Newsletter n. 2/2022 | March-May
Are you up to date on the latest news from the Better Regulation world?
In the fourth number of the newsletter - the second of 2022, the Chair continues with the aim to keep its readers up to date with the news of the last 3 months on better regulation.
Moreover, the opportunity is welcomed to remind of the "Good Regulatory Practice" contest, organised in collaboration with the Observatory on Italian Independent Regulators' RIA and under the patronage of the Ministry for Public Administration and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - OECD.
In order to accomodate requests received from several administrations, the deadline is extended to the 1st of July 2022.
The news that appear in this number concern, for instance, the first Regulation on the use of artificial intelligence by a public authority in Italy, the Regulatory Scrutiny Board (RSB) 2021 Annual Report and the EU Standardisation strategy.
Besides, the content of the news testifies the continued focus on new technologies, such as "Public Contracts and Innovations", “Digital assets" and "Algorithm's impact assessment".
Furthermore, the newsletter presents the book "Diritto Amministrativo Effettivo", written by Guido Corso, Maria De Benedetto and Nicoletta Rangone (JM Chair).
As always, the Chair suggests you the latest publications and the past and upcoming conferences of potential interest.
The website welcomes research notes, in English or in Italian, from whoever has special interest in the regulatory landscape.
You can read here past issues of the newsletter.
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Latest News |
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On 2 February, the European Commission announced its new Standardisation Strategy, which seeks to help the European Union achieve its goals of a greener and more digital economy. Therefore, by becoming a more relevant player in the global economy, in line with the Industrial Strategy 2020.
The initiative's purpose is for the EU to regain its waning power over the international organisations that set the norms and standards for the products and services we use every day.
Keep reading »
[Registazione] Presentazione "Diritto amministrativo effettivo. Una introduzione" di Guido Corso, Maria De Benedetto e Nicoletta Rangone
AIR Observatory's Quarterly Review: n. 2/2022| Rassegna Trimestrale Osservatorio AIR: n. 2/2022
The April 2022 issue (XIII-2) of the AIR Observatory's Quarterly Review is out.
With the end of the state of emergency, which has lasted for more than two years, the AIR Observatory Quarterly Review returns to diversify the topics related to regulation, which have inevitably focused in the last period on the emergency, from its regulatory management to its implications on activities and approaches.
Keep reading »
The analysis of the impact of algorithms used by public administrations is nowadays considered one of the tools aimed at preventing new technologies from producing negative effects on citizens. In a recent report by the European Law Institute, model rules are proposed to regulate precisely this type of impact assessment.
Keep reading »
 The BioLaw Journal recently published its issue n. 1/2022, entitled "AI & Law | Law and power in the digital age" with a focus on “Smart cities and central administrations facing artificial intelligence: comparing experiences”. The issue contains two reports on these topics.
This focus completes the in-depth study presented in issue 4/2021 of Bio-Law Journal, on the use of artificial intelligence in the Italian administrative system.
The research was curated by Edoardo Chiti, Barbara Marchetti and Nicoletta Rangone in the working group dedicated to the topic “Administration and Artificial Intelligence” within a wider Astrid study on “AI and legal profiles” (coordinated by Alessandro Pajno and Filippo Donati).
Keep reading »
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On 12 May 2022, the Regulatory Scrutiny Board (RSB) published its 2021 Annual Report.
Тhe report was prepared in accordance with Article 11(4) of the Rules of Procedure of the RSB.
The sixth year of operation of the RSB is described as the busiest ever. Indeed, the Board managed to scrutinise 98 impact assessments and evaluations: an 81% increase from the previous year's workload.
Keep reading »
During the conference “Public Contracts and Innovations” held on April 6th 2022 at Palazzo Spada, numerous problems that afflict public procurement have been addressed, while also providing many suggestions for simplification from a digital perspective. The audience of speakers testifies to the importance, both in the current phase and in the phase immediately following the entry into force of the new regulatory framework on public contracts scheduled by the end of the year, of the need for close collaboration between the judiciary, legal practitioners and academia. In fact, only through dialogue and cooperation between these parties can guidelines and common elements be identified to ensure the success of the decree to be adopted.
