Tag Archives: standards

Beyond a destination and towards a culture: Corporate transparency regulations

The private sector plays a critical role in achieving economic and social goals through providing goods and services, employment and tax revenue. Corporate vehicles such as companies, trusts, foundations, partnerships, and other types of legal persons and arrangements, make up a large share of the private sector. Although corporate transparency is a standard business practice of most companies, other corporate vehicles have less transparency as revealed by the International Consortium of Journalists in the Panama Papers. Corporate transparency regulations need always to balance measures aimed at catching bad actors with measures that encourage voluntary transparency, to avoid overly burdensome rules. This howtoregulate article focuses on good examples of corporate transparency regulations and highlighting opportunities for improvement. Continue reading Beyond a destination and towards a culture: Corporate transparency regulations

Typology of referencing in regulations

Referencing in regulations is becoming more common in a globalised and interconnected world. Jurisdictions recognise that other bodies, or organisations both within and outside their jurisdiction, have more expertise in a given sector and so it makes sense to reference such bodies / organisations. In fact such referencing is justified based on efficiency, limited resources and consistency. However, some referencing in regulations has not been conceived well and so this howtoregulate article provides a roadmap of considerations that a regulator ought to take into account before making a reference, external to the piece of regulation. Continue reading Typology of referencing in regulations

Referring to standards: never think there is no further alternative

In particular for technical sectors, regulators tend to refer to international or national standards as a means to set up requirements. This article examines some risks and downsides of (classic) direct and specific referencing, a referencing that makes the standards mandatory (A.). Furthermore it presents a matrix that can be used to generate dozens or hundreds of alternative techniques of referencing that avoid these risks and downsides and describes in more details a few favourite techniques (B.). Continue reading Referring to standards: never think there is no further alternative

Cybersecurity: Regulating the Virtual World

Smart grids, electronic commerce, digital government, and health services are but a few of the many possibilities offered by the advancement of technology and expansion of cyberspace. We could only agree with the Indonesian legislator that activities in cyberspace are virtual activities that have actual impacts on our lives. Cybersecurity breaches cover – among others – denial of services, physical theft, crime ware, cyberespionage, and web application attacks. Continue reading Cybersecurity: Regulating the Virtual World