Meaningful monitoring and helpful guidance

If the authorities’ regulatory activities are to succeed, they need to work in harmony with the day-to-day operations of companies. Accordingly, MindLab spoke to farmers and store managers in order to hear what they had to say about their experiences with the authorities’ current enforcement efforts.

”Of course, the authorities are not here physically, but in form-filling terms they are actually present every day.”

Pig producer

Some of the work of the authorities involves ensuring that companies are complying with laws and regulations. Several ministries are therefore working on a strategy to ensure more effective enforcement of business regulations, as well as applying enforcement that targets those areas where the problems are greatest and where the most serious risk of violations exists.

MindLab contributed to the process by bringing the experiences of some enterprises with existing enforcement activities into the strategy development work.

MindLab involved:

• 3 farmers
• 3 supermarket managers

Principal results

• MindLab has identified eight development potentials for the enforcement work of the ministries that can be addressed via the new enforcement strategy.

• MindLab has helped the project team to gain a better understanding of how businesses will experience the principles and recommendations arising from the strategy.

What MindLab did

MindLab visited three supermarkets and three farmers. We asked them to show us around their businesses and to tell us about the areas where they had to take account of official laws and regulations. For instance, what rules applied in the pig barn or at the cold counter? We also asked how the authorities ensured that the laws and rules were being complied with, and how the companies experience this.

Insights from the six company visits were then jointly analyzed in workshops with the officials responsible for drafting the new enforcement strategy. Video clips from the six company visits played an important part in this.

We anticipate talking to companies again to obtain their assessments of the initial proposals regarding the strategy’s principles and recommendations.