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State to use artificial intelligence in reforming regulations
KEITH ARNOLD
Special to the Legal News
Published: February 25, 2020
The state's Common Sense Initiative, or CSI, which reviews rules and works to improve the state's regulatory climate, is incorporating artificial intelligence into the initiative's efforts to reform the regulatory landscape of the Buckeye State.
The Common Sense Initiative has partnered with InnovateOhio to launch the project, according to a press announcement last week.
The implementation of the artificial intelligence tool is expected to allow the initiative to be proactive in the way it examines rules instead of simply waiting for regulations to be filed, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said in remarks at a meeting of the Small Business Advisory Council.
"Ohio has over 200 years of rules and regulations that have been patched together in a way that no one person or team of people can fully understand them," Husted said. "With our new AI tool, any regulatory topic can be researched and analyzed in seconds.
"We are going to use this new tool to bring comprehensive regulatory reform to Ohio."
Upon taking office, Husted said he discovered a significant backlog of unreviewed rules at CSI and subsequently oversaw the clearing of the backlog early in the new administration.
A 2018 report from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University estimated that Ohio currently has in excess of 240,000 regulations that would take a person 21 weeks to read, the press release detailed.
The project uses text analytics in addition to AI in its review. By comparing and linking data sets - a task that could take humans months or years, officials noted - it will provide government policymakers with opportunities to streamline regulations.
The tool is expected to more quickly sort data from the Ohio Revised Code and Ohio Administrative Code in order to narrow the work that needs to be done by human analysts significantly hastening the process, the release provided.
The project was funded by the General Assembly's passage and enactment of the operating budget and is to be administered through InnovateOhio.
CSI is hopeful its efforts to support the regulatory reform goals of the current administration, General Assembly leadership, and complement national efforts at regulatory review, the press release concluded.
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