myLegislative Compliance - ICT tool for self-assessment of legal compliance

myLegislative Compliance is R&D project aiming to establish a software toolkit for improving the assessment of legal compliance for businesses and citizens. This web-based self-service tool would enable organizations and private individuals to check their legal compliance and to receive relevant alert messages when their legal compliance is at risk due to proposed changes in legislation.

Being compliant with the laws and regulations is core to good corporate governance. But in reality, businesses often gamble with risks associated with compliance. With around 120 laws applicable, each organization has thousands of compliance tasks to be fulfilled and monitored. This leaves businesses but also non-government organizations and citizens at a considerable risk, to be – or to become non compliant even without realizing it.

The myCompliance toolkit provides a management service on a legal platform that ensures compliance, including:

• Identification of applicable laws; general laws, state laws
• Research on all the relevant acts and prepare checklists of the same
• Regular updates regarding all laws and bylaws
• Detailed questionnaires in simple formats of all the applicable acts
• Scorecards and index of noncompliance
• Periodical reviews of the compliances
• Maintaining control of legal compliance
• Suggesting action steps in case of non-compliance
• Providing statistical data for benchmarking and assessment of rule of law

This would not only be an important e-Democracy aspect for protecting citizens and NGOs from accidental legal compliance issues, but would also be an excellent service in Europe, where business and private life is increasingly transcending national borders. The non-compliance data and the adaptation efforts are statistically analysed and aggregated, thus enabling to assess the adoption effort and costs of the new legislation. This would also provide feedback to the legislator on administrative burdens associated with the real state of compliance.

The users of the system would also be able to check their compliance in an on-screen dialogue. The system would not only alert the user to the legal change but would also indicate the required action necessary to become compliant again and may even indicate the budget necessary.

• myLegislative Compliance Objectives:
• Improving the rule of law
• Improving transparency and citizen participation
• Increasing competitiveness
• Early warning service on upcoming changes to legislation
• Assessment on financial and administrative burden for businesses and citizens
• Improving effectiveness of public administration