The project will support country-level operational pilots that experiment with alternative ways of introducing Good Regulatory Practices (GRP) in a country. Use of ICT will be an integral part of the project and will be leveraged in most, if not all, pilots. The pilots will be implemented through World Bank Group operational projects and will be an integral part of those.

The pilots will cover one or more of the following GRP areas:

1. Regulatory Policy and Delivery Reviews (a diagnostic tool)

2. Evidence-based policy-making (i.e. through Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA))

3. Notice and Comment systems

4. Business-to-Government feedback mechanisms on reform implementation

5. Systemic Investor Response Mechanisms

6. Closing the Implementation Gap and Uncertainty of G2B Services (CGU)

These components are described below:

Component 1. Regulatory Policy and Delivery (RPD) Review. This is a diagnostic/analytical tool that provides a comprehensive overview and assessment of government-wide policies, institutions, procedures and tools used to prepare, assess, consult, implement and monitor regulation. The RPD Reviews are intended to help improve the understanding of the operation, quality and effectiveness of regulatory systems. The Reviews will identify and recommend options for prioritized improvements of countries' regulatory management systems.

Component 2. Evidence-based policy-making: Based on knowledge products developed under project 601180 this activity will provide guidance and options for improving the design and implementation for systems for evidence-based regulatory policy-making. In this capacity the program will provide guidance to two pilots. This support will not be comprehensive in terms of covering a full RIA design and implementation program, but rather it will complementary to ongoing reform efforts.

Component 3. Notice and Comment Systems: Such mechanisms will help increase regulatory predictability and enhance the quality of regulatory design by leveraging the knowledge of the citizen and private sector in the formulation of regulations. A focused approach to introducing Notice and Comment systems in developing countries will be developed covering integration of technical, regulatory and institutional, user mobilization and M&E dimensions, and piloted in 4-5 countries.

Component 4: Business-to-Government Feedback Mechanisms on Reform Implementation: These will generate just-in-time information on the quality of reform implementation and will be customized to specific regulatory reforms. The findings can trigger corrective actions by government to close implementation gaps, with the effectiveness of such actions verified through follow-on surveys. Component 5; Systemic Investor Response Mechanism (SIRM): The SIRM has two main elements:1) implementation of a protocol designed to enable the administration to coordinate its agencies to timely react and catch and resolve investors' grievances well before they escalate to legal disputes and 2) implementation of an ICT tool to track the investment at risk of being lost due to government conduct that is afterwards retained.

Component 6; Closing the Implementation Gap and Uncertainty of G2B Services (CGU): In some countries a lack of trust between the private and public sectors may hinder the collection of information on excessive discretionary behavior through feedback loops or surveys. The CGU approach can address this issue by developing an evidence base of objective data at the point of service delivery (i.e. the contact point between firms and the public agency) and support governments in developing performance measures based on the findings. The CGU work will measure the actual experience during those interactions based on objectively verifiable statistics (e.g. originating from tracking actual case files) compared to relevant regulations.