Keep reading »
The regulation of digital assets is highly topical today. The European Law Institute has drawn up a draft aimed at regulating the hypothesis in which security interests, i.e., guarantees for the protection of a credit, are created on digital assets. Taking into account the peculiarities of these assets (above all, their intangibility), the proposed regulation tends towards a 'remodulation' of the civil law categories on the subject of guarantees.
Keep reading »
On April 22, 2022, Howard Kunreuther, James G Dinan Professor Emeritus operations information and decisions department of the Wharton School and CO-Director Emeritus of the Wharton risk management and Decision Process Center, was invited to the “ The Not Unreasonable Podcast”, led by David Wright.
Professor Kundreuther has been involved in a stimulating discussion on risk and cognitive biases, by focusing on low probability and high consequence disasters and with particular attention to topical situations – such as climate change and pandemics. 
Digital Versus Human Algorithms | C. Coglianese; A. Lai [repost from The Regulatory Review]
Algorithms, at their most basic level, consist of a series of steps used to reach a result. Cooking recipes are algorithms, mathematical equations are algorithms, and computer programs are algorithms.
Today, advanced machine-learning algorithms can process large volumes of data and generate highly accurate predictions. They increasingly drive internet search engines, retail marketing campaigns, weather forecasts, and precision medicine. Government agencies have even begun to adopt machine-learning algorithms for adjudicatory and enforcement actions to enhance public administration. Keep reading »
The Corriere della Sera offers an interesting discussion between Riccardo Viale and Gerd Gigerenzer on the limits of artificial intelligence.
Keep reading »
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The submissions should concern news on better regulation tools, simplification policies, markets regulation, new technologies and regulation, cognitive-based regulation, and competition advocacy. The note might regard a newly published paper or a European, international, national or local document as well as policy devoted to these topics.
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Publications |
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Critics raise alarm bells about governmental use of digital algorithms, charging that they are too complex, inscrutable, and prone to bias. A realistic assessment of digital algorithms, though, must acknowledge that government is already driven by algorithms of arguably greater complexity and potential for abuse: the algorithms implicit in human decision-making. The human brain operates algorithmically through complex neural networks. And when humans make collective decisions, they operate via algorithms too—those reflected in legislative, judicial, and administrative processes. Yet these human algorithms undeniably fail and are far from transparent. On an individual level, human decision-making suffers from memory limitations, fatigue, cognitive biases, and racial prejudices, among other problems. On an organizational level, humans succumb to groupthink and free-riding, along with other collective dysfunctionalities. As a result, human decisions will in some cases prove far more problematic than their digital counterparts. Digital algorithms, such as machine learning, can improve governmental performance by facilitating outcomes that are more accurate, timely, and consistent. Still, when deciding whether to deploy digital algorithms to perform tasks currently completed by humans, public officials should proceed with care on a case-by-case basis. They should consider both whether a particular use would satisfy the basic preconditions for successful machine learning and whether it would in fact lead to demonstrable improvements over the status quo. The question about the future of public administration is not whether digital algorithms are perfect. Rather, it is a question about what will work better: human algorithms or digital ones.
 A growing body of literature discusses the impact of machine-learning algorithms on regulatory processes. This paper contributes to the predominantly legal and technological literature by using a sociological-institutional perspective to identify nine organisational challenges for using algorithms in regulatory practice. Firstly, this paper identifies three forms of algorithms and regulation: regulation of algorithms, regulation through algorithms, and regulation of algorithms through algorithms. Secondly, we identify nine organisational challenges for regulation of and through algorithms based on literature analysis and empirical examples from Dutch regulatory agencies. Finally, we indicate what kind of institutional work regulatory agencies need to carry out to overcome the challenges and to develop an algorithmic regulatory practice, which calls for future empirical research.
