The 5th edition of the UB’s Social Innovation Lab on Good Governance and Regulation assesses public policies and regulatory quality

The University of Barcelona (UB) held the 5th edition of the Living Lab on Good Governance and Regulation at the end of 2022. The theme of the event was Experimentation in the regulatory environment and the role of sandboxes -a term that designates a testing environment for new regulations and their implication in new business models supervised by regulatory institutions- in the framework of the evaluation of public policies and regulatory quality at the local level.

The objective of the Living Lab is to respond to social challenges, coming from both the private and public environment, through innovative solutions and in a collaborative way, with the participation of companies and institutions, clients and users, academic experts and policy makers.

The 5th edition of the Living Lab on Good Governance and Regulation, coordinated by the team of Prof. Juli Ponce, Professor of Administrative Law at the UB, dealt in a first block with innovation in state-level regulation through regulatory sandboxes, showing examples of experiences already implemented and promoted by the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) in the financial-technological sector, in the energy sector and in urban mobility.

The Living Lab day specifically dedicated a blog to regulatory experimentation and the role of sandboxes at the local level. Reference was made to the possibility of temporarily repealing rules as an element of experimentation in the field of regulation, suggesting the need for a general regulatory framework on regulatory experimentation.

The day included an outstanding presentation by Prof. Juan Luís Jiménez, from the Department of Applied Economic Analysis of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, who, in his interesting speech, defended the need to evaluate public policies and the way to do so by applying empirical evaluation methodologies, which would make it possible to identify and learn from the experience of some public policies considered to be ineffective, since they had not achieved their purpose.

The conclusions of this conference will lead to the publication of the 4th Yearbook on Good Governance and Regulation, which will be published in 2023 thanks to the support of the Democracy and Local Government Foundation and the Federation of Municipalities of Catalonia.

A liquid model for a liquid society

The UB Living Lab is conceived as an experimental instrument of people and multidisciplinary resources that are activated according to each specific challenge and take different forms. It is a liquid model for a liquid society. The nearly 6,000 UB researchers from different fields of knowledge, the prestige and reputation of the academic institution and the relational experience in innovation projects of the Bosch i Gimpera Foundation make the University of Barcelona an unbeatable environment in which to develop this type of project.

In both public and private projects, the UB Living Lab methodology allows defining innovative solutions focused on users, validating new products or services under development, while training, raising awareness and empowering potential customers by promoting the change of habits necessary for the success of the project.

Therefore, the Living Lab UB is a key tool to address knowledge transfer, especially in the disciplines of humanities and social sciences related to people’s behavior.