencies generally have flexibility in making decisions on and allocating resources for a mix of compliance assistance and enforcement strategies. However, some selected agencies reported that statutory requirements, programmatic constraints, and changing priorities affected how they allocated resources for compliance and enforcement activities. For example:

MSHA must prioritize available resources to fund inspections because they are required by law to inspect every underground mine four times a year and every surface mine twice each year. Once those resources have been allocated for inspection, any additional resources may then be used for compliance related activities.

FSIS’ allocation of resources is similarly constrained because it is statutorily required to be present at every meat, poultry, and egg product facility whose product enters into commerce in order for the facility to operate.

APHIS is programmatically constrained in allocating resources between enforcement and compliance assistance because another federal department enforces some of their promulgated regulations, and thus determines compliance resources and approaches. The agency’s Agricultural Quarantine Inspection program inspection activities are performed by Customs and Border Protection within the Department of Homeland Security.

The type and behavior of regulated entities also affects selected agency decisions on strategies to achieve compliance. The characteristics of regulated entities—such as the hetero- and homogeneity of the regulated community and frequency of interaction with agency officials—may inform agency compliance assistance and enforcement resource decisions. Some of the selected agencies described frequent interaction with regulated entities that were homogeneous or easily identified. As a result, officials said it is easier for their agencies to ensure that regulated entities are aware of applicable requirements, and that there may be less need to invest in compliance assistance. For example, the operators of the pipelines PHMSA regulates are a small and well known community. Similarly, FSIS inspectors must be present at each meat, poultry, or egg products facility, at frequencies determined by the type of operation being conducted, for it to function. MSHA inspects a fixed number of mines, and its inspectors are often onsite; however, MSHA officials stated that some mines are better at complying with health and safety standards than other mines.

In contrast, large and heterogeneous communities present different needs and considerations that may inform agencies’ compliance assistance and enforcement resource decisions. When regulated entities are less likely to engage with inspectors or other federal officials, agencies’ decisions on allocating resources to ensure all regulated entities understand requirements and to elicit voluntary compliance are important. As previously discussed, OSHA regulates and monitors a large and diverse community of regulated entities. EBSA monitors approximately 685,000 private retirement plans and 2.2 million health plans, and similar numbers of other welfare benefit plans. CMS regulates more than 15,000 large and small nursing home facilities across the country. In contrast to its pipeline-related regulations, PHMSA also regulates a broad spectrum of transportation operators and hazardous materials, requiring a different approach to disseminating information and providing outreach.

At the selected agencies we reviewed, agency officials told us that the main objective of their regulatory enforcement efforts is to achieve compliance with regulatory requirements. The selected agencies we reviewed took different approaches to achieve compliance, and used compliance and enforcement tools to escalate pressure to get regulated entities to comply. For example, FDA officials told us that when the agency identifies noncompliance, it may not immediately sanction a regulated entity. Rather, the agency may begin with a meeting or call with the regulated entity to address the noncompliance, and gradually implement more serious regulatory compliance measures (such as a negative inspection report or warning letter) or even seek an injunction from the relevant court(s) if it cannot resolve the noncompliance.

APHIS also uses a range of compliance assistance activities to promote compliance and reserves its enforcement authority for the most serious situations and noncompliance. For example, APHIS officials told us it offers facilities struggling to maintain compliance the opportunity to work with trained compliance specialists to develop options and plans to promote future compliance. PHMSA officials told us the agency uses the Systems Integrity Safety Program as a non-adversarial tool that provides compliance assistance to regulated entities not currently in compliance. They said that the agency generally will not initiate enforcement actions against regulated entities enrolled in this program, but will pursue them if there are violations that PHMSA believes to be willful, and where a safety violation presents an imminent hazard.

Despite a common objective to elicit compliance, selected agency approaches to resource allocations for compliance and enforcement differ. While some agencies consider allocations for compliance and enforcement to implement each individual regulation, others allocate resources across regulations and regulatory programs. For example, Labor allocates compliance assistance and enforcement resources for individual regulations depending on multiple factors, such as the nature of the regulation and underlying subject matter. In contrast, EPA allocates resources across regulations, programs, and regions. Its Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance works with each regional office to allocate enforcement and compliance assistance resources for the various programs across EPA.