This handbook is published in the context of AI Watch, the European Commission’s knowledge service to monitor the development, uptake and impact of AI for Europe, which was launched in December 2018 as part of the Coordinated Plan on the Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence Made in Europe. As part of the AI Watch, a specific Task addresses the role of AI for the public sector, and it is set out to provide actionable guidelines for the adoption of AI in the public sector in the EU. The public sector deserves special attention in this regard, as it differs from the private sector in a number of ways and features.
V.L. Raposo (2022)
Ex machina: preliminary critical assessment of the European Draft Act on artificial intelligence
This article will unpack the European Draft Act on Artificial Intelligence (AI), the first (both in Europe and in the world) far-reaching regulation in this domain. It categorizes AI systems in three (eventually four) levels of risk and it assigns to each level a particular legal framework, with its own limitations and obligations. The Draft Act was created for laudable purposes, namely to harmonize digital development with fundamental rights and European values. However, similar to many other ambitious projects, it falls short in many ways. As this article will show, several issues are incompletely regulated, and there are doubts about the exact scope and content of the legal solutions outlined in the draft. It also potentially overlaps with several other European norms, introducing the possibility of conflicts. Finally, the law’s focus on fundamental rights may come at the price of digital innovation, although critics claim that the Draft Act does not go far enough to protect such rights.
On 21 April 2021, the European Commission presented its long-awaited proposal for a Regulation “laying down harmonized rules on Artificial Intelligence”, the so-called “Artificial Intelligence Act” (AIA). This article takes a critical look at the proposed regulation. After an introduction (1), the paper analyzes the unclear preemptive effect of the AIA and EU competences (2), the scope of application (3), the prohibited uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) (4), the provisions on high-risk AI systems (5), the obligations of providers and users (6), the requirements for AI systems with limited risks (7), the enforcement system (8), the relationship of the AIA with the existing legal framework (9), and the regulatory gaps (10). The last section draws some final conclusions (11).
G. Corso, M. De Benedetto, N. Rangone (2022)
Diritto Amministrativo Effettivo
Il volume affronta il tema dell'effettività delle regole e delle decisioni amministrative quale elemento fondante dello stato di diritto. Come il contesto pandemico e il PNRR hanno messo in evidenza, decisioni e regole effettive sono essenziali per costruire relazioni di fiducia tra cittadini e istituzioni. Ma per conseguire maggiore effettività occorre oggi un profondo ripensamento dell'organizzazione e dell'attività amministrativa: processi decisionali basati su evidenze empiriche, attenzione agli individui reali (stakeholders e decisori pubblici), verifica dei risultati raggiunti e supporto di cittadini e imprese, uso consapevole delle nuove tecnologie. Attraverso la lente dell'effettività gli autori rileggono cruciali sistemi di regolazione amministrativa quali la fiscalità, l'ordine pubblico e la sanità: una ricognizione preziosa e attuale per gli studenti che a diversi livelli affrontano insegnamenti di diritto amministrativo sostanziale, ma anche per i funzionari pubblici e gli amministratori che si interrogano sullo svolgimento delle loro funzioni.
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Conferences |
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The Jean Monnet Chair on EU Approach to Better Regulation aim is to contribute to solutions for the crisis of confidence in regulation at all levels of governance. Its research focuses on the key European tools of Better Regulation (impact assessment, regulatory burden measurement, ex-post evaluation, consultation), the in-practice application, the elaboration of how they can be reframed according to a cognitive-based approach.
The Chair goal is also to inform and raise awareness among citizens on their rights and opportunities when confronted with a regulatory process or a regulation. The Chair addresses all the above, with a theoretical/practical and multidisciplinary approach blending law, economics, and psychology, within its teachings. The latter are divided into three courses. The EU Approach to Better Regulation (40hrs) and Better Regulation Advanced (20hrs) Master courses for students that have traditionally received fragmented training in European Regulation and that - without this opportunity - would probably never come into contact with studies on European Regulation. The Intensive Professional Course (30 hours) for practitioners and future professionals which meets unanswered demands for training in the use of all Better Regulation tools.
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