Driving Performance at Latvia's Public Utilities Commission
Regulators are proactive referees of the sectors they regulate, contributing to the delivery of essential public utilities for citizens. To fulfill this function, they need to be constantly alert, checking sectoral trends as well as assessing the impact of their decisions. However, while measuring regulators’ performance is essential, it is also challenging, from defininig what should be measured to attributing impacts to regulators' decisions. To address these challenges, the OECD has developed an innovative framework that looks at the institutions, processes and practices that help regulators assess their performance. The framework has been applied to Latvia's Public Utilities Commission, which is responsible for regulating energy, communications, water and waste. The review offers unique insights into the work of a multi-sector regulator, identifying the organisational features that allow lessons and experiences to be shared across sectors and contribute to good performance. It highlights the importance of clarifying the role and functions of the regulator and its relationship with other public institutions, setting long-term strategic objectives for the regulator's activities, and having the right regulatory tools with appropriate incentives for the efficient and effective provision of public utility services.
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Methodology and approach
Measuring regulatory performance is challenging, starting with defining what to measure, dealing with confounding factors, attributing outcomes to interventions and coping with the lack of data and information. This chapter describes the methodology developed by the OECD to help regulators address these challenges through a Performance Assessment Framework for Economic Regulators (PAFER), which informs this review. The chapter first presents some of the work conducted by the OECD on measuring regulatory performance. It then describes the key features of the PAFER and presents a typology of performance indicators to measure input, process, output and outcome. It finally provides an overview of the approach and practical steps undertaken for developing this review.
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