In addition, certain agencies we reviewed distinguish between compliance assistance and enforcement activities, while others view these activities as a joint effort. For example, EBSA allocates its resources between benefits advisors, who provide compliance assistance, and their enforcement staff. Conversely, OSHA inspectors provide compliance assistance to regulated entities in addition to their enforcement roles, supplementing onsite outreach and education provided by compliance assistance specialists located in regional offices.

To appropriately allocate their enforcement and compliance resources, selected agencies we reviewed also collect and review data to identify noncompliance trends. For example:

OSHA uses collected data to identify national and local special emphasis programs to highlight specific workplace health and safety issues as the focus of targeted outreach and enforcement efforts.

EBSA’s national office annually establishes enforcement priorities— and shifts resources to respond with new emphases—through its guidance outlined in its Enforcement Program Operating Plan. In preparing this guidance, EBSA assesses current enforcement activities, identifies recent enforcement trends, analyzes available information regarding industry activities and areas of noncompliance, and reviews current policy considerations to identify possible areas of potential risk within the employee benefit plan industry.

EPA officials told us they use their National Enforcement Initiatives to prioritize resources to compliance concerns that are particularly entrenched or problematic. Further, EPA initiated its Next Generation Compliance (NextGen) strategy to structure regulations and permits with new monitoring and information technology, expanded transparency, and innovative enforcement activities. NextGen was designed to increase transparency and real time information made possible by electronic reporting and advanced monitoring, and allows the agency and its stakeholders the opportunity to experiment with innovative approaches. Furthermore, EPA stated that it and its stakeholders are better able to identify and solve environmental issues, and address large regulated communities with approaches that go beyond traditional single facility inspections and enforcement.

Selected Agencies Have Made Efforts to Make Compliance Data Transparent and Accessible

Transparency and availability of data are important to promoting compliance and achieving regulatory objectives. The selected agencies that we reviewed have made efforts to make compliance and enforcement information more transparent and accessible to the public, including:

All the Labor subcomponents we reviewed made efforts to make data and information more publically accessible. MSHA developed online compliance tools that allow the public to monitor a mine’s compliance with key safety and health standards by providing a broad range of mine safety and health data, including information about mine inspections, accidents, injuries, illnesses, violations, employment, production totals, and air sampling. One of these tools is the “Rules to Live By Calculator,” which focuses on the 49 safety standards most often associated with fatal mining accidents and serious injuries.

EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database provides integrated compliance and enforcement data for over 800,000 regulated facilities on air emissions, surface water discharges, hazardous waste, and drinking water systems. The database includes EPA, state, local, and tribal environmental agency compliance and enforcement records that are reported into national databases. ECHO also incorporates EPA environmental data sets to provide additional context for analyses.

CMS created a “Nursing Home Compare” website to assist consumers in comparing information about nursing homes. The website contains detailed information on the quality of care and staffing information for more than 15,000 Medicare- and Medicaid- participating nursing homes including a five-star scale of quality ratings of overall and individual performance on health inspections, quality measures, and hours of care provided per resident by staff performing nursing care tasks.

Selected Agencies Reported They Evaluated Regulatory Decisions by Collecting Feedback, and Responses to Identified Noncompliance Varied

Selected Agencies Supplement Feedback on Effectiveness of Regulatory Design and Enforcement Approaches with Evaluations

While agency officials receive feedback on their regulations during rulemaking, they also have opportunities to receive feedback during implementation of the regulation and as part of later retrospective review efforts. In 2007 and 2014, we reported on retrospective reviews of individual regulations, which agencies use to evaluate how existing regulations work in practice. As mentioned previously, two executive orders issued in 2017 also emphasize the importance of retrospective review, and officials from two agencies told us that they are currently examining their regulatory evaluation processes in response to these directives. To supplement retrospective review efforts, officials told us that they collect feedback from both internal and external stakeholders on the effectiveness of their regulatory design and enforcement decisions. This feedback may occur during rulemaking or during implementation, and might prompt changes. For example:

EPA officials told us they provide opportunities for regulated entities to give feedback, and that they may reconvene the initial Regulatory Working Group for a rule if they heard complaints or concerns.

