Bureau 5: Regulatory

The Regulatory Bureau is the fifth bureau in the community, and the first in the Process and Property Department. The bureau consists of the IP, Legal Affairs, and Audit agencies. The bureau’s core responsibilities are to align the community’s social and economic affairs with the law and best practices while fuelling innovation that can transform the way people live and work.

Duties of Regulatory Bureau Agencies

The duties of the three agencies can be summarized as follows:

IP Agency	Legal Affairs Agency	Audit Agency
Facilitate innovation	Aligning the community’s activities with existing laws and community bylaws	Ensuring compliance with policies, regulations, bylaws, legislation, and audit standards
Processing IP	Acting as the community’s legal advisor and litigator	Checking the accuracy of financial reports
	Coordinating the community’s legal strategies	Assess the adequacy of internal controls

Shared responsibilities of agencies in the bureau

Compliance: the Regulatory Bureau is tasked with ensuring the community’s activities comply with the law and best practices. For instance, the process of developing and then filing IP is dominated by various legal requirements, which necessitate a careful review of the said IP to ensure it does not infringe one other property. In addition, the community does not operate in a vacuum. Instead, it operates in an environment governed by industry practices and the law. The bureau needs to ensure that its activities reflect the environment it operates on, while proactively aligning them with changing times.

Fuelling innovation: while the bureau aims to streamline activities to reflect its environment, it also encourages participants and other agencies to be innovative, not just in developing IP, but also in the way they approach challenges that are unique to the community. The bureau develops legal strategies to leverage laws and their application and also encourages industry-originated audit practices that harness various agencies’ automated systems and possession of vast amounts of current data.

Public servants and organization

Executive presidencies and boards

Each agency in the Regulatory Bureau is served by a four-member executive presidency. Each president represents a specific demographic: married men (A), married women (B), single women (C), and single men (D). However, each president serves the whole community, rather than their demographic alone. The presidencies serving the three agencies come together to form the Regulatory Bureau Board, a 12-member body that advises individual presidents and presidencies and acts as an additional check and balance beyond the presidencies.

Additionally, each president belongs to a demographic presidency. Three presidents who serve the same demographic on a board form a demographic presidency, which helps in articulating issues that cut across the board and are specific to the demographic.

Executive presidencies set strategy and draw up operating policies. They also set up and monitor their respective agencies’ automated systems.

	Demographic presidency A	Demographic presidency B	Demographic presidency C	Demographic presidency D
Executive presidency, IP (13)	13A	13B	13C	13D
Executive presidency, Legal (14)	14A	14B	14C	14D
Executive presidency, Audit (15)	15A	15B	15C	15D

Regulatory operational presidencies

As is the case with executive presidencies, the regulatory operational presidencies are composed of four presidencies representing the four major demographics. As such, there are 48 (12*4) regulatory operational presidents. The presidents in presidencies 1, 2, and 3, form a 12-member board, as do those in 4, 5, and 6, 7, 8, and 9, and 10, 11, and 12. As such, there are 4 boards.

Operational presidents also belong to demographic presidencies. The presidents belonging to presidencies 1, 2, and 3, and who serve one demographic group form a demographic presidency, as do those in presidencies 4, 5, and 6, 7, 8, and 9, and 10, 11, and 12. This means that there are 16 demographic presidencies for the operational presidents.

Each of the 12 operational presidencies serves 2 agency executive presidencies and 2 districts that correspond with the agencies’ number. For instance, operational Presidency 1 will serve Human Relations (1) and IP (13) agencies, as well as districts 1 and 13. For the four days in a week that they work, they alternate the days they serve in a district building, such that if they serve one agency on Monday, they will go to the other agency on Tuesday. This can be better explained as follows:

Presidency	President	demographic presidency	Agencies/ districts served	.	Presidency	President	demographic presidency	Agencies/ districts served
1	1A	1	1 and 13		7	7A	9	7 and 19
	1B	2	1 and 13			7B	10	7 and 19
	1C	3	1 and 13			7C	11	7 and 19
	1D	4	1 and 13			7D	12	7 and 19
2	2A	1	2 and 14		8	8A	9	8 and 20
	2B	2	2 and 14			8B	10	8 and 20
	2C	3	2 and 14			8C	11	8 and 20
	2D	4	2 and 14			8D	12	8 and 20
3	3A	1	3 and 15		9	9A	9	9 and 21
	3B	2	3 and 15			9B	10	9 and 21
	3C	3	3 and 15			9C	11	9 and 21
	3D	4	3 and 15			9D	12	9 and 21
4	4A	5	4 and 16		10	10A	13	10 and 22
	4B	5	4 and 16			10B	14	10 and 22
	4C	7	4 and 16			10C	15	10 and 22
	4D	8	4 and 16			10D	16	10 and 22
5	5A	5	5 and 17		11	11A	13	11 and 23
	5B	6	5 and 17			11B	14	11 and 23
	5C	7	5 and 17			11C	15	11 and 23
	5D	8	5 and 17			11D	16	11 and 23
6	6A	5	6 and 18		12	12A	13	12 and 24
	6B	6	6 and 18			12B	14	12 and 24
	6C	7	6 and 18			12C	15	12 and 24
	6D	8	6 and 18			12D	16	12 and 24

Operational presidents are identified by the two presidencies they belong to, and the 2 agencies they serve. While the services they provide are not restricted to any one of the three agencies, regulatory agents’ final selection is conducted by a particular executive presidency. Each of the three executive presidencies selects 4 of the 12 presidencies, with IP selecting 1,2,3, and 4, Legal selecting 5,6,7, and 8, and Audit selecting 9, 10, 11, and 12.

Qualifications

Regulatory agents perform a range of highly specialized roles. They need to handle legal, IP, and audit issues. This means that, for instance, a regulatory agent needs to be fully conversant with the law, IP prosecution, and audit processes. These skills are acquired professionally, meaning that the agents will most probably be lawyers, accountants, or other relevant professionals able to discharge the roles assigned to them by the office.

The community operates under a unique legal and innovation ecosystem. Besides their professional qualifications, regulatory agents need to have vast experience in how the community works. In many instances, they are likely to be former community public servants. Their conversance with the system’s 0erformance will be crucial if they are to offer specialized services to various presidencies and participants.