How can we understand how the stock of regulation impacts business?

Written by Ben Leich, Economic Advisor at Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

BEIS GovTech Challenge: Identifying regulatory obligations on business: taking stock and building insights

What is the opportunity

The historical build-up of legislation and regulation can create disproportionate burden on businesses.  

The Better Regulation Executive (BRE) and the department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) are looking at tech solutions to analyse the cumulative effect of different regulations on business.

Successful solutions would help policy makers develop regulations which would be easier for businesses to comply with.

This problem is not unique to the UK, so if a solution is developed there is potentially a wider, global market.

Description

We’re seeking tech solutions to the following problems:

  1. How can we analyse the stock of existing legislation to find out which regulations affect which businesses and sectors?
  2. How can we better understand the difficulties businesses and sectors face when complying with regulations?
  3. How can we better identify where regulations overlap and how this impacts on business?  

There are several things that make regulations more complicated and challenging for businesses to comply with. These include:

  • the length, complexity and scope of regulations
  • frequent changes to regulations
  • overlaps between different regulations
  • the different types and amount of regulation

The majority of the stock of UK regulation is stored at www.legislation.gov.uk. It’s free for anyone to use and republish. It’s updated regularly.

We welcome different approaches to tackling this challenge.

Your solution must be accessible and usable for a range of government policymakers.

Process

The challenge will open on 14  January for applications, and the competition details will be published on GOV.UK. Registration will close on 20 February, and the competition will close on 27 February.

If you’d like to subscribe to our mailing list or have any questions, please email us.

If you’re interested in applying for this competition we’ll be hosting a launch event for this challenge in BEIS in the afternoon on 16 January. Details are here.

What do suppliers get

This is a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition which has 2 phases. In Phase 1 there is the opportunity to apply for up to £50k (inc. VAT) for a feasibility study resulting in a technical and commercial specification. If you’re successful in Phase 1 there will be an opportunity to bid for up to £500k funding for Phase 2 to prototype a full solution. Five projects will be selected for phase 1 and up to two will be taken forward to phase 2. You’ll keep the intellectual property of any solution you develop.

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