No abstract

Companies are required by law to report all kinds of information to various public agencies. Since most public agencies are autonomous and define their information demands independent of each other, companies have to report information to various agencies in different ways. Accordingly, governments are initiating programs that aim to transform business-to government information exchange to reduce the administrative burden for companies and improve the accountability at the same time. Yet little research is available on the type of transformations needed and the role of the infrastructure. Drawing on a case study, this paper investigates the interplay between technical infrastructure and transformation. In this case study an information brokerage infrastructure based on the Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) was developed providing a one stop shop for companies and public agencies. The case study shows that the infrastructure should be flexible enough to accommodate changes over time but stable enough to attract a large user-base. The increase in efficiency and effectiveness of information exchange processes requires extensive transformation from both public and private parties.

Regulation based on Continuous Control Monitoring could reduce the administrative burden for companies. Often, companies already have elaborate internal control and quality management systems. Instead of periodic physical inspections, regulatory supervision can partly be automated and performed on a continuous basis. The regulator gets access to a validated copy of key data elements from the company's internal information systems, which serve as indicator of compliance to specific control objectives. In this paper we describe an information architecture for continuous control monitoring, and show how it can be applied to supervision of regulatory compliance. The approach is illustrated by a pilot project in the Netherlands of applying continuous control monitoring to food safety regulations in the meat processing industry. Participants concluded that the approach is technically feasible but requires a different mindset towards regulation, and a clear business case.

No abstract

No abstract