The Importance of Transparency in Regulation

Abstract

The annual audit plan of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which was issued in November 2020, included an audit of the NRC’s practice of allowing “dropin” visits. These are closed meetings of senior executives of licensees and NRC management. NRC procedures assume that “dropin” visits do not concern any matters that are related to pending regulatory decisions that could affect the interests of those licensees. The audit objective was to determine whether NRC policies and procedures for nonpublic interactions with industry stakeholders are adequate to prevent compromise of the independence of agency staff or the appearance of conflicts of interest. The results of this audit were issued in August 2022. In 2017, the OIG conducted another audit [USNRC, OIG17A23, “Audit of NRC's 10 CFR 2.206 Petition Review Process,” August 22, 2017, ADAMS No. ML17234A561] that focused on the public’s trust and confidence in the NRC. That audit examined the procedure that the NRC staff used to evaluate 10 CFR §2.206 enforcement petitions. The OIG found that the NRC staff had not issued a single enforcement order, as the result of 38 enforcement petitions that it had received in the prior three fiscal years, ending in 2016. The OIG concluded that the lack of such actions could adversely affect the public’s perspective on the effectiveness of the agency’s 10 CFR 2.206 petition process. Both audits are discussed in context with examples that illustrate the NRC’s implementation of its policy of transparency, in theory and practice.