| Inspections Reforms: Front line Between the State and the Market |
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Government inspections are on the front line between the state and the market, and are an essential component of the modern regulatory state. Reform of inspection systems, procedures and practices is one of the Jacobs, Cordova & Associates specialties. This is a particularly difficult reform challenge, because inspectorates are decentralized, and human behavior and incentives are difficult to change. Like regulations, regulatory inspections are proliferating, often with little impact on the level of compliance with laws and regulations. However, if the underlying legal requirements are well-targeted and well-designed so that they create more benefits than costs, and if inspections are carried out efficiently and disciplined by accountability and due process, inspections can be beneficial to society. We have advised many countries on inspections reforms, often in the context of broader regulatory reform effort. On each project, we tailored our advice to national political and economic realities. In this work, we apply the quality principles that we developed for the IFC toolkit Good Practices for Business Inspections Guidelines for Reformers (see Figure 1). We have also worked extensively on alternatives to traditional inspection systems. Please see selected inspection reforms we have carried out here |