At its Plenary Session on December 6, 2013, the Administrative Conference adopted Statement #18 on Improving the Timeliness of OIRA Regulatory Review.  The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) reviews draft proposed and final regulations to ensure they comply with the regulatory principles stated in Presidential Executive Orders and reflect the President’s policies and priorities.  During discussion of the Statement, the Assembly expressed an interest in statistics on the length and disposition of these reviews and accepted the GW Regulatory Studies Center’s offer to make them available on an annual basis. The Center’s RegStats page features new statistics and figures derived from data available on the government website, www.RegInfo.gov.

Figure 1 shows the average length of review for regulations concluded in each year from 1994 to 2013.  Figure 2 presents the results of those reviews. When making comparisons across years, it is important to note that the length of review is not recorded until review is concluded, so a lengthy average review time during a particular period may reflect the conclusion of reviews that had begun in an earlier period, rather than longer-than-average ongoing reviews.

Figure 1:

Figure 2: