Article by the StanfordReport: “Bureaucracy moves slowly, and decades of outdated provisions clogging the bylaws of cities and states only make it worse. Sometimes dubbed “policy sludge,” such obsolete processes and stale reporting requirements can trap civil servants in red tape and cause program dysfunction.
Scholars at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) and Stanford RegLab are working with cities and states across the country to find and cut out this sludge. They developed an AI tool to examine 500 million words of state statutes across all 50 U.S. states to reveal common patterns in the sludge, which they detail in a new paper, “The Abundance of Reports and Incapacity of States,” forthcoming in the Yale Journal on Regulation. RegLab also partnered with the states of New York, California, and Maryland to help these governments start paring these provisions from their books to speed the pace of government.
“This is a direct example of how AI can benefit millions of people,” says Daniel E. Ho, faculty director of the RegLab, associate director at HAI, and a Stanford Law School professor. “These tools can clean up outdated requirements, reduce burdens on civil servants, and enable government to serve regular people who don’t want to face delays in filing for a new business, building a house, or securing a license. We hope that more states and cities will adopt this approach to clear clutter.”
Based on this work, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an Executive Order this month, directing state agencies to carry out a “regulatory reset” to remove outdated requirements, burdensome fees, and obsolete and unnecessary reports and commissions. “People have lost confidence in their state to be able to deliver the way they want it to,” Hochul said in a recent New York Times story about the order. “We have to shake it all up – be creative, and rethink government on a daily basis.”..(More)”.
