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Implications for regulatory mapping process

When considering the mapping of regulation to controls, there are several complexities arising from the way that regulation is made and enforced that need to be addressed.

Despite standards being set at an international level, there is a huge variety in how these standards are made into law based on the type of legal framework, the constraints of the legislative process in different jurisdictions and the national conventions involved in the drafting of laws. In addition, in countries such as the US, some regulation dates back to the 1930s, before international standards were in place.

As a result, there is a lack of consistency in how regulatory texts can be broken down into their component parts and the level of detail that is contained in the discrete, most granular elements of these texts.

Context and meaning​

Another implication of the lack of standardisation in regulatory texts is that it is not always clear how much context is necessary to include to establish what a firm needs to do / refrain from doing. For example, regulations often contain multiple cross-references both to other parts of the same piece of regulation or to another regulation which can have a material effect on the meaning of an element of the regulatory text.

Navigating either the over-inclusion or under-inclusion of context is critical to ensuring the most accurate matching of regulation to controls.

Regulations are legal texts and as a result, contain elements which relate to the protocols of the legal process. These elements do not necessarily have legal standing and / or do not require firms to either do something or refrain from doing something. Including these elements in the reg mapping process is likely to create a lot of unnecessary 'noise' and thus reduce the accuracy of the matching of regulations to controls.