At DOT, FAA officials told us they collect feedback about potential needs to update or change rules through requests for exemptions and through their various advisory committees. According to PHMSA officials, advisory committee inputs or petitions are two ways they evaluate the success of their regulations.

MSHA officials told us that in response to comments received during rulemaking, they changed their rule on proximity detection systems for continuous mining machines, which protects miners from being struck by such machines. MSHA initially proposed specifying certain requirements for a technology but used a performance-based approach in its final rule. This experience subsequently informed MSHA’s proposed design for its new rule for proximity detection systems for mobile machines, in which the agency proposed a performance standard from the outset of the rulemaking.

A BIS enforcement official told us that his office requested a revision to an existing regulation that was difficult to enforce because it did not provide clear requirements for how companies could determine when a government-identified “red flag”—a party on BIS’ Unverified List— could be resolved. BIS received similar feedback from advisory committees and revised the regulation for clarity.

According to APHIS officials, they evaluate the effectiveness of their compliance and enforcement activities by tracking compliance rates under the Animal Welfare Act and through feedback from their regulated entities. USDA officials also stated that interactions with inspectors and listening sessions provide the department’s agencies with feedback.

Selected agency officials cited concerns about changing the design of established regulatory programs and the resources required for the rulemaking process. Two of our selected agencies mitigated these concerns by piloting new regulatory designs. USDA implemented an ongoing project—the HACCP Inspection Models Project—to assess the viability of applying potential performance-based regulations to ensure food safety at hog and poultry processing facilities. After assessing inspection findings for the poultry pilot project and in response to public comments on the program, they ultimately determined that the regulation should be broadened to additional facilities. FAA used feedback from pilot studies, in which more than 30 public-use airports participated, to inform a proposed rule for Airport Safety Management Systems.

Agencies also typically have flexibility to continue to change and adjust their compliance and enforcement strategies in response to feedback and evaluation without going through the rulemaking process to amend a final regulation. As previously mentioned, agencies assess the effectiveness of their enforcement and compliance efforts by collecting data to target their enforcement efforts. In addition, selected agencies identified evaluations of their enforcement and compliance efforts, including:

DOL’s Chief Evaluation Office officials told us they work with Labor components to (1) develop and implement research studies, (2) address how collected information is used to assess effectiveness, and (3) support data analysis to inform management decision making. For example, the office worked with OSHA to pilot changes to issuing and following up citations to increase employer responsiveness. The study, which began in 2015, found that employers who were part of the new citation process, which included elements such as a handout during inspections, postcard reminders, and a follow-up call, were 3.9 percentage points more likely to engage with OSHA.

EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance wrote a guide for EPA managers and staff on their integrated strategic approach to effectively eliciting compliance, focusing on compliance assistance, incentives, monitoring, enforcement, and other tools. EPA has also conducted research on what makes a regulation more likely to be complied with and identified principles and tools to aid in writing more effective regulations. For example, EPA directs rule drafters to use clear and objective regulatory requirements and applicability criteria, to structure regulations to make compliance easier than noncompliance, and to leverage regulated entities and/or third parties to assess compliance and prevent noncompliance. It also encourages agency officials to leverage accountability and transparency through e-reporting to government and public access to data on websites.

According to PHMSA officials, they developed formal enforcement goals, strategies, and metrics after reviewing leading practices for enforcement, including reviewing the compliance strategies at other DOT subcomponents. They analyzed data to identify commonalities between violations that are causal to incidents, as well as those that increased the severity of incidents. They also reviewed enforcement data to identify guidance that needs to be improved, provide feedback to inspectors, and ultimately provide ideas for improved rulemaking and regulatory design.

Selected Agency Responses to Continued Widespread Noncompliance Varied

Selected agencies responded differently when they identified continued widespread noncompliance through their evaluations or monitoring of compliance data. Some agencies told us they view a record of noncompliance as a fault in the regulation and may update their regulatory design, while others may change compliance strategies. FSIS officials told us they use enforcement data to analyze the effectiveness of their regulations, and may make changes to their regulations based on trends in noncompliance. According to PHMSA officials, they analyze enforcement data in several ways, including identifying regulations with the highest rates of noncompliance to understand weaknesses in individual regulations.

MSHA officials told us that when an Inspector General audit found that its enforcement actions were not strong enough for repeat violators, the agency updated its Pattern of Violations regulation to better attain compliance. Conversely, OSHA officials told us that they view persistent noncompliance or workplace injuries and illness as indicating a need to revisit and readdress how compliance assistance is being provided and enforcement applied, rather than as a reason to adjust the regulation. EPA officials told us that they will update an existing regulation to solve an ongoing compliance problem only as a last resort due to the large resource investment required and disruption to regulated entities to adapt to changes in regulatory design.

Key Considerations Could Strengthen Agency Regulatory Design and Enforcement Decisions

We built upon current statutory and executive requirements and selected agencies’ current practices to identify key considerations to strengthen agency processes for regulatory design and enforcement decisions. As agency officials craft regulations, they are guided by high-level statutory requirements, economic principles in executive orders, and OMB directives and resources. In accordance with those directives, our selected agencies have implemented varied practices to facilitate their regulatory design and enforcement decisions. Based on our review of those directives and the selected agencies’ processes, as well as academic and practitioner research, past IG work and our own past work, and existing criteria and resources for federal managers, we identified key considerations for regulatory design and compliance to aid decision makers in designing—or redesigning—their regulations and determining how best to elicit compliance.

The following key considerations for regulatory design and compliance in figure 1 are intended to serve as a resource to supplement existing directives and guidance. We identified these considerations to bridge the gap between high-level directives and current agency practices. These considerations can provide criteria for decision makers to identify, assess, and evaluate options for achieving their regulatory objectives. Further, we have offered elements for each consideration as concrete questions that agencies can ask themselves as they design their regulatory approaches to elicit compliance within statutory authority and available resources. Not all considerations are applicable in every instance. We recognize there are tradeoffs inherent in any choice, but we believe that these key considerations can strengthen agency decision making, resulting in more informed designs, plans for evaluations, and ongoing changes to compliance and enforcement approaches.

We provided a draft of this report to the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Labor, and Transportation, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget for comment. The Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and Labor and the Environmental Protection Agency provided technical comments that were incorporated as appropriate. The Departments of Commerce and Transportation and the Office of Management and Budget did not provide comments.

As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents of this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days from the report date. At that time, we will send copies to the appropriate congressional committees, the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Labor, and Transportation; the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; the Director of the Office of Management and Budget; and other interested parties. In addition, the report is available at no charge on the GAO website at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please contact me at (202) 512-6806 or krauseh@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made key contributions to this report are listed in appendix II.

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

You asked us to review how agencies make key decisions related to regulatory design, compliance and enforcement, and updating of regulations. This report describes how selected agencies report (1) making decisions on regulatory designs among available options, (2) making decisions to designate resources among available compliance and enforcement activities, and (3) evaluating those decisions, and also identifies (4) key considerations for decision makers related to regulatory design and enforcement.

To describe agency experiences and decisions regarding regulatory design and compliance and how they evaluate those decisions, we reviewed regulatory processes at 6 departments and 13 subcomponents within those departments. To illustrate a wide range of regulatory designs and resulting compliance activities, we selected the six executive branch departments—excluding the Department of Defense—that promulgated the most significant regulations between September 1, 2011 and August 31, 2016. These departments were the United States Departments of Agriculture (USDA), Commerce (Commerce), Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor (Labor), and Transportation (DOT), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Among other inputs, the selected departments were also among those that most often promulgated regulations that were anticipated to affect small entities (such as small businesses, nonprofits, and governments) during the same time period. We used reginfo.gov to identify the number of significant regulations. We assessed the reliability of those data by reviewing relevant documentation, interviewing knowledgeable agency officials, and electronically and manually testing the data for missing values, outliers, and invalid values, and we found the data to be sufficiently reliable for the purpose of identifying selected departments. The experiences of these selected executive branch departments are illustrative and nongeneralizable.

