Reinforcing Regulatory Frameworks through Standards, Measurements and Assurance

1. Assessment and recommendations

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the key findings and recommendations on the interactions of the standards, quality assurance (QI) and regulatory landscape and provides a quick overview of the main conclusions of this report.

A well-functioning and strategically integrated standards and quality assurance system (often called quality infrastructure or QI) can enhance the effectiveness, efficiency, and agility of regulatory frameworks. When standards, metrology, accreditation, conformity assessment, and market surveillance, which make up this QI system, are considered as part of regulatory design and delivery, they offer governments a broader and more flexible set of tools to meet policy objectives, particularly in rapidly evolving areas such as digitalisation, and innovation. By drawing on standards and quality assurance, governments can better calibrate regulatory approaches across the spectrum—from voluntary to mandatory—enabling risk-based, proportionate interventions that encourage innovation while safeguarding public interests. This can also foster alignment with international practices, improving cross-border coherence and reducing trade frictions.

However, in practice, the integration of standards and quality assurance systems into regulatory processes remains uneven. Policymakers often overlook the technical capacities required to deliver regulations on the ground, leading to implementation gaps, underestimation of compliance costs, and missed opportunities for more adaptive, innovation-friendly rules. Businesses may struggle to navigate fragmented or poorly co-ordinated national QI systems, particularly in the absence of clear guidance or when standards and conformity assessment procedures vary across jurisdictions. Moreover, limited co-ordination between regulators and QI bodies such as national standards, metrology or accreditation bodies, insufficient visibility of QI services in the policy cycle, and underinvestment in institutional capacities can all undermine the potential of standards and quality assurance to support better regulation. Addressing these challenges requires governments to more systematically assess and plan for the national QI implications of regulatory proposals, strengthen governance arrangements, and promote structured collaboration between QI institutions and regulatory authorities.

This section provides a summary of the assessments and recommendations structured in line with the subsequent chapters.

An optimised and well-functioning standards and quality assurance system (known as quality infrastructure or QI) can support better design and delivery of regulations

While standards become mandatory when they are required by technical regulations, they are more often voluntary. Standards and quality assurance systems can create flexible governance frameworks that evolve with societal and market needs and can be a tool utilised in the spectrum of governance, from self-regulation through to command and control regulation. Voluntary use of QI services such as standards and conformity assessment can enable businesses to earn recognition and self-regulate, while increasing their competitiveness and traction in the market. Governments can set out high-level policy objectives (e.g., on environmental performance) and then refer to technical standards that businesses can use to demonstrate compliance and manage risks adequately. Using standards in this way can drive innovation by providing a clear, yet flexible framework that encourages industry-led solutions, while remaining aligned to policy objectives. This approach can enhance regulatory efficiency and foster collaboration between public and private sectors. On the other hand, in the absence of clearly defined regulatory requirements, navigating the often-complex landscape of private, public and international standards can prove a challenging task for businesses.

QI services, including standards, metrology, accreditation, conformity assessment, and market surveillance, are the backbone for the implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of regulations. When policymakers design regulations, it is therefore essential that they assess the needs of the national QI services to deliver policies. Failing to account for these services can affect economic activity, lead to inefficiencies, hinder compliance, and weaken the intended impact of regulations. This can also lead to underestimating the costs imposed by new regulations. Integrating market surveillance insights into the regulatory cycle creates a continuous feedback loop, allowing regulators and QI bodies to assess the effectiveness of existing regulations and standards. By analysing compliance trends and identifying gaps or emerging risks, policymakers can refine regulations to enhance consumer protection and keep pace with technological advancements and market shifts. This iterative approach ensures that regulatory frameworks remain responsive, efficient, and aligned with evolving industry needs.

Recommendations

• Policymakers should make use of flexible regulatory frameworks by utilising standards and quality assurance (QI) tools that can be more responsive than legislation to market innovations and stakeholder needs. This includes referring to standards, utilising accredited conformity assessment schemes and the scientific expertise of national metrology institutes to foster innovation.

• Governments should make use of regulatory impact assessment to anticipate the standards and quality assurance services needed to demonstrate compliance. Guidelines on regulatory impacts assessment should include how standards, metrology, accreditation, and conformity assessment are required to implement regulations, and a requirement to assess their capacity-building needs and costing. As part of completing a regulatory impact assessment, policymakers could systematically consider whether market-led or voluntary approaches, which often use QI tools, are sufficient or whether regulation is required. Policymakers should consult QI bodies when drafting regulations.

• Policymakers should help “close the loop” between regulatory design and delivery by leveraging standards and quality assurance services. Governments can assess data and insights from inspections, conformity assessment, and market surveillance to inform new or updated regulations and standards. Policymakers should enable technical capacities to collect, store and assess data, and foster data integration with conformity assessment bodies (CAB)s and market surveillance bodies.

Enabling effective governance for the standards and quality assurance (QI) and regulatory systems

The governance and institutional location of standards and quality assurance bodies vary according to national specificities, dependent on different country and historical contexts. The location of QI institutions in federal or national regulatory structures determines their autonomy and independence in delivering their remits and how they interact with and deliver against key policy priorities and guidelines. This diversity can add complexity for regulators when considering standards and quality assurance in regulatory processes, if knowledge about the different QI actors and their setup is limited. Similarly, if QI bodies do not have sufficient visibility and influence, regulators may lack incentives to consider them for regulatory design and delivery.

Preserving the integrity, independence and impartiality of QI bodies is essential to enable the most effective, evidence-based standards and quality assurance tools that can optimise regulatory outcomes. For a well-functioning QI system optimised to support regulatory outcomes, it is important to ensure the integrity of QI bodies, that they can provide evidence-based advice to policymakers, and conduct their processes on standards, measurement and assurance in an impartial, and where required, independent manner. Ensuring the impartiality and integrity of the QI system is critical to preventing capture of processes on standards and quality assurance by specific interests, and ensuring standards and quality assurance provide the best support for all interested stakeholders across business, policy and citizens.

Co-ordination between regulatory and QI bodies is an important aspect of achieving policy outcomes in both the public or private sectors. The report underlines the wealth of opportunities offered by better co-ordination between QI and regulators, particularly in addressing global challenges such as the green transition and enabling efficient use of new digital tools. Nevertheless, collaboration among QI bodies, regulators and government institutions can be lacking across the policy cycle, from the design to the implementation and enforcement of rules. For co-ordination to be successful, regulatory systems can benefit from a legal and organisational framework for co-ordination and co-operation put in place by governments with their QI bodies.

Standards and quality assurance infrastructure services are essential in delivering the vision set out in high-level policy strategies. When drafting high-level sectoral strategies such as on infrastructure, health or development policies, governments should anticipate the need of QI services. This would allow QI bodies to prepare and allocate resources, and governments to develop capacities where needed. For instance, developing an overarching “quality policy” can help align QI services to national policy priorities and anticipate the governance required, and by extension, help government strategically utilise QI bodies to best serve policy priorities.

However, standards and quality assurance bodies and their services should modernise to keep pace with the digital transition and to ensure that their engagement and funding models are sustainable and fit for purpose in a digital world. For instance, where standards take several years to develop, they may rapidly require updates due to the pace of technological change.

Similarly, the variance of national standards and quality assurance systems around the world, and complexity of how they interact with each other, and with regulators, can make the standards and quality assurance landscape difficult to navigate for businesses and governments. It is imperative that governments and QI bodies work together to streamline how they operate, harmonise and simplify to reduce proliferation of standards, frameworks and guidance. This requires collaboration across business, QI bodies and governments to harmonise governance tools, as the proliferation of norms can be due to increasing private standards (developed by NGO’s and businesses) and public standards (developed by QI bodies and governments).

Recommendations

• Governments should optimise their national standards and quality assurance systems by setting an explicit high-level policy on the setup and utilisation of QI, and on the co-ordination mechanisms among governments, regulators and QI bodies for public policy delivery. This policy should consider what is the best institutional arrangement for the different QI bodies, including their location and resourcing mechanisms, and their capacity to implement policy for current and future policy challenges.

• Governments should include assessments of anticipated needs of QI services to deliver their high-level sectoral strategies (e.g. on transport, environment, health, education). This helps QI services to plan and ready themselves for policy delivery, identifies existing QI tools of use to regulators, and helps governments plan policy implementation.

• QI bodies should review their processes, including how they engage stakeholders and who they engage, to remain relevant in the future. This means becoming more agile, proactive and innovative to enable faster multi-stakeholder-led standards, measurement and assurance processes for tackling current challenges. This also means using the digital transformation and other innovations to enable this agility and be ready for future governance challenges.

• Governments can utilise the practical checklist (Chapter 5) included in this report to consider who their national QI actors are, how they are currently interacting with each other and with regulators, and how to optimise QI-regulation interactions. QI bodies can use the checklist in their engagement with governments to highlight their critical role in policy implementation and enforcement, and to better understand where gaps and challenges lie in their remits and delivery mechanisms.

Leveraging standards and quality assurance systems (QI) to tackle global challenges

Global challenges such as the green transition and the advent of AI require governments to develop solutions at pace that evolve with technological progress and societal needs. standards and quality assurance (QI) and regulatory systems already have common objectives on global challenges, such as fostering innovation, growth and protecting consumers and the environment. QI can be used by policymakers to tackle gaps in governance for global challenges, such as developing international standards that keep pace with rapid environmental change, or to develop safety principles that evolve with technological advancements in AI.

Global challenges require internationally aligned, interdisciplinary and inclusive approaches that also cater to national needs. Regulation operates within national borders, and international co-operation is required to enable cross-border coherence and interoperability in regulatory requirements. A well-functioning standards and quality assurance system that is well integrated into the national economy can support international regulatory co-operation, through participation in international QI fora that can deliver transboundary consensus on responses to global challenges. Governments can use QI’s multilateral fora on standards, conformity assessment, accreditation and metrology, where governments are represented by their nationally recognised QI institutions, to increase interoperability and reduce fragmentation in approaches to tackling global policy problems. For instance, QI tools can facilitate recognition of certification across borders, reducing the need for businesses to certify in both exporting and importing countries. Promoting the interoperability of standards and quality assurance tools and measurement systems is key to enabling co-operation across borders.

Strategic use of standards and quality assurance can connect voluntary action by businesses, national or regional regulatory frameworks, and multilateral international regulatory co-operation. As QI systems convene diverse stakeholders in national, regional and international fora, they consider the needs of businesses, policymakers and civil society. For example, the international standard-setting process is highly consultative and consensus based.

There is a need for standards and quality assurance systems to mobilise strategically to enable meeting such policy challenges, and to support policymakers effectively. To tackle global challenges, QI systems will need to modernise, become proactive and agile, and respond to their stakeholder needs faster,

Recommendations

• Governments should use the standards and quality assurance system’s international co-operation mechanisms to build inclusive, consensus-based, flexible, and internationally applicable governance frameworks to reduce fragmentation of governance approaches in global challenges. For example, this could mean using the international standards system to develop consensus-based understanding of best practices in AI safety or using accredited conformity assessment to enable trading in the carbon market.

• Governments should use standards and quality assurance strategically to connect expertise form voluntary and corporate action to regulatory frameworks, aligning action across the national economy and across global markets.

• Standards and quality assurance systems need to mobilise and proactively prepare innovative and faster solutions that can support policy challenges of the modern day. QI systems should assess the readiness of their tools and systems for policymaking in a digital future, and reform processes to simplify, harmonise and enable faster quality assurance.

• There is a need to build capacity in national standards and quality assurance systems to increase effective participation of low- to middle-income countries and maximise the impact of QI tools through increased inclusivity. Participation in the development of international QI tools, such as international standards, requires the capacity and resources of national QI systems and their stakeholders, which can be challenging for emerging economies.