Alex McMinn on what makes regulatory reform work

What turns a regulatory review into lasting reform rather than another report on a shelf?

Alex McMinn is Head of Regulatory System Capability at New Zealand’s Ministry for Regulation. He joins Paul Leavoy and Simon Corden to examine how reviews can create momentum for change, why regulators need their own measures of performance, and how confidential peer support can help leaders work through difficult institutional problems.

McMinn explains the Ministry’s distinctive approach to regulatory reviews, including its efforts to build support for reform before the final report lands. He also discusses the risks involved: speed can preserve momentum, but it can weaken evidentiary depth and allow support to gather around the wrong diagnosis.

The conversation then turns to a problem familiar to regulators everywhere. If effective regulation prevents harm that never occurs, how should performance be measured? McMinn argues that inspection numbers, processing times, and stakeholder satisfaction reveal only part of the picture.

This episode covers:

• How reviews can create the conditions for reform
• Why reports should mark progress rather than begin the conversation
• The trade-off between speed and evidentiary depth
• How reviewers can test an early diagnosis
• Why generic public service frameworks struggle to assess regulators
• What meaningful evidence of regulatory performance might look like
• How confidential peer support can improve regulatory decisions
• McMinn’s magic wand for making prevented harm visible

Further reading:

• Artificial Intelligence, Regulatory Capacity, and the Adaptive State
• Don’t Build a Profession, Govern a System
• Alex McMinn on New Zealand’s regulatory system
• Regulatory Institutions and Practices

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This episode is made possible with the support of Objective RegWorks – the software for regulators.