From these departments, we selected subcomponents for nongeneralizable case studies. These subcomponents were selected based on information provided by department officials engaged in regulatory activities on their departmental subcomponents’ use of a variety of regulatory designs and any experience making changes to their regulatory design or compliance strategies based on new information (such as evaluations) or new circumstances (such as evolving technologies or changes in agency resources for compliance). We also asked department officials about subcomponents’ use of compliance activities other than traditional compliance assistance and enforcement. To further inform our selection of subcomponents, we reviewed past Inspector General and our own work on types of regulatory designs and compliance strategies. We did not include independent regulatory agencies in our scope as they are not subject to directives from the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Furthermore, many independent agencies promulgate and administrate financial regulations, which present different considerations and have been the focus of other work we performed. In reviewing enforcement strategies used by agencies, we did not review federal regulatory programs for which enforcement has been delegated to states or localities.

To illustrate how our selected agencies make decisions regarding regulatory design and compliance and how they evaluate those decisions, we reviewed agency written procedures and interviewed department and subcomponent officials on their practices for making these decisions. To develop themes and examples from our documentary and testimonial evidence, we analyzed information from relevant documents and interviews to identify and confirm common patterns as well as differences across selected agencies. These experiences illustrate how the selected agencies currently make these decisions, the outcomes of those decision- making processes, and their evaluation practices.

To identify key considerations for decision makers related to regulatory design and enforcement, we reviewed existing criteria documents, including (1) elements of the Regulatory Flexibility Act; (2) applicable executive orders and guidance such as Executive Order 12866 and OMB Circulars A-4, A-11, and A-123; and (3) resources for federal managers, and leading practices we had previously reported on for enterprise risk management.

To ensure that our considerations incorporated applicable academic and government research and findings we conducted a literature review. Our literature review incorporated searches of several academic, literature, and government sources—including bibliographic databases such as ProQuest, Scopus, Academic OneFile, Public Affairs Information Service, and LexisNexis—for articles or studies published from January 2011 through August 2016. The team searched for articles using several combinations of relevant key words such as: “regulatory design,” “regulatory structure,” “regulatory compliance,” and “regulatory enforcement.” We then identified the articles that were relevant to our objectives based on the independent review of two team analysts. In addition, we searched our own and selected federal Inspector General websites for any reports relevant to our objectives. These searches were not meant to be a comprehensive search of all available literature on the topic, but rather conducted to identify relevant work to inform our identification of key regulatory design and enforcement considerations for decision makers.

We developed a data collection instrument for each of the academic and government literature search sources and our own reports. To analyze and summarize the results of the academic literature search, two analysts independently reviewed each relevant record in the search results to document information that was relevant to our objectives and to identify key themes to inform our key considerations. We reviewed all relevant articles and reports and summarized information in the data collection instrument that related to the following topics: regulatory design; regulatory design principles; enforcement and compliance; enforcement and compliance principles; regulatory or subject matter area; and general observations that were relevant to the engagement’s objectives. In addition, we reviewed the annotated citations and references in selected articles to identify additional articles to include in the literature review and ensure that we were not omitting key literature related to regulatory design and enforcement.

After applying identified criteria—including key practices and elements of those practices—to decision making about regulatory design and compliance, we obtained input on those considerations with officials from our selected agencies and with subject matter specialists. We initially selected and interviewed relevant specialists based on the results of our literature review (i.e., the authors of relevant articles or books included in our review). Based on suggestions from those individuals, we expanded our list of specialists and conducted a second round of interviews, ultimately speaking with 14 specialists. These considerations were also refined by the current practices and approaches of the selected agencies we reviewed.

We conducted this performance audit from August 2016 to October 2017 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Appendix II: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

GAO Contact

Heather Krause at (202) 512-6806 or krauseh@gao.gov.

Acknowledgments

In addition to the contact named above, key contributors to this report were Tim Bober, Assistant Director, Alexandra Edwards, Danny Berg, and Travis Hill. In addition, John Hussey, Timothy Guinane, Andrea Levine, Kayla Robinson, Robert Robinson, and Cynthia Saunders provided key assistance.