The Management of Regulation Development: Out of the Shadows

In most federal mission areas-from low-income housing to food safety to higher education assistance-national goals are achieved through the use of various policy tools, such as direct spending, grants, loans and loan guarantees, insurance, tax preferences, and regulations. Although policy tools have proliferated in recent decades, knowledge of how to design and manage the federal policy tool set has not kept pace. Policy makers need a better understanding of how individual policy tools such as regulation operate, how to measure their performance and effectiveness, which actors participate in implementing them, and what features are necessary to ensure accountability and oversight.

Kerwin contends that the greatest challenge facing the management of regulation development is the persistence of its obscurity. His report represents an important step toward removing some of that obscurity and helping raise regulation development management to a level of prominence befitting its impact on public policy. Organizational Transformation