Open Regulation Platform (ORP)

Less than a third of UK businesses believe that the UK Government’s approach to regulation supports them in bringing new products and services to market. For the UK to have a regulatory system that is pro-innovation and provides a supportive environment to dynamic entrepreneurial business across all industries, regulatory reform needs to encourage new processes, products and business models.

PUBLIC is supporting the Better Regulation Executive (BRE) at the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) to develop the Open Regulation Platform (ORP), a platform which provides access to UK regulation as enriched, machine-readable data.

We, together with partners MDRxTech, are currently developing the beta phase of the programme; we have taken a user-centred approach to developing the ORP, through user testing and frequent engagement with regulators and Reg Tech innovators.

Building from this understanding of user needs, we compile documents from multiple regulators; employ data science and engineering to extract searchable information, or metadata, from those documents; and make those documents searchable via an accessible front-end which follows GDS design standards to ensure wide usability.

The ORP will help ensure that regulation in the UK is digital-first and more accessible to businesses. By converting UK business legislation into machine-readable data, the ORP will enable the creation of RegTech apps that will help ease the burden of regulatory compliance.

Over the coming months and years, the ORP will support the Government, regulators and Reg Tech providers to transform how UK businesses find, understand and comply with regulatory guidance and